Hot Pockets: ADS & Non-Lethal Weaponry
NexusSix
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I scanned through the first few pages of the D&D threads and I didn't see this mentioned, so I'm assuming this topic hasn't been covered... at least not recently.
Any who:
"The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.
"You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.
"According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.
"The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.
"The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues.
"Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.
"The beam produces what experimenters call the 'Goodbye effect,' or 'prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.' In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.
"'It will repel you,'" one test subject said. 'If hit by the beam, you will move out of it -- reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again.'"
That's the gist. The rest of the article can be found at:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72134-0.html?tw=rss.index
Foreign Implications: Should the military even be involved in the development of non-lethal weapons? After all, the primary purpose of this type of weapon is crowd control (i.e., police action). Applying the use of military force for police actions is missing the point: the whole point of the military is to kill the enemy as fast, quickly and efficiently as possible (i.e., area denial, individual suppression, etc.). Certifying something like the ADS system for use in Iraq falls outside of military parameters and denies soldiers the use of their best tools--it doesn't let them get their job done (killing anyone who stands in the way of the mission objective). Antiseptic warfare doesn't seem to make much sense--if you're going to commit to military action... commit, or don't. Also, just for the record: I'm more of a don't commit guy unless absolutely necessary (Afghanistan = commit; Iraq = WTF were you thinking?)
Domestic Implications: Something like this might come in handy for dealing with dangerous crowds--I'm thinking cases where the safety of the general public is at peril due to something like the Rodney King riots--but would police be more trigger happy to use a non-lethal system like this? Y'know, the hippies got a bit uppity at the Iraq protest, so we Hot-Pocketed their asses.
Thoughts? Would you support the use of this type of weapon for either foreign or domestic use? Feelings on the use military force vs. police action?
Any who:
"The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.
"You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.
"According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.
"The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.
"The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues.
"Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.
"The beam produces what experimenters call the 'Goodbye effect,' or 'prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.' In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.
"'It will repel you,'" one test subject said. 'If hit by the beam, you will move out of it -- reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again.'"
That's the gist. The rest of the article can be found at:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72134-0.html?tw=rss.index
Foreign Implications: Should the military even be involved in the development of non-lethal weapons? After all, the primary purpose of this type of weapon is crowd control (i.e., police action). Applying the use of military force for police actions is missing the point: the whole point of the military is to kill the enemy as fast, quickly and efficiently as possible (i.e., area denial, individual suppression, etc.). Certifying something like the ADS system for use in Iraq falls outside of military parameters and denies soldiers the use of their best tools--it doesn't let them get their job done (killing anyone who stands in the way of the mission objective). Antiseptic warfare doesn't seem to make much sense--if you're going to commit to military action... commit, or don't. Also, just for the record: I'm more of a don't commit guy unless absolutely necessary (Afghanistan = commit; Iraq = WTF were you thinking?)
Domestic Implications: Something like this might come in handy for dealing with dangerous crowds--I'm thinking cases where the safety of the general public is at peril due to something like the Rodney King riots--but would police be more trigger happy to use a non-lethal system like this? Y'know, the hippies got a bit uppity at the Iraq protest, so we Hot-Pocketed their asses.
Thoughts? Would you support the use of this type of weapon for either foreign or domestic use? Feelings on the use military force vs. police action?
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-
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
NexusSix on
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Unfortunately for me, you aren't driving military policy. As long as we have soldiers playing babysitter, we probably should give them a method of giving the locals a "time-out" rather than resorting straight to the belt.
EDIT: Though I also think that this whole things sounds a little too good to be true, and won't be surprised when I hear about two-headed Iraqis being born five years from now.
Without doubt they'd be more trigger happy with a system like this. See: Tasers.
They already are in large numbers, but that's because of our DU rounds.
Also, what are the odds that someone would decide that milimeter-wave beams are acceptable interrogation tools, since - hey- no permanent damage!
I'd prefer this system over gunning down protesters, let's just hope it's actually safe.
Exactly. And they won't use it properly.
Also, the description of it in action, a large group of people suddenly running... Oh, great, so a near-altercation instead becomes a fatal mass trampling? I suppose when we see the first of these headlines, it'll be used as evidence of how violent the mob was, you know, being scary muslims and all, and not how dangerous crowds can be when their flight response is triggered suddenly.
Hopefully, we've at least field-tested the directed-sound area denial systems at this point. They pose fewer risks, so unless they just plain don't work, they should be our go-to crowd control system.
In urban guerilla warfare, you don't typically know who the enemy is, so dispersing everyone is extremely effective, I would imagine.
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 shooting at you get the hell out of dodge.
Yeah, I'm with you there, but most people are seriously not cool with any kind of collateral damage. Which is kind of ridiculous, when you realize we were firebombing Tokyo sixty years ago, but whatever.
This would end up being both more effective and safer than other crowd-disbursal tools availible. I'm with you on trigger-happy, though, considering the sort of abuses that happen with tasers.
Funny thought: If this is supposed to repel standing crowds, what happens when some unfortunate soul gets tossed into this field/effect and can't move quickly enough to get out? Seizure? Paralysis? Death?
If sometime in the future we can have weapons like this being used in almost all civil and forein situations the amount of lives saved would be staggering. I have trouble justifying any war in my mind at the moment, something like this would make it so much easier.
As far as using it for riot control, I don't really like it. It's something for serious conflict, not riots. Waterguns do fine there.
This is certainly "Less Than Lethal", and not "Non-lethal". If you crank up the power, and use lower frequency waves, you can cook someone's internal organs easy enough. Heck, even high power at it's usual frequency will burn and blister skin. Also, what if this hits your eyes?
The ADS is designed to encourage our pain reflex - to get away from what's causing the pain as fast as possible. It's instinctive for humans to do it. My concern is what happens when someone can't move: They're human shields, or unconcious, or whatever.
I'm pretty sure rioters will come armed with tinfoil suits and Faraday cages now - the hippies have evolved!
On a strictly moral standpoint, I completely agree with you. Civilians--children, mothers, sons, daughters--being sprayed with bullets or buried under the rubble of an "oops, wrong target" bomb strike--is heartbreaking and repulsive.
But on the flip side: non-lethal weapons allow for free repeats. Here's a very simplistic example: group of soldiers are manning a checkpoint, small group of "terrorists" blends in with the general population and open up with small-arms fire on soldiers and civilians, soldiers use non-lethal (ADS, rubber bullets, etc.) to disperse everybody. "Terrorists" retreat to safehouse, show up again and do the same thing the next day, repeat, repeat, repeat. When a target is permanently "neutralized," said target won't show up again the next day to pull the same shit.
Edit: Gom Jabbar.
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
The ADS system has been tested on civilians, by the Air Force, in different scenarios:
From the Defensetech.org website on the ADS system:
"F-WR-2002-0024-H - Effects of Ethanol on Millimeter-Wave-Induced Pain translates roughly into “let’s see if a guy can stand the pain if we give him enough vodkas.â€
FWR-2002-0023 Facial sensitivity and eye aversion response says that earlier trials included testing the pain beam on subjects buttocks; and
FWR-2004-0029-H: Effects of Active Denial System Exposures on the Performance of Military Working Dog Teams involved putting a trained attack dog and its handler in front of the beam and seeing what happened when the animal was exposed to sudden, intense pain. Down, boy, down...
The beam has been tested thousands of times, and the bottom line is the same – apart from very occasional blisters (seven in ten thousand exposures), all the ADS does is hurt a lot. Earlier concerns about zippers and spectacles seem to have been settled. But the Pentagon are hugely defensive about it. Perhaps it’s coincidence, but since those FoIA documents went out the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Program updated their web site’s section on the ADS. The best bit is the new video here. If you ignore the Pentagon PR blather and move to a point 1 minute 19 seconds in you can see the actual effects of the beam, but only for 8 seconds, and again at 1 min 40 for 6 seconds."
It's been in development for years now and it's technology is pretty proven to work. There are only a few cases of blisters out of the many tests they've conducted, Noah (The writer of the Wired article and Defensetech.org) states that 7 out of 10,000 exposures experienced blisters, which is a small enough number for me personally.
I can see this working in riots and checkpoints. In the riots that's I've had to deal with while in Iraq, you don't use waterguns. You use non-lethal ammunition, dogs, and lots of yelling; in one case, a dust storm hit our FOB pretty bad and you couldn't see anything beyond 10ft infront of you. Rocks where flying everywhere, the Iraqi's where chanting "Allah Ahakbar" over and over again while throwing rocks at us(one hit my face, one hit my IBA, one hit my buddies hand and broke it, one hit my LT's jaw and knocked a tooth out). That night, we fired over 5000 rounds of non-lethal shotgun ammunition, around 1500 M203 non-lethals, over 3,000 FN-303 rounds, and threw over 200 flashbangs and 100 donkey dick grenades(A non-lethal frag grenade. It has rubber ball bearings inside and when it explodes, it sends the ball bearings everywhere). The riot didn't stop until 5am, when it had started at 5pm. And we went through several riots throughout my tour.
An ADS weapon like this could effectively limit the amount of casualties sustained by friendly force, reduce the amount of Non-lethal or even lethal ammunition used, and quickly disperse or end a riot. I can see it being misused though, a few soldiers bored with guarding a Check point, decide to use the ADS on some random passer-by, watching him run away theoretically unharmed, but irritated and afraid.
EDIT: Oh yeah, they do mention that the victims be away from water, as that will increase the pain caused and damage caused. So it's a big no for maritime use...but if you are that close a ship and rioting there is something wrong already.
There's a vast gulf between 'nonlethal' and 'humane' it seems.
It's very likely defeatable with a farraday cage. Just bascially a mesh suit, which would be pretty easy to fabricate.
Not as big as between being alive with a sunburn and laying in the street with a hole in your head.
Id take a non-lethal inhumane hit over a bullet in my face anyday.
Could they keep the 'ray' on indefinitely as kind of a invisible 'fence'?
You all probably won't find this as hilarious as we did, and you can probably label me as sick but:
We nicknamed our Mk. 19 (An automatic 40mm grenade launcher) "Humanely", and each individual 40mm round was named "Dignity" and "Respect". This way in the future if we where asked why didn't we treat them humanely, with dignity and respect we could reply:
"but sir we did treat them Humanely. We gave them dignity 3 times but those suckers dodged respect every time.
Still, this just doesn't strike me as an effective weapon of war. It doesn't eliminate a threat, it just moves the threat in the opposite direction temporarily. It has far better utility as a police weapon, and I bet there are plenty of law enforcement groups who want to get their hands on the magic pain ray.
Agreed.
Its not a battlefield weapon. Its a way for soldiers to control a hostile civilian population once the war's over.
The sheer distance this can be fired, the concern for vital areas more prone to injury/permanent injury (eyes) and the risk of people incapacitated in the beam's path (or the risk of people dying due to being trampled in a panic'd stampede) do give me pause on such a device.
I wholeheartedly approve of the military producing tools to utilize in situations where lethal force is not required, however I realisitically recognize that it's only a matter of time before that tool is misused, intentionally or accidentally.
I can only hope that those who are using it are trained to do so in the most professional manner.
Anyway, while this might not have the best military applications it would certainly have some use at home, so long as it were saved for the correct situation. Something on the scale of the Rodney King riots could happen again pretty easily. It shouldn't be used when a few nazis at a rally get uppitidy or something.
Irrelevant or not, it's pretty damned funny.
You get 100,000 points for knowing who General Bonkers is.
He got a lot of flak for declaring the war on string unwinnable - he needs our support. (But he does hate hippies. And dogs.)
Concern for this weapon being used inappropriately isn't really on the top of my list, as it's at least better than billy clubs, tear gas and all the other less-than-lethal methods that are already in use. I'm sure some yahoo is going to zap a villaiger at some 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.
I'm not saying that this image represents all of our troops, just to be clear. I'm saying that there are troops that act this way from time to time and I think a ranged pain-ray is much better in their hands than the alternatives. I'd rather we not be over in the Middle East at all but we don't really have a choice right now.
And pissing somebody off is not the best idea in a country where AK-47's and explosives grow on trees. Seriously, you hit me with the magic "sucks to be you" pain ray, you can bet your sweet ass I'm not going to feel bad when my buddies blast one of your convoys and then disappear off into the desert. I might even be more willing to help them dig the hole for the IED.
EDIT: Also, considering the recent incident involving Tasers at UCLA, there is no goddamned way I want this in the hands of the police.
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.
However, I'm extremely skeptical of the argument that there are no lasting effects. I find that impossible to believe.
Also, I'm curious if it's possible for the "bad guys" to DIY one of these devices. What cooks the goose can cook the gander.
Finally, how effective would a Faraday cage be at dampening this? It'd be funny if it could be defeated with a few layers of ferrous chicken wire.
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.