Details of US microwave-weapon tests revealed

by composter Mon Jul 25, 2005 11:12

VOLUNTEERS taking part in tests of the Pentagon's "less-lethal" microwave weapon were banned from wearing glasses or contact lenses due to safety fears. The precautions raise concerns about how safe the Active Denial System (ADS) weapon would be if used in real crowd-control situations.
The ADS fires a 95-gigahertz microwave beam, which is supposed to heat skin and to cause pain but no physical damage (New Scientist, 27 October 2001, p 26). Little information about its effects has been released, but details of tests in 2003 and 2004 were revealed after Edward Hammond, director of the US Sunshine Project - an organisation campaigning against the use of biological and non-lethal weapons - requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.

The tests were carried out at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Two experiments tested pain tolerance levels, while in a third, a "limited military utility assessment", volunteers played the part of rioters or intruders and the ADS was used to drive them away.

The experimenters banned glasses and contact lenses to prevent possible eye damage to the subjects, and in the second and third tests removed any metallic objects such as coins and keys to stop hot spots being created on the skin. They also checked the volunteers' clothes for certain seams, buttons and zips which might also cause hot spots.

The ADS weapon's beam causes pain within 2 to 3 seconds and it becomes intolerable after less than 5 seconds. People's reflex responses to the pain is expected to force them to move out of the beam before their skin can be burnt.

But Neil Davison, co-ordinator of the non-lethal weapons research project at the University of Bradford in the UK, says controlling the amount of radiation received may not be that simple. "How do you ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent damage?" he asks. "What happens if someone in a crowd is unable, for whatever reason, to move away from the beam? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?"

During the experiments, people playing rioters put up their hands when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being targeted again. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.

"What happens if someone is unable to move away from the beam?"A vehicle-mounted version of ADS called Sheriff could be in service in Iraq in 2006 according to the Department of Defense, and it is also being evaluated by the US Department of Energy for use in defending nuclear facilities. The US marines and police are both working on portable versions, and the US air force is building a system for controlling riots from the air.

by anon Tue Feb 06, 2007 17:59

According to a report on the Wayne Madsen site http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ on Jan 26, 2007.


According to a technology expert who is familiar with the Raytheon Active Denial System (ADS), tested January 24 at Moody Air Force base in Georgia, the millimeter microwave directed beam weapon can be defeated by a crowd of people using aluminum- or gold-coated Mylar to conduct the beam to ground or even direct it back to the Humvee housing the ADS system. Although the Humvee is shielded, any law enforcement or military personnel standing near the Humvee would get a burning taste of their own medicine if the directed beam were reflected back to its source or to a crowd of police. In addition to aluminum or gold coated Mylar, Mylar reflective space blankets, aluminum coated windshield heat protective screens, and more sophisticated and precise corner cube retro-reflectors or Luneburg spheres can all be used to reflect the millimeter wave beam back to its source.


And signs that the terrorists in power are serious about terrorising the populations and intend to use this microwave system sometime in the future come from the fact they have already used it in Iraq and that Raytheon is offering the ADS technology to police departments and as a component of home security alarm systems. The latter effort to try and sell it to obviously wealthy individuals would de-facto make it acceptable because they would be able to say the system is already in use by private citizens.

But apparently they can turn up the power on this system taking from a quote of the report:

The source we spoke to also revealed that the ADS technology has already been used in Iraq against civilian rioters even though the Pentagon claims it will not be deployable until 2010. The source added that even if the ADS Humvee is present at the anti-war march in Washington tomorrow, Raytheon would not permit its use because of liability issues stemming from potential eye damage and human rights violations.


The march they are referring to is the anti-war march that took place on Jan 27th 2007. Significantly prior to this march:

Bush administration -- now armed with all sorts of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) "non-lethal" toys -- decided to stage a test of an anti-crowd microwave weapon, code named "Sheriff," in a demonstration for the media at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.

Basically by naming the test Sheriff they were giving the not so-subtle hint to those thinking of going to the march that this weapon will be used quite soon on them. Now if that is not terrorizing the population, I don't know what is.

by SlaineMacRoth Wed Feb 07, 2007 19:21

The mediaalert site has a great update on the mainstream media's take on this weapon. Basically, the featured article amounted to a BBC copy and paste job from miltiary-HQ. Judith Miller journalism 101.

But it acts as a good case study in how quite horrific stories such as this, are dealt with, mitigated and in no way questioned or analysed in a proffessional manner in the mainstream media.

See the full article @
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/070126_bbc_heat_ray.php

[extract]

General Mann: “That skeleton beam must be what they used to wipe out the French cities.”

Dr. Forrester: “It neutralizes mesons somehow. They're the atomic glue holding matter together. Cut across their lines of magnetic force and any object will simply cease to exist! Take my word for it, general, this type of defense is useless against that kind of power! You'd better let Washington know, fast!” (The War Of The Worlds, 1953, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046534/quotes)

“Too Painful To Bear” But “Harmless”

The above quotes from the 1953 film The War Of The Worlds pretty much sum up what ‘heat-rays’ meant to us up until very recently - blistering beams of Martian light that were often seen reducing earthlings to dust during our childhood years. It goes against the grain, then, for us to conceive of such a thing as a harmless ‘heat-ray’. And yet this is precisely what the BBC has claimed of the new American Active Denial System (ADS).

This was brought to our attention in a January 25 email from Richard Moyes, Policy and Research Manager at Landmine Action:

“Dear editors,
I thought you might be interested in this confirmation from the BBC that the US’s ‘active denial system’ directed energy weapon is ‘actually harmless‘... despite those experiencing it finding the feeling ‘too painful to bear.’

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6297149.stm

Richard Moyes”

We checked Moyes’s description of the BBC online article by James Westhead. The article, which read like a Pentagon press release, was dominated by the views of military spokespeople and lacked a single word of challenge or dissent from anyone else. ........[extract]

by anon Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:53

Yeah, and what if as in many protests, the crowd is composed of people of all ages especially very young and very old. I would imagine that they would be particulary susceptible to all sorts of injuries. If you had a weak heart, suffering severe and a rapid onset of pain and then trying to run away from it in a stampede situation would without doubt cause injury and possibly death.

And we know from the technical data released so far, that the power levels can easily be increased. Actually if you read the press releases from the military, they always quote the tests at a certain distance of a few 100 meters. But the power drops over with distance. Therefore as you approach it, the power increases. So what would be the effect if they were up close, driving down city streets after protests and right behind them?

Lets face it, this weapon is the dream weapon of totalitarian regimes. A real democracy would never even consider it.

by John Boy Fri Feb 09, 2007 09:16

This is pretty cool physics. It doesn't burn you but it causes the water molecules in the skin to become very excited and it's that that causes the burning feeling.

Physics is cool, innit.

Well, it's handier than a water cannon and not as bad as rubber bullets.

There are occasions where you need crowd control 'weaponry'. The copper from the May-Day riots may not always be available.

by Stuart Fri Feb 09, 2007 11:15

Rubber bullets are one of the comparators for the risk of serious injury or death. DARPA's remit for "less lethal" weapons is that they will kill or injure no more people than rubber bullets and equivalently forceful responses.

The risk factors for millimetre waves (sunscreen, sweat, jewellery, glasses, contact lenses and other specific absorbers) provide military minds with a neat bonus over rubber bullets because the injured or dead will share some contributory negligence - unlike the negative publicity that might accompany crushing an infant's or young child's skulls with a baton round.

by John Boy Fri Feb 09, 2007 11:23

Personally, I don't think anything is as effective as asking a riotous crowd, nicely, to behave.