U.S. military testing heat-generating non-leahtal weapon
Some non-lethal weapons are already in use 9for example, taser guns and rubber bullets), while others are still being debating (for example, troop-blinding laser weapons); the U.S. military is testing another non-lethal system: A beam which engulfs enemy sodiers wiht a 130-degree heat blast
For more than two decades now a debate has been going on about the merits of non-lethal weapons for military and law enforcement applications. The more benign of these weapons — rubber bullets for the dispersal of rioters, for example — are widely used. During the past year and a half there were questions raised about the safety of taser guns, especially after two Chicago pediatricians published a distrubing study showing that an alarming number of teenagers died as result of police using taser guns to subdue them. The U.S. military is still toying with the idea of using blinding laser weapons against enemy troops, but these weapons never left the test range because of worries that enemy sodliers would become permanently, rather than temporarily, blind by the weapon.
The U.S. military now has a new non-lethal weapon — or “active denial system,” in the military argot — which shoots a beam which increases the temperature of the surface of the body to a point where people feel as if they are about to catch fire. The military argues that using these weapons would cause enemy soldiers to drop their weapons and flee. The weapon, which is built by Raytheon, is not expected to go into production until at least 2010.
The device shooting the beam is a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee and it is operated by a two-men crew. The crew finds the targets through powerful lenses and fires beams from more than 500 yards away, nearly 17 times the range of existing nonlethal weapons such as rubber bullets. The beam engulfs the body with a blast of 130-degree heat.
-read more in this AP report
