A microwave beam weapon that uses the heating effect of microwaves to cause pain is to be issued to U.S. troops in Iraq, says EE Times and the UK Telegraph.
The supposedly nonlethal weapon, also called “active-denial technology,” has been under development throughout the 1990s at the U. S. Air Force Research Laboratory (Kirtland, N.M.), in tandem with the Marine Corps’ Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate, the report said.
The weapon uses 95-GHz energy to penetrate the skin to 1/64 of an inch, and hits water molecules in the skin to produce an intense burning sensation that stops when the transmitter is switched off or when the individual moves out of the beam.
The weapon has been cited as being particularly useful for crowd control and urban conflicts. “The skin gets extremely hot, and people can’t stand the pain, so they have to move and move in the way we want them to,” the more recent report quoted Col. Wade Hall of the Office of Force Transformation as saying. The weapon is set to be fitted to armored vehicles already in Iraq. This would allow the microwave beam weapon to be deployed in 2005, the report said.
U.S. Army and Marine Corps units should receive four to six vehicles equipped with the microwave weapon, dubbed “Sheriffs,” by September 2005.
The system includes a millimeter-wave energy source with waveguides to direct the energy to a dish antenna measuring about 3 x 3 meters, which forms a beam that can be swept across a battlefield or hostile crowd. Beam size, whether it is a convergent, focused beam or a divergent beam, and its range, were classified, although the beam has been reported to have a range of about 1 kilometer.
During the Iraq invasion, use of a High Powered Microwave (HPM) weapon was apparently contemplated.
The “ebomb“, developed by the Directed Energy Weapon program, can briefly deliver a single massive pulse larger that the output of Hoover Dam, about two billion watts, instantly disabiling most electronics.
The technology was pioneered at the High Energy Research and Technology Facility at USAF base Kirtland, New Mexico, in a top-secret building called The Trestle, in a canyon in the Manzano mountains and has reportedly been fitted to small AGM-86 cruise missiles, carried by B52s. Some observers say using the e-bomb would be risky since its effects are hard to control and it may be relatively easy for terrorists to duplicate and use against U.S.
At the Republican Convention, the New York Police Department showed off a machine called the Long Range Acoustic Device, capable of blasting at an earsplitting 150 decibels for dispursing crowds. Itcan direct sound for four blocks to the point of pain. LRAD, which is 33 inches in diameter and looks like a giant spotlight, has been used by the U.S. military in Iraq and at sea as a non-lethal force.
When in weapon mode, LRAD blasts a tightly controlled stream of caustic sound that can be turned up to high enough levels to trigger nausea or possibly fainting. The operators themselves remain unaffected since the noise is contained in its focused beam.
Northrop/Grumman has a Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser they’d like to sell you for missile defense. Shoots down speeding bullets.
Daily Wireless has more on Wireless PsyOps.
[...] Related Millimeter Band articles on DailyWireless include; The Very Very Large Array, SBX Arrives, Satellite Jam, Software Radios in Space, Intergalatic Long Shots, Beam Weapons and More Beam Weapons. [...]
Left by dailywireless.org » Large Millimeter Telescope on November 27th, 2006