Active Denial System

[Boerseun]

Would you not agree that such use of a weapon is less violent than driving a pusher truck through the mob, or asking 600 armed police officers to push and possibly club any protestor that doesn't do as they're told and go home?

Not really. This weapon uses electromagnetic radiation of a frequency very close to microwaves, if I understand it correctly, to make the target experience direct stimulation of his nerve endings, making him feel as if he's being cooked alive. I'd take a rubber bullet, any day. The fact that there's no lasting damage is academic; this weapon overrides any force of will that any protestor might have, thereby forcing him to 'do what he is told'.

 

And there's the rub, you see. How can the populace tell the government what to do, the government being their government, paid for by their taxes, if any public gathering can be dispersed through tampering with the gatherer's nervous systems? They don't have a choice - if they were fired upon by water cannons, rubber bullets, or whatever, the sheer force of their wills could make them push through. Who's gonna check up on those 'telling the people what to do'? And I'm not saying that public demonstrations are a substitute for the poll, all I'm saying is that public gatherings and protests are a Constitutional right that can be too easily taken away and denied when such PR-friendly weapons become the norm. Your president have already started eating into your freedoms. Be careful of this, and 'do what you're told'.

[cwes99_03]

Likewise any public gathering can be dispersed with a fire hose or a machine gun, Boer.

 

What about the audio version of the ADS I mentioned?

[CraigD]

Because both cause strong dielectric heating in water, I see little difference in the medically consequential effect of stream of .003 m wavelength photons produced by the proposed ADS weapon, and the .12 m ones used in a microwave oven. Both will, given sufficient intensity and duration of exposure, heat the water in plant or animal cells sufficiently to rupture them. If enough cells are ruptured, the plant or animal will die. As most animals are adapted to detect and respond to damaging heat, such heating will be painful before it is fatal.

 

Boesreun states

if I understand it correctly, to make the target experience direct stimulation of his nerve endings, making him feel as if he's being cooked alive.

I think this is incorrect. The painful sensation of heat one experiences when irradiated by an ADS projector is of actual heating of the water, fat, and sugar molecules in your tissues – you don’t just feel as if your’re being cooled alive, you are being cooked alive.

 

The major difference between .003 m and .12 m radiation appears to be that the more energetic .003 m radiation heats more quickly, causing a targeted animal to experience pain and retreat more quickly. If, however, the targeted animal is unable to retreat – for example, if a person is pressed to the front of a crowd - I can see no feature of the ADS weapon’s design that would prevent him from being badly or fatally injured.

 

Proponents of the ADS weapon contend

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.

My guess is that “proper use” means exposing individual targets to only brief burst of radiation, giving them time to flee to safety. I’m very doubtful that real world conditions would permit such proper usage, and suspect that, without substantial conventional support – eg: riot police with barriers and batons – the operator of an ADS weapon would often be compelled to injure or kill many people to prevent himself from being overrun and captured, injured, or killed. With its large antenna, the system strikes me as being very vulnerable to attack, from grenades and IEDs to smallarms fire to thrown rocks and bricks.

 

Proponents are also, IMHO, disingenuously downplaying a problem inherent in all dielectric heating devices – metal is more subject to dielectric heating than is water. In a microwave oven, accidentally irradiating metal can damage the oven, cause a fire in it, or burn the user when he removes the overlooked metal parts. With the ADS, metal such as coins, keys, and eyeglass frames could burn flesh or ignite clothing or nearby paper or building material. On a positive note, it would also make it difficult for a target to hold metal weapons such as guns, though I suspect it could cause guns to fire unintentionally due to heating of their metal shell casings.

 

I strongly support the development of non-lethal weapons, but am mistrustful of claims that the ADS will prove an effective one for use from ground vehicles. Though many of my concerns with the weapon’s effectiveness are answered by used it from an aircraft, even then it seems to me to be limited in usefulness to dispersing unarmed people from open ground. It’s potential to injure or kill seems to me to warrant careful consideration before such a weapon being put into field operation.

[Boerseun]

Likewise any public gathering can be dispersed with a fire hose or a machine gun, Boer.

A firehose is a formidable weapon, but only tests the crowd's resolve. If the crowd is really p'd off, they'll grin and bare it.

A machine gun us a weapon of last resort, seeing as it's lethal. The Powers That Be will only haul is out after the firehoses, smoke granades, rubber bullets and batons have been used up, and only in the most dire of circumstances.

 

This ADS-weapon, on the other hand, will be too easily employed, because of it's 'humane' and 'non-lethal' nature. And it's exactly there where the problem lies. Ease of use because of good PR makes for the average Joe having to give up his right to protest.

[cwes99_03]

So, your primary complaint about the weapons is that they will work too well, and that because they work so well governments will assuredly misuse them to keep the populace from doing what they feel is their citizen's duty.

 

You basically say that if these weapons work they way they are supposed to, that all countries that possess them will cease to be democracies and they will become dictatorships. This is an illogical argument.

 

EDIT:

Btw, firehoses don't just test the crowds resolve. A firehose can be used to knock people off of their feet, and if propperly directed, can litterally tear the clothes off of an individual and cause serious bodily damage (broken arms, legs, torn ligaments, blackened eyes). Likewise, rubber bullets, beanbags, tear bombs etc., can also all cause serious bodily harm and force the crowd to react the same way as these devices are intended. However, as noted, they can be counteracted by various methods, including linking arms together, wearing body armor, etc.

Similar effective means will be created to counteract these weapons as well. Simply ear plugs and mesh suits may be all that is necessary. But how many rioters put on riot gear before they take to the street to demonstrate?

[eric l]

I repeat that these "non lethal weapons" are instruments of violence, just like rubber bullets - or rubber truncheons or all that other stuff.

One of the dangerous things here is that their being "non lethal" lowers a treshold in the application of violence, "non lethal" being considered the same as "harmless"; the fact that they are used at a distance makes crossing that treshold easier for most people than e.g. a rubber truncheon would.

So you have your police officers stepping in that spiral of violence, with only one logic : if it does not work, let's give it one more notch ! In this kind of logic, the sabre is just a few steps up from the rubber truncheon, and "lethalness" becomes something quantitative rather than qualitative.

[ronthepon]

Then ADS is simply a... scaled down version -damagewise- of the 'conventional' methods.

 

With a violent and rioting mob, you need to have the guys quit the 'mischief' they're at. I'm talking about mobs that will resort to the use of damage to life and property as they method of... expression. The kind of riot that cant be allowed to take it's course.

 

Here in any case it would be better to use a 'non lethal' system that hurts them, than to use a method that actually injures them.

But using a method that injures them is probably better than killing them off.

 

Use ADS, or use .22 ammo.

 

Now obviously, these weapons need 'control' to have them remain non lethal. My guess is that there are going to be the proverbial 'first misuse' cases, and after that the actual control will gather momentum. How should it be done?

 

As a thought, they'll be really effective torture tools.

[cwes99_03]

In the same thought, stun guns and tazers are generally non-lethal, and very painful. They are being used instead of guns because officers won't think twice about shooting someone with a tazer. This in turn frees them up to bring down a suspect instead of chasing them for several blocks into a crowded area or possibly a children's playground. Now stun guns and tazers can be lethal, and if someone were to tinker with them they could easily be "notched up" to a lethal nature.

You are arguing a non-point. Anything can be turned into a weapon, if the motive is there to do so. I could find a plastic bat and stick a spike through it, then it becomes a lethal weapon. This thread is a discussion of the propper use of such a weapon. While it is permissable to point out that it could be used lethally, or possibly the other side effects of such a weapon (which btw is what this thread was about), I don't think you should turn the thread into a conspiracy theory thread about how the governments will use this to keep the man down. You can start another thread for that.

 

Ron, what did your source say was the range and effects for such a device, and can you give a little more specific data on how it works/what it does? Any testing that you can share with the community?

[CraigD]

But using a method that injures them is probably better than killing them off.

 

Use ADS, or use .22 ammo.

As a point of civic and professional responsibility and technical accuracy, I’m compelled to point out that .22 Long Rifle firearms are not and should not be considered non-lethal.

 

Despite a tradition, in the US and other countries were sporting arms are common, of considering these weapons to be appropriate for use by children (growing up in West Virginia, I was give a .22 rifle for my 6th brithday, and allowed to hunt and plink with it without adult supervision), they are accurate, effective, and well capable of killing humans with a single round.

 

Despite the impression one may gain from studying firearms, reading and watching popular fiction, and playing paper RPGs and video games, animals and human beings are in many ways very fragile. Even a small hole, like that made by a .22 calibre bullet, punched anywhere over a large fraction of our bodies, is quckly and irreversably fatal.

 

While the effective non-lethality of radio-frequency dielectric heating weapons like the ADS has, IMHO, yet to be adequately demonstrated, the lethality of nearly every firearm not using amunition specifically designed for non-lethality (eg: rock salt in shotgun shells; rubber bullets; beanbags) is well demonstrated.

[Boerseun]

So, your primary complaint about the weapons is that they will work too well,

No. Any non-lethal weapon is a good concept, in principle. What I'm against, though, is that any weapon of this nature, can be too easily misused because its non-lethal nature makes for good PR, and because of it, public freedoms will be abused. For the rest of your post, all I can say is please don't put words in my mouth. I might just have to speak to my mates in Downing Street and nuke yer ***.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Like Boerseun, I'm primarily concerned that they make it easier to hurt people.

 

In the same thought, stun guns and tazers are generally non-lethal, and very painful. They are being used instead of guns because officers won't think twice about shooting someone with a tazer

 

In fact, this is pretty much my point. They don't think twice about shooting some one with a tazer. Did you see that video from UCLA where they tazered the kid like five times because he wouldn't stand up when ordered? (Nevermind that he had just been tazered.)

 

How long until they start tazering people because they won't shut up? Ever watch "Cops?" Everytime somebody gets a little agitated - ZAP! Or maybe the police start tazering everybody at the UCA library because the bystanders are making it "difficult to do their jobs."

 

What I see goes something like this - crowd gathers peacefully. Police tell them to disperse because they don't have the proper permits or some such nonsense.

 

The protesters start chanting "Hell no, we won't go." Now instead of standing there with backup waiting for things to ACTUALLY get out of hand, the police just fire up the ADS-owave and set it for 45 seconds.

 

It's not like it's a possibility that these things are going to be abused at some point. IT'S A WEAPON. It is possible to use it offensively - therefore it is a certainty that it will someday be used that way.

 

There is a lower threshold of beginning to use force when the danger isn't "real."

 

TFS

[Zythryn]

...What I'm against, though, is that any weapon of this nature, can be too easily misused because its non-lethal nature makes for good PR, and because of it, public freedoms will be abused.

 

Bold added by me.

The bolded part of the statement seems to be an unsupported leap of faith. Have public freedoms been more abused with the introduction of rubber bullets? Or the use of firehoses?

 

Also, keep in mind that peaceful protests are protected by the laws in the U.S., not violent protests.

For example, consider a riot among college students after their university won a sports championchip (crazy enough, it happens here in the U.S.). If this device were available and used, it may have stopped the destruction of cars, storefronts and other property more quickly.

 

I do agree with you, abuse of this technology should not be tolerated. However, I believe any abuse will be dealt with. If the government wishes to change our form of government, I don't think they will bother with the non-leathal forms of violence:shrug:

[InfiniteNow]

Either side of this issue can be argued, and it very quickly comes down to personal interpretation (these are good/these are bad).

 

For me, it's a deeper issue regarding 1) why the populace must rise up to have their voices heard, and 2) How to gauge the appropriateness of the steps taken by the powers that be when they try to stop those uprisings.

 

 

That is social science though, not applied.

[cwes99_03]

Very well stated, thank you iNow.

[ronthepon]

Misused or not, non lethal is what really should be used in real riot control.

 

Ron, what did your source say was the range and effects for such a device, and can you give a little more specific data on how it works/what it does? Any testing that you can share with the community?

I was reffering to any non lethal system. Atleast any potentially non lethal system. And by 'hurts' them, I meant inflicts serious pain without serious bodily damage.

 

As a point of civic and professional responsibility and technical accuracy, I’m compelled to point out that .22 Long Rifle firearms are not and should not be considered non-lethal.

Yeah, that's what I meant, basically. I was reffering to the methods employed in some countries, involving firing squads. From the link I gave above,

They said that the killing of 254 Hindus, mostly in police firing, indicates how the state authorities took effective steps to curb the violence

 

Er... but nevermind me. I'm not emotional... ofcourse not.

 

'Who will watch over the guards?'

[Boerseun]

'Who will watch over the guards?'

...My point exactly.

 

Ron = +++Rep.

[Pyrotex]

I don't like this, at all....:hihi:[/b]

I'm with Boerseun. I agree 100%.

Tazers are non-lethal. They allow police officers to take down dangerous criminals without having to wound or kill them. Fine so far.

Now, Houston, Texas, is having an inquiry into the abuse of tazers. It seems that some folks pulled over or arrested, wind up tazered several times. No apparant reason. but after all, "it's harmless, right?"

 

Yeah. I'm with Boerseun.