50 Years of Research and Still No Microwave Weapons 154
DevotedSkeptic writes in with a story about the lack of usable microwave technology to come from 50 years of military research. "For some Pentagon officials, the demonstration in October 2007 must have seemed like a dream come true — an opportunity to blast reporters with a beam of energy that causes searing pain. The event in Quantico, Virginia, was to be a rare public showing for the US Air Force's Active Denial System: a prototype non-lethal crowd-control weapon that emits a beam of microwaves at 95 gigahertz. Radiation at that frequency penetrates less than half a millimetre into the skin, so the beam was supposed to deliver an intense burning sensation to anyone in its path, forcing them to move away, but without, in theory, causing permanent damage. However, the day of the test was cold and rainy. The water droplets in the air did what moisture always does: they absorbed the microwaves. And when some of the reporters volunteered to expose themselves to the attenuated beam, they found that on such a raw day, the warmth was very pleasant. The story is much the same in other areas of HPM weapons development, which began as an East–West technology race nearly 50 years ago. In the United States, where spending on electromagnetic weapons is down from cold-war levels, but remains at some US$47 million per year, progress is elusive. 'There's lots of smoke and mirrors,' says Peter Zimmerman, an emeritus nuclear physicist at King's College London and former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in Washington DC. Although future research may yield scientific progress, he adds, 'I cannot see they will build a useful, deployable weapon.'"
You say it like it is a bad thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
No new weapons? (Score:4, Insightful)
What a tragedy.
Re:You say it like it is a bad thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are There Any Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
Like pepper spray, water cannons, clubs, horses, dogs, sonic weapons, machine guns, truncheons, whips, tear gas.....
$47 million. You could make a good start at buying an election with that kind of money.
So let's see (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a very expensive crowd control weapon that likely could be rendered ineffective as long as enough of the protesters brought 99-cent spray bottles full of water along with them.
Got it.
Re:You say it like it is a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely it is a tool to disperse protesters without those incriminating head cracking videos.
Re:You say it like it is a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes it way too easy to disperse peaceful protestors when their message is politically inconvenient. The people you linked to were not protesters, they were rioters and anything but peaceful. A water cannon would have done a better job than the microwave weapon anyway.
Re:You say it like it is a bad thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
When you design a weapon that is inferior in every way except that it's use leaves no obvious traces, it has only bad uses.
That applies to ultrasonics as well.
Re:You say it like it is a bad thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
When you design a weapon that is inferior in every way except that it's use leaves no obvious traces, it has only bad uses.
So, having an effect while being less likely to kill, maim, or injure, than rubber bullets, baton rounds, riot batons, etc., is essentially a design flaw then. Don't you think that democratic governments have a responsibility to minimize the harm to its citizens, if possible, even when coercion is necessary?
Re:You say it like it is a bad thing. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is far more likely to torture or maim (when it works at all) than a water cannon all without risking the backlash of photojournalism. The latter part makes it more likely to be used when, in fact, a legitimate government would respect the right to peaceably assemble and a less legitimate one would otherwise tolerate it in order to avoid making the protesters into media heroes.
When I say inferior in every way, I mean that it is less likely to actually work in real world conditions than a fire hose while costing more. As for the liklihood to injure or maim, we don't actually know how harmful it might be. If it causes pain, it is quite likely to be doing damage. Once it's out of the hands of researchers and being operated by pigs, what reason do we have to believe people won't be tortured until they have long term nerve damage? In contrast, a riot shield or a hose just pushes you down.
Re:You say it like it is a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can easily see this going badly wrong.
eg. In a big crowd the people at the back won't feel anything but they can be blocking the escape of the people at the front. The people at the front will have nowhere to go and could be exposed to this for a very long time. That's torture by any definition.