US police could get 'pain beam' weapons
By David Hambling , on 12-24-2008
The research arm of the US
Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict
pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the
intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.
The two devices under
development by the civilian National Institute of
Justice both build on
knowledge gained from the Pentagon's controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last
year, which uses a
2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person's skin
and cause pain.
'Reduced injuries'
Like the ADS, the new portable
devices will also heat the skin, but will have beams only a few centimetres
across. They are designed to elicit what the Pentagon calls a "repel response" -
a strong urge to escape from the beam.
A spokesperson for the
National Institute for Justice likens the effect of the new devices to that of
"blunt trauma" weapons such as rubber bullets, "But unlike blunt trauma devices,
the injury should not be present. This research is looking to reduce the
injuries to suspects," they say.
Existing blunt trauma weapons
can break ribs or even kill, making alternatives welcome. Yet ADS has recorded
problems too - out of several thousand tests on human subjects there were two
cases of second-degree burns.
Dazzle and burn
The NIJ's laser weapon has
been dubbed Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response - PHaSR - and resembles a
bulky rifle. It was created in 2005 by a US air force agency to temporarily
dazzle enemies (see image, right), but the addition of a second, infrared laser
makes it able to heat skin too.
The NIJ is testing the PHaSR
in various scenarios, which may include prison situations as well as law
enforcement.
The NIJ's portable
microwave-based weapon is less developed. Currently a tabletop prototype with a
range of less than a metre, a backpack-sized prototype with a range of 15 metres
will be ready next year, a spokesperson says.
The truly portable mini-ADS
could prove the more useful, as microwaves penetrate clothing better than the
infra-red beam, which is most effective on exposed skin. Although the spokesman
says: "In LEC [Law Enforcement and Corrections] use there is always a little bit
of skin to target."
Torture concerns
The effect of microwave beams
on humans has been investigated for years, but there is little publicly
available research on the effects of PHaSR-type lasers on humans. The attraction
of using a laser is that it can be less bulky than a microwave
device.
Human rights groups say that
equipping police with such weapons would add to the problems posed by existing
"non-lethals" such as Tasers. Security expert Steve Wright at Leeds Metropolitan
University describes the new weapons as "torture at the touch of a
button".
"We have grave concerns about
the deployment and use of any such devices, which have the potential to be used
for torture or other ill treatment," says Amnesty International's arms control
researcher Helen Hughes, adding that all research into their effects should be
made public.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16339-us-police-could-get-pain-beam-weapons.html
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