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I just wish they'd also get their hands on a proper understanding of the right to peacable assembly and de-escalation tactics, seeing as they're not the Roman army and protest groups aren't a barbarian horde.
I fear the day when they decide to begin laying this on peaceful protests
Hey, there's no such thing as a peaceful protest, for arbitrarily narrow definitions of peaceful.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I just wish they'd also get their hands on a proper understanding of the right to peacable assembly and de-escalation tactics, seeing as they're not the Roman army and protest groups aren't a barbarian horde.
I fear the day when they decide to begin laying this on peaceful protests
Hey, there's no such thing as a peaceful protest, for arbitrarily narrow definitions of peaceful.
I worry it'll either go the route of "It looked like it could become violent later" or "They were damaging the good name of the government "
Corlis on
But I don't mind, as long as there's a bed beneath the stars that shine,
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
Well, as said before, it looks like situation it's meant for is - an unidentified gunman is taking potshots at you from inside a civilian building. You can't immediately see where he is and firing off shots randomly might kill civilians, so instead you pain ray the whole building. Yeah, that means women and children are going to experience mind-boggling pain for five minutes, but at least they're not dead.
I suppose it's better that they're not dead; however, when innocent bystanders get hit by the Beam of Oh Fuck That Hurts, they're not going to be happy. They're not likely to be all, "oh, well I guess it was reasonable to use it in that situation, since they were taking fire and it didn't really (supposedly) cause any lasting effects on me."
I'm not arguing that it's a good thing. Present company excepted, in my experience most of the volunteers of our all-volunteer military signed up so they can get paid to fire fancy war toys that go boom, so I agree that you give them something like this and tell them that it has "no lasting effects," they're going to point it at some brown people just for fun.
However, I'm extremely skeptical of the argument that there are no lasting effects. I find that impossible to believe.
Me too. I think it'll end up being more of a "no immediately identifiable lasting effects, and as long as we only use it on brown people in third world countries they'll probably die of something else before any lasting effects show up...so let's use this until we come up with something better."
For some reason I can't stop thinking about Bikini Atoll.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I just wish they'd also get their hands on a proper understanding of the right to peacable assembly and de-escalation tactics, seeing as they're not the Roman army and protest groups aren't a barbarian horde.
I fear the day when they decide to begin laying this on peaceful protests
Hey, there's no such thing as a peaceful protest, for arbitrarily narrow definitions of peaceful.
The problem is when you try to apply peacable protest and de-escalation tactics in a combat zone. In one particular riot dealing with the Iraqi women (Who I will forever hate), we lined up in a line side by side, with the rifle at port arms, and forceibly pushed them passed our wire, to a zone that could be called "open territory". We then refused to let anyone pass, and they all sat down in a quiet protest. We did nothing to stop this, they where free to protest, just not in our FOB territory because it would disrupt day-to-day operations.
However, most of the protests and riots I've been in while deployed in Iraq are not peaceful, they always turn violent because the Iraqi's will push eachother, shout at eachother, and start wailing on eachother. It always turns violent. In the past, flashbangs where thrown and the dog handlers where called out as we upped our force presence and began to move the riot outside of our "territory". The flashbangs did a good job of cordoning off sectors and the Iraqi's hated the dog handlers and dogs in general, at least dogs that look like could bite your head off at command.
If you apply accepted standards of de-escalation tactics they will fail because the protest is not peaceful. You have to take a harder stance to stop the protest and riot to: 1) not cause harm or destruction to any of the soldiers or equipment in the area and 2) to not cause further harm to any of the civilians involved. Many times the Iraqi's would push eachother and little children into our concentrina wire and fences resulting in many many civilians getting injured and slashed (I actually committed a tabboo in fundamentalist Iraqi culture: I applied a field dressing to an Iraqi woman who had a horrible gash on her hand from being slashed by the concentrina wire. You aren't allowed to touch the women, but obviously she was bleeding and bleeding bad so it had to be stopped/treated. I applied the field dressing during the chaos, with all the other Iraqi's watching and they didn't seem to care and actually they came to respect me). This was before any attempts to de-escalate the scenario, the tempers began to flare when a group of Iraqi women refuse to move or began arguing with another group of Iraqi women, so they started crowding in and pushing eachother, resulting in everyone pushing more and more with the resulting riot and chaos.
In all other instances where they can maintain peace, they are allowed to protest as long as it's not interfering with the operations of the military. You don't disrupt that, you don't even touch that, you let them protest.
I see this weapon being used at hard installizations not so much mobile units. You have an angry protest going on right outside your FOB walls you could use this ADS system to push the riot away to stop disrupting your operations. Or you are being attack by a mob of attackers, you could technically coerce them into moving towards police/military presence so they could be detained. In those scenarios, I actually see it being beneficial to the military.
I'm not arguing that it's a good thing. Present company excepted, in my experience most of the volunteers of our all-volunteer military signed up so they can get paid to fire fancy war toys that go boom, so I agree that you give them something like this and tell them that it has "no lasting effects," they're going to point it at some brown people just for fun.
Agreed. I can count the number of infantrymen I've known who I trust to never use such a thing irresponsibly without resorting to toes.
You know what's sad, I'd actually trust this or any weapon to a combat MOS than to a REMF. I think the REMF would actually probably try using it on one of his buddies, like I've seen REMF's shoot eachother with non-lethal shotgun rounds.
Sure, I don't think it's a bad thing to have for dispersing violent people. I just worry that it will be used in situations where it shouldn't be used, such as peaceful protests.
Corlis on
But I don't mind, as long as there's a bed beneath the stars that shine,
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
Im not sure if this is right, but wouldn't an experimental microwave zap ray be considered a 'strategic' weapon rather than a 'tactical' one? There will be cameras watching every single time this weapon is used, and we know for a fact that the insurgents won't think twice about actively putting civilians in the line of fire for propagnada purposes. Its not like they're gonna load up a C5 with them and hand them out to everyone the next day. Im worried about abuses too, but there are professional career soldiers out there who are responsible and didn't join to make things go 'Boom'. It'd be one thing if we got reports indicating they were testing this system on the Iraquis secretly, but they've made information available to the public since 2004 before finally deciding to use it and there's no way they'd let it be used without tight supervision at this point.
You give an 18-year-old ex-football jock with an assault rifle a laser gun and tell him only to use it in emergencies, he's gonna wanna start shooting cans off a fence within the first 10 seconds. At least he's not popping some poor Afghani kid's kneecaps with rubber bullets or cracking a woman's skull in the marketplace because she won't remove her scarf so he can get a look at her.
The problem is that the guys who are all about those examples are going to be even more all about this, because hey, it doesn't really damage anybody, and it's not like anyone can actually prove you did it for fun, right? Abuse of the weapon is easily swept under the rug--I'm sure whoever gets complaints along those lines has a shitton of more important things to be looking into on a constant basis--and hard to discourage.
That's just going to lead to more popular support for the guys who are out there doing more than protesting and throwing rocks and refusing to remove their veils, especially since (assuming the damage really is a) limited to blisters and b) rarely occuring) pretty much anyone can claim they got zapped with one of these things without anyone having a good reason to doubt them.
Ecoterrorism is actually the single largest terrorist threat at the moment. They don't usually kill people, but they blow up or set on fire very expensive things.
I just wish they'd also get their hands on a proper understanding of the right to peacable assembly and de-escalation tactics, seeing as they're not the Roman army and protest groups aren't a barbarian horde.
I fear the day when they decide to begin laying this on peaceful protests
Hey, there's no such thing as a peaceful protest, for arbitrarily narrow definitions of peaceful.
The problem is when you try to apply peacable protest and de-escalation tactics in a combat zone.
Which is great, but the original thing quoted was in reference to a post about the police, not the military.
Ecoterrorism is actually the single largest terrorist threat at the moment. They don't usually kill people, but they blow up or set on fire very expensive things.
Somehow I can't help but think that this is going to be the "but we don't use white phosphorus as a weapon" of 2026. It says people can't stand more then 5 seconds exposure? What happens if you train it on them and don't let them move? What happens if you turn up the power?
Okay, so from the perspective of a person in the crowd, getting a sunburn is preferable to being shot. But we, well-fed Americans sitting in front of our computers thousands of miles away from any actual unrest, don't really care about the people in the crowd, do we? What we care about is there being some way for the Air Force to solve dangerous crowd situations without the messy hearts-and-minds PR repercussions of shooting people-- we've been trying to pretend that we only enter countries as peacekeepers and liberators now, and it's hard to credibly do that when you keep shooting the people you are trying to liberate.
The Air Force's interest in this weapon, and indirectly our own interests, are not humane; they're practical, based in the perceptions that the use of different weapons creates. So, what do you think creates a worse perception of America? Shooting in the air to drive back a crowd, or shooting a couple people who are immediate threats, like all sides of every conflict wind up doing sooner or later? Or turning fucking death ray beams on a crowd of people, burning their skin? Do you think the use of laser beams that cause unbearable pain will help or hurt America's omnipotent-evil-empire image in areas which lack the technology development level to get clean water?
This particular weapon has the odd property of being more humane than just shooting somebody, but way more dehumanizing. It also seems quite likely that if put into use, it will wind up getting used in situations where the operator would not dream of actually opening fire, meaning we ultimately exacerbate the PR problems of firing into a crowd because we're doing it more "humanely", but more humiliatingly and more often.
At least I think it's safe to hope this will never come to the United States, even if its use is made officially legal. You turn something like this on a U.S. citizen, you will invariably get sued based on nebulous and possibly-imaginary long term health effects it will be claimed to cause. And getting sued is so much worse than getting shot at.
At least I think it's safe to hope this will never come to the United States, even if its use is made officially legal. You turn something like this on a U.S. citizen, you will invariably get sued based on nebulous and possibly-imaginary long term health effects it will be claimed to cause. And getting sued is so much worse than getting shot at.
I think that's kind of a leap. How hard is it to get a successful judgment against the police when they do something like shoot someone twice for obeying a direct order on camera? They'd probably need to actually call it a cancer-ray before a plaintiff had a shot at getting a suit about the domestic use of this thing rolling.
Ecoterrorism is actually the single largest terrorist threat at the moment. They don't usually kill people, but they blow up or set on fire very expensive things.
I don't get why this heat beam is worse than tear gas.
I'd rather the heat beam to tell you the truth. At least if it isn't trained on me for more than a handful of seconds.
I think the skepticism about this thing follows two principles:
1) It has sharply limited military applications
2) Law enforcement and some military people are notorious for their equivalence of "there's no chance of permanent damage" and "it's okay to use this." There's been insufficient restraint on use of tasers and pepper-sprays since their introduction to law-enforcement, and both of those do have some lasting damage.
Yeah - using something like this is better than using something that inflicts equivalent pain but more damage. I think people are just concerned about misuse.
I don't get why this heat beam is worse than tear gas.
Because the people using it don't even have to make sure it's worth them busting out their special anti-tear-gas gear and suiting up over. They just have to make sure they're out of the area of influence before firing it up. If we could trust the users' oversight committees to beat some ass if these things got misused, it wouldn't be so bad. We can't, though, so pretty much anything that puts fewer "do we really need to do this" steps in front of doing it is not exactly a good thing.
Ecoterrorism is actually the single largest terrorist threat at the moment. They don't usually kill people, but they blow up or set on fire very expensive things.
I don't get why this heat beam is worse than tear gas.
I'd rather the heat beam to tell you the truth. At least if it isn't trained on me for more than a handful of seconds.
Because if its trained on you for more than a handful of seconds you will most likly die.
We are talking about a microwave folks, it agitates water molecules. When used for 5 seconds, only the skin heats up significantly. Then again, if you stick a hot dog in the microwave and turn it on for 5 seconds, the inside is still frozen.
As soon as this goes into the hands of soldiers there will be reports of death and serious injury directly caused by the device.
Goumindong on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratorMod Emeritus
I don't get why this heat beam is worse than tear gas.
I'd rather the heat beam to tell you the truth. At least if it isn't trained on me for more than a handful of seconds.
Because if its trained on you for more than a handful of seconds you will most likly die.
We are talking about a microwave folks, it agitates water molecules. When used for 5 seconds, only the skin heats up significantly. Then again, if you stick a hot dog in the microwave and turn it on for 5 seconds, the inside is still frozen.
As soon as this goes into the hands of soldiers there will be reports of death and serious injury directly caused by the device.
I think it's at least an order or magnitude off from microwaves. IIRC, it's milimeter waves, which probably have a pretty low cross-section with water molecules. I'm not convinced that it really cooks things or causes real tissue damage. It's kind of academic to most of the discussion here anyhow, I guess.
You can probably kill some people by causing them prolonged agony, I'd imagine.
They'd probably need to actually call it a cancer-ray--
Once the lawyers start getting involved, it probably will be :O
Again, I think you're underestimating the pro-cop (or at least anti-guy-that-got-brutalized) bias in the people who'd be responsible for returning a judgment and setting a penalty for any of this shit. Unless the police are quite literally issuing CancerGunâ„¢ 2000 sidearms and shouting "Put your hands over your head or I will give you melanoma!", I do not think it has legs. Yeah, we might have threads about how nobody can believe they gave that kid cancer over not leaving the library, and a whole bunch of people going "It's just a little cancer. He'll be fine if he sees a dermatologist within a week. Maybe next time he'll leave more quickly.", and how the officer responsible will get paid leave and then be given cancer-training and be back out on the street until he gives cancer to someone on film again. But we're not going to see class action suits so big that the ultimate irony--the litigants in the death-ray case being death-rayed out of the courtroom for being too large a crowd for the defendants' tastes--winds up on CourtTV.
Ecoterrorism is actually the single largest terrorist threat at the moment. They don't usually kill people, but they blow up or set on fire very expensive things.
I don't get why this heat beam is worse than tear gas.
I'd rather the heat beam to tell you the truth. At least if it isn't trained on me for more than a handful of seconds.
Because if its trained on you for more than a handful of seconds you will most likly die.
We are talking about a microwave folks, it agitates water molecules. When used for 5 seconds, only the skin heats up significantly. Then again, if you stick a hot dog in the microwave and turn it on for 5 seconds, the inside is still frozen.
As soon as this goes into the hands of soldiers there will be reports of death and serious injury directly caused by the device.
I think it's at least an order or magnitude off from microwaves. IIRC, it's milimeter waves, which probably have a pretty low cross-section with water molecules. I'm not convinced that it really cooks things or causes real tissue damage. It's kind of academic to most of the discussion here anyhow, I guess.
You can probably kill some people by causing them prolonged agony, I'd imagine.
They arent nearly as strong as microwaves, but they dont have to be to cook somone until they die. The beam heats up the surface of the skin to about 130 degrees in 5 seconds*.
Prolonged exposure is going first give you full thickness burns, then its going to kill you.
*Rereading the article, that was not in it. Though i do not doubt that the type of heat needed to produce a non-endurable temperature after 3 to 5 seconds is at least 130 degrees.
Call me paranoid but am I the only one who thinks that this ADS is simply a way for the military to get their foot in the door of a new technology? Sure on the surface this seems like a great and useful tool but I'm more concerned about what they will start coming up with next, like an actual death ray type weapon, directed energy (lasers pew pew pew), and other exotic stuff.
Random add-on question:
Bush already has a chubby over the idea of putting weapons in space, can a new Star Wars program be far away?
Its obvious that this is the first step to laser guns. In a way I'm kind of surprised about how transparent they're being with this project. This could just be smoke and mirrors for mini-nukes and psy-ops or something.
Ecoterrorism is actually the single largest terrorist threat at the moment. They don't usually kill people, but they blow up or set on fire very expensive things.
I don't get why this heat beam is worse than tear gas.
I'd rather the heat beam to tell you the truth. At least if it isn't trained on me for more than a handful of seconds.
I think the skepticism about this thing follows two principles:
1) It has sharply limited military applications
It seems to me that it has applications for the situations in which we keep putting our military in terms of peacekeeping and nation building missions.
Shinto on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratorMod Emeritus
I don't get why this heat beam is worse than tear gas.
I'd rather the heat beam to tell you the truth. At least if it isn't trained on me for more than a handful of seconds.
I think the skepticism about this thing follows two principles:
1) It has sharply limited military applications
It seems to me that it has applications for the situations in which we keep putting our military in terms of peacekeeping and nation building missions.
Maybe so, but I'm not really sure what they could use it for besides dispersing crowds. Is the lack of crowd dispersal a big problem in occupation scenarios?
It's apparently not incapacitory like a taser is - it just hurts a whole lot.
Call me paranoid but am I the only one who thinks that this ADS is simply a way for the military to get their foot in the door of a new technology? Sure on the surface this seems like a great and useful tool but I'm more concerned about what they will start coming up with next, like an actual death ray type weapon, directed energy (lasers pew pew pew), and other exotic stuff.
Random add-on question:
Bush already has a chubby over the idea of putting weapons in space, can a new Star Wars program be far away?
You should read about proposed modernization ideas for the C-130U Spectre Gunship. They already have a solid state laser that runs on 45kw of power, the power supply is small enough to fit on the C-130, and they are talking about having the gunship launch and recover it's own UCAV's and UAV's while replacing the 105mm howtizer with a 120mm mortar that can fire both lethal and non-lethal rounds. It would be able to pinpoint target the enemy by itself and fire a very accurate laser, mortar, chaingun(s), or UCAV at the target very accurately from high up in the air.
Infact, there is another idea of converting C-130's or other large aircraft's nose cones to be equipped with the "Airborne laser", which can shoot down ICBM's over enemy territory and have the missile land on the enemy nation.
Back on topic with the ADS, is it possible to widen the firing range of this heat ray, target it at the ground to be an effective deterrent against IED's? I'd imagine the heat increase on an IED would set it off before it had the chance to explode in a military convoy. Is that possible, or is it too far reaching?
Stay well informed of civilian movement and use preventative measures to shut down hotspots before trouble can form? Fuck no. Just burn em!
Also, people are concerned about if victims aren't allowed to retreat - but a more likely scenario is if they can't retreat - ie, lying wounded on the ground.
I think Shinto's right, and this probably isn't too different from tear gas, but it's just so illustrative of the American army's apparent compulsion to throw big money at problems that could more easily be solved by a fundamental approach.
Stay well informed of civilian movement and use preventative measures to shut down hotspots before trouble can form? Fuck no. Just burn em!
Also, people are concerned about if victims aren't allowed to retreat - but a more likely scenario is if they can't retreat - ie, lying wounded on the ground.
I think Shinto's right, and this probably isn't too different from tear gas, but it's just so illustrative of the American army's apparent compulsion to throw big money at problems that could more easily be solved by a fundamental approach.
I think the army's response to your rebuttal might be something along the lines of:
"The fundamental approach is for gays."
On the other hand, you make a good point. I think that if this system is utilized in an intelligent way (i.e. a vehicle-mounted horizontal beam that works like a slowly-moving electric-fence to corral dissidents) it could be molded into an effective peacekeeping tool... or a symbol of our Orwellian might and dominance.
Stay well informed of civilian movement and use preventative measures to shut down hotspots before trouble can form? Fuck no. Just burn em!
Also, people are concerned about if victims aren't allowed to retreat - but a more likely scenario is if they can't retreat - ie, lying wounded on the ground.
I think Shinto's right, and this probably isn't too different from tear gas, but it's just so illustrative of the American army's apparent compulsion to throw big money at problems that could more easily be solved by a fundamental approach.
I think the army's response to your rebuttal might be something along the lines of:
"The fundamental approach is for gays."
On the other hand, you make a good point. I think that if this system is utilized in an intelligent way (i.e. a vehicle-mounted horizontal beam that works like a slowly-moving electric-fence to corral dissidents) it could be molded into an effective peacekeeping tool... or a symbol of our Orwellian might and dominance.
No visual indicator means you go from "just standing there" to "ohmygodwhatthefuckitburnssss" in pretty short order. Knowing which way to disperse is kind of hard. It seems like mostly it would have the same effect as a magnifying glass on an anthill.
...it's just so illustrative of the American army's apparent compulsion to throw big money at problems that could more easily be solved by a fundamental approach.
Actually, this is U.S. Air Force hardware.
But you bring up an excellent point. Billions of greenbacks are/were being spent on these "rad" toys while foot soldiers are/were dealing with shoddy body armor. Boots on the ground, lots of boots on the ground, are what really get the job done and win wars, but the Marines and Army troops--the guys doing all the real work--usually get shortchanged at the expense of the whiz-bang G.I. Joe sci-fi hardware.
NexusSix on
REASON - Version 1.0B7 Gatling type 3 mm hypervelocity railgun system
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
No visual indicator means you go from "just standing there" to "ohmygodwhatthefuckitburnssss" in pretty short order. Knowing which way to disperse is kind of hard. It seems like mostly it would have the same effect as a magnifying glass on an anthill.
It shouldn't be too hard to equip something like that with a laser-site sort of thing to at least help address that issue. I'm not sure if there's a practical and perfectly effective solution for full-light conditions, though.
Ecoterrorism is actually the single largest terrorist threat at the moment. They don't usually kill people, but they blow up or set on fire very expensive things.
No visual indicator means you go from "just standing there" to "ohmygodwhatthefuckitburnssss" in pretty short order. Knowing which way to disperse is kind of hard. It seems like mostly it would have the same effect as a magnifying glass on an anthill.
It shouldn't be too hard to equip something like that with a laser-site sort of thing to at least help address that issue. I'm not sure if there's a practical and perfectly effective solution for full-light conditions, though.
If you could get 'em to show up like they do in the movies it would seem all right. Maybe a big-ass laser and a steam machine or something.
Or - better - instead of steam, you could use tear gas
No visual indicator means you go from "just standing there" to "ohmygodwhatthefuckitburnssss" in pretty short order. Knowing which way to disperse is kind of hard. It seems like mostly it would have the same effect as a magnifying glass on an anthill.
It shouldn't be too hard to equip something like that with a laser-site sort of thing to at least help address that issue. I'm not sure if there's a practical and perfectly effective solution for full-light conditions, though.
If you could get 'em to show up like they do in the movies it would seem all right. Maybe a big-ass laser and a steam machine or something.
Or - better - instead of steam, you could use tear gas
I'm relatively sure you can set a laser up so that you wind up with a weaker but larger spot rather than the tiny little dot, which would let people in a crowded or urbanized spot get a feel for the path without trying to listen for scream volume. My initial thought was a small searchlight with a colored cell over it, but that'd probably be way too weak for full-light use. This is kind of a moot point, though, as I don't think this is the sort of weapon that's going to be effective at herding an angry mob anywhere but "the fuck away from you."
Ecoterrorism is actually the single largest terrorist threat at the moment. They don't usually kill people, but they blow up or set on fire very expensive things.
Imagine you're in a crowded street in Baghdad. Someone starts shooting at you. You're not certain where the shots are coming from. You can either:
1): Attempt to retreat, and possibly take casualties while running away.
2): Lay down suppressing fire and probably kill some civilians.
3): Use ADS and make whoever's not shooting at you get the hell out of dodge.
Fixed. You don't know where the shots are coming from, remember?
Also, the painspraying a whole building to disable a shooter thing doesn't work cos the ray doesn't pass stone or metal.
Posts
Hey, there's no such thing as a peaceful protest, for arbitrarily narrow definitions of peaceful.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
I'm not arguing that it's a good thing. Present company excepted, in my experience most of the volunteers of our all-volunteer military signed up so they can get paid to fire fancy war toys that go boom, so I agree that you give them something like this and tell them that it has "no lasting effects," they're going to point it at some brown people just for fun.
For some reason I can't stop thinking about Bikini Atoll.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The problem is when you try to apply peacable protest and de-escalation tactics in a combat zone. In one particular riot dealing with the Iraqi women (Who I will forever hate), we lined up in a line side by side, with the rifle at port arms, and forceibly pushed them passed our wire, to a zone that could be called "open territory". We then refused to let anyone pass, and they all sat down in a quiet protest. We did nothing to stop this, they where free to protest, just not in our FOB territory because it would disrupt day-to-day operations.
However, most of the protests and riots I've been in while deployed in Iraq are not peaceful, they always turn violent because the Iraqi's will push eachother, shout at eachother, and start wailing on eachother. It always turns violent. In the past, flashbangs where thrown and the dog handlers where called out as we upped our force presence and began to move the riot outside of our "territory". The flashbangs did a good job of cordoning off sectors and the Iraqi's hated the dog handlers and dogs in general, at least dogs that look like could bite your head off at command.
If you apply accepted standards of de-escalation tactics they will fail because the protest is not peaceful. You have to take a harder stance to stop the protest and riot to: 1) not cause harm or destruction to any of the soldiers or equipment in the area and 2) to not cause further harm to any of the civilians involved. Many times the Iraqi's would push eachother and little children into our concentrina wire and fences resulting in many many civilians getting injured and slashed (I actually committed a tabboo in fundamentalist Iraqi culture: I applied a field dressing to an Iraqi woman who had a horrible gash on her hand from being slashed by the concentrina wire. You aren't allowed to touch the women, but obviously she was bleeding and bleeding bad so it had to be stopped/treated. I applied the field dressing during the chaos, with all the other Iraqi's watching and they didn't seem to care and actually they came to respect me). This was before any attempts to de-escalate the scenario, the tempers began to flare when a group of Iraqi women refuse to move or began arguing with another group of Iraqi women, so they started crowding in and pushing eachother, resulting in everyone pushing more and more with the resulting riot and chaos.
In all other instances where they can maintain peace, they are allowed to protest as long as it's not interfering with the operations of the military. You don't disrupt that, you don't even touch that, you let them protest.
I see this weapon being used at hard installizations not so much mobile units. You have an angry protest going on right outside your FOB walls you could use this ADS system to push the riot away to stop disrupting your operations. Or you are being attack by a mob of attackers, you could technically coerce them into moving towards police/military presence so they could be detained. In those scenarios, I actually see it being beneficial to the military.
You know what's sad, I'd actually trust this or any weapon to a combat MOS than to a REMF. I think the REMF would actually probably try using it on one of his buddies, like I've seen REMF's shoot eachother with non-lethal shotgun rounds.
I hate idiots in the military.
Sure, I don't think it's a bad thing to have for dispersing violent people. I just worry that it will be used in situations where it shouldn't be used, such as peaceful protests.
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
That's just going to lead to more popular support for the guys who are out there doing more than protesting and throwing rocks and refusing to remove their veils, especially since (assuming the damage really is a) limited to blisters and b) rarely occuring) pretty much anyone can claim they got zapped with one of these things without anyone having a good reason to doubt them.
Okay, so from the perspective of a person in the crowd, getting a sunburn is preferable to being shot. But we, well-fed Americans sitting in front of our computers thousands of miles away from any actual unrest, don't really care about the people in the crowd, do we? What we care about is there being some way for the Air Force to solve dangerous crowd situations without the messy hearts-and-minds PR repercussions of shooting people-- we've been trying to pretend that we only enter countries as peacekeepers and liberators now, and it's hard to credibly do that when you keep shooting the people you are trying to liberate.
The Air Force's interest in this weapon, and indirectly our own interests, are not humane; they're practical, based in the perceptions that the use of different weapons creates. So, what do you think creates a worse perception of America? Shooting in the air to drive back a crowd, or shooting a couple people who are immediate threats, like all sides of every conflict wind up doing sooner or later? Or turning fucking death ray beams on a crowd of people, burning their skin? Do you think the use of laser beams that cause unbearable pain will help or hurt America's omnipotent-evil-empire image in areas which lack the technology development level to get clean water?
This particular weapon has the odd property of being more humane than just shooting somebody, but way more dehumanizing. It also seems quite likely that if put into use, it will wind up getting used in situations where the operator would not dream of actually opening fire, meaning we ultimately exacerbate the PR problems of firing into a crowd because we're doing it more "humanely", but more humiliatingly and more often.
At least I think it's safe to hope this will never come to the United States, even if its use is made officially legal. You turn something like this on a U.S. citizen, you will invariably get sued based on nebulous and possibly-imaginary long term health effects it will be claimed to cause. And getting sued is so much worse than getting shot at.
I'd rather the heat beam to tell you the truth. At least if it isn't trained on me for more than a handful of seconds.
1) It has sharply limited military applications
2) Law enforcement and some military people are notorious for their equivalence of "there's no chance of permanent damage" and "it's okay to use this." There's been insufficient restraint on use of tasers and pepper-sprays since their introduction to law-enforcement, and both of those do have some lasting damage.
Yeah - using something like this is better than using something that inflicts equivalent pain but more damage. I think people are just concerned about misuse.
Because if its trained on you for more than a handful of seconds you will most likly die.
We are talking about a microwave folks, it agitates water molecules. When used for 5 seconds, only the skin heats up significantly. Then again, if you stick a hot dog in the microwave and turn it on for 5 seconds, the inside is still frozen.
As soon as this goes into the hands of soldiers there will be reports of death and serious injury directly caused by the device.
I think it's at least an order or magnitude off from microwaves. IIRC, it's milimeter waves, which probably have a pretty low cross-section with water molecules. I'm not convinced that it really cooks things or causes real tissue damage. It's kind of academic to most of the discussion here anyhow, I guess.
You can probably kill some people by causing them prolonged agony, I'd imagine.
They arent nearly as strong as microwaves, but they dont have to be to cook somone until they die. The beam heats up the surface of the skin to about 130 degrees in 5 seconds*.
Prolonged exposure is going first give you full thickness burns, then its going to kill you.
*Rereading the article, that was not in it. Though i do not doubt that the type of heat needed to produce a non-endurable temperature after 3 to 5 seconds is at least 130 degrees.
Random add-on question:
Bush already has a chubby over the idea of putting weapons in space, can a new Star Wars program be far away?
It seems to me that it has applications for the situations in which we keep putting our military in terms of peacekeeping and nation building missions.
Maybe so, but I'm not really sure what they could use it for besides dispersing crowds. Is the lack of crowd dispersal a big problem in occupation scenarios?
It's apparently not incapacitory like a taser is - it just hurts a whole lot.
You should read about proposed modernization ideas for the C-130U Spectre Gunship. They already have a solid state laser that runs on 45kw of power, the power supply is small enough to fit on the C-130, and they are talking about having the gunship launch and recover it's own UCAV's and UAV's while replacing the 105mm howtizer with a 120mm mortar that can fire both lethal and non-lethal rounds. It would be able to pinpoint target the enemy by itself and fire a very accurate laser, mortar, chaingun(s), or UCAV at the target very accurately from high up in the air.
Infact, there is another idea of converting C-130's or other large aircraft's nose cones to be equipped with the "Airborne laser", which can shoot down ICBM's over enemy territory and have the missile land on the enemy nation.
Back on topic with the ADS, is it possible to widen the firing range of this heat ray, target it at the ground to be an effective deterrent against IED's? I'd imagine the heat increase on an IED would set it off before it had the chance to explode in a military convoy. Is that possible, or is it too far reaching?
Stay well informed of civilian movement and use preventative measures to shut down hotspots before trouble can form? Fuck no. Just burn em!
Also, people are concerned about if victims aren't allowed to retreat - but a more likely scenario is if they can't retreat - ie, lying wounded on the ground.
I think Shinto's right, and this probably isn't too different from tear gas, but it's just so illustrative of the American army's apparent compulsion to throw big money at problems that could more easily be solved by a fundamental approach.
"The fundamental approach is for gays."
On the other hand, you make a good point. I think that if this system is utilized in an intelligent way (i.e. a vehicle-mounted horizontal beam that works like a slowly-moving electric-fence to corral dissidents) it could be molded into an effective peacekeeping tool... or a symbol of our Orwellian might and dominance.
Actually, this is U.S. Air Force hardware.
But you bring up an excellent point. Billions of greenbacks are/were being spent on these "rad" toys while foot soldiers are/were dealing with shoddy body armor. Boots on the ground, lots of boots on the ground, are what really get the job done and win wars, but the Marines and Army troops--the guys doing all the real work--usually get shortchanged at the expense of the whiz-bang G.I. Joe sci-fi hardware.
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
Or - better - instead of steam, you could use tear gas
I am tremendously dissapointed.
Fixed. You don't know where the shots are coming from, remember?
Also, the painspraying a whole building to disable a shooter thing doesn't work cos the ray doesn't pass stone or metal.