8 ms·

"Pain gun" gets deployed in Afghanistan

34 points by tomerico 16y ago

dhughes 16y ago
I wonder if metal mesh clothing, a wearable Faraday Cage, would defeat this device similar to the screen used on microwave ovens. From what I have read it's been fine-tuned to a specific frequency that penetrates the skin so far and is prefect for causing the nerves to react. If so it should be easy to create a suit that would nullify the effect using a metal mesh suit and helmet.
Rhapso 16y ago
Finally, a weaponized mobile microwave gun! If you are afraid of getting hit by one of these, do not wear contacts! You can handle melted plastic on your skin, but you do not want it on you eyes (contacts have a lot of water in them thus they would heat up fast. Unlike your eyes, contacts melt)
- wtallis 16y ago
  How hot do contact lenses need to be to melt? I would hope that by the time your contacts could absorb enough energy to melt, you would already be in enough pain to force your eyes shut.
  - Rhapso 16y ago
    There has yet to be a real study of such things, but... there is info like this out there http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1702897/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1702897/posts http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725095.600 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725095.600 if too much water on the skin causes horrible burns I do not want to think about what would happen to the water in contacts or even in your eyes.
- blueberry 16y ago
  I am sure most people in Afghanistan prefer contacts to glasses. This is very useful info for them.
code_duck 16y ago
Oh boy! I'm looking forward to when this is deployed on US citizens. It will only be a few years out, you know. Maybe it will be another great innovation like Tazers, which police can use to attack citizens as an alternative to being civil. Need a handheld version first, though. I guess this model will only be good for repressing protests.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Even if you don't think it's likely to be used against US citizens, I imagine the Chinese Government is not far behind in the development of this sort of technology.
  - code_duck 16y ago
    Indeed, and each will be selling such technology to other governments eventually.
- maqr 16y ago
  We used that sound cannon truck on our own people in Pittsburgh during the G-20 protests. Nobody seemed to care much either, even though it can easily cause permanent hearing loss. If the cops had the pain ray, they would have used it just the same.
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  The G20 protest in Pittsburgh was the first time the LRAD (sound cannon) was used on US Citizens (me included). It wasn't bad - people brought eye plugs, but I see no easy way to combat this either - short of tin-foil hats that is ;-) Scary times ahead!
tocomment 16y ago
Could this be used a form of "organic" pest control. Would it deter insects from crops? If nothing else it would seem to keep birds away from berries, etc.
- motters 16y ago
  That's a good point. You might be able to have a rotating beam passing over a crop, although if aimed at the crop it might have a negative effect due to the surface water heating aspect. Perhaps there are particular frequencies which might be effective against insects, but leave crops unharmed.
  - qohen 16y ago
    Raytheon, the maker of this system, is already pursuing agricultural applications, though apparently they are focussed on preventing frost-damage (via Slashdot): http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2010/06/25/raytheon-turns-swords-into-plowshares/ http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2010/06/25/raytheon-turns...
    - motters 16y ago
      The other problem would be that only a minority of insects are pests, and others are beneficial. You wouldn't necessarily want to deter all insects.
- dagobart 16y ago
  I initially thought along the same lines, but not outdoors. Depending on the energy consumption, this technology might serve as a nice protection inside buildings. Like areas where you don't want unauthorized personel to go to. For everyone else you could "lower the shield" for the moment of passing-through.
paul9290 16y ago
Here's a video about it from The History Channel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmuyLIrSjxI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmuyLIrSjxI
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Never before in the history of humanity have governments been able to effectively control each person in a large population so effectively as today. A famous general once said "It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it." This has the same problem as tazers: some things are supposed to be difficult, ugly, and nasty to do, like bringing a population to bear under rule of law, or convincing an unarmed (or lightly-armed) mob that there is no need to protest. The folks that think that these things are somehow more humane are living in a delusional world. These things only solve a short-term problem at the expense of creating a much worse problem later on. Having said that, they also look very interesting in terms of doing things like patrolling the North Korean border. Hard to launch an invasion if all of your soldiers feel like they are on fire. And I support the use in Afghanistan -- there are lots of good things these tools can accomplish. But overall I think this is a step backwards, not forwards.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Never before in the history of humanity have governments been able to effectively control each person in a large population so effectively as today Compared to, say, ancient Egypt?
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    Yes. There's a problem of scale with any centralized authority. While it's relatively easy to have total control over a population of a few thousand, span-of-control problems mean that multiple levels of managers must be involved the larger the populace. Note that I am not saying that folks are more oppressed now than at any other time in history (aside from obvious examples). I am saying that the ability for a central authority to monitor and control each person's behavior has scaled enormously. Every large enough organization experiences a tremendous degree of infidelity between the authority's wishes and how those wishes are actually carried out. Most folks look at some huge thing like, say North Korea, and think that there is one person completely in charge, and on paper it looks like that. But reality doesn't work like that at all. Instead central authorities in large systems constantly have to use persuasion, politics, and marketing tactics to get their wishes fulfilled. This was true with ancient Rome and much as today. So there is a constant give-and-take between the ideals and plans of leaders and the zeitgeist of the ruled. This, along with regularly-changing leadership, allows organizations to learn and adapt. Effective organizations embrace this tension and provide a means for regularly changing course, sometimes in a dramatic way. But what if leaders didn't have to worry about all those middle-level guys and discontent? What if you could have one central person/group that could monitor each person's actions minute-to-minute, applying various forms of non-lethal pain every time the person steps out of line? Don't like the food prices and want to go downtown to yell at the leaders? Well maybe we'll let you feel like you are on-fire for a few minutes and see how likely you are to try that again. Caesar doesn't have to worry about the Senate or governors in the provinces or the mob any more -- with computers and non-lethal population control, he can effectively manage hundreds of millions as easily as he could some bloke sitting in front of him in the same room. The state-of-monitoring discussion is for another thread. The key point here is that monitoring and control becomes a lot more palatable if nobody is getting hurt, so by inventing lots of forms of non-lethally controlling folks, leaders can squeeze tighter and tighter. Never before in history has it been that way. When the United States passed prohibition, everybody nodded their heads and drank anyway. Over time, it was painfully obvious what a disaster prohibition was. It's not that way today. Back then, to enforce prohibition you had to have tens of thousands of cops and FBI agents who were true believers and willing to harm and kill people to enforce the law. Those people simply didn't exist. The people who passed prohibition had morals, righteous feelings, and a majority vote on their side, but they wanted the impossible from the population. Today we're cutting way back on the systemic checks -- it only takes one true-believer in prohibition somewhere in the government to do some data mining of cell phone locations over time to easily find out where all the gin joints are. It only takes one or two guys to deploy some non-lethal force on those establishments to make them off-limits -- all without the nasty political fall-out of people harmed or killed -- or the practical requirement of actually having a big enough percentage of the population that supports enforcement (instead of just enactment) We live in an incredible time in history. We're seeing this massive system of state control develop on a scale that would boggle the minds of folks just fifty years ago. I'm hoping for a century or two of Pax Romana before we end up with a Caligula -- but I wouldn't bet on it.
robryan 16y ago
Does this thing have the ability to do something low level enough for people to feel it without any real discomfort? I think if it works like that it would be the only setting you need 99% of the time people would just scatter knowing they didn't want what was coming next.
- wtallis 16y ago
  There are ways to turn down the amplifier (by reducing the voltage to the cathode or the cathode heater), but it would be more practical to simply turn on the device before anybody gets close enough to be subject to really intense radiation.
mfukar 16y ago
I find it disturbing that an article about a new kind of weapon is neutrally worded, with a positive spin at the end.
- gaius 16y ago
  Gotta be better than shooting holes in people.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    As long as it's only used in circumstances where shooting holes in people is the alternative, yes.
    - gaius 16y ago
      The military have a huge issue at checkpoints, if you ask a driver to stop and he doesn't, then you can't take the risk he didn't understand; he could be a suicide bomber. So they open fire. This provides a means to say, in any language, stop. So it will save lives.
      - hugh3 16y ago
        Oh, I'm sure it has plenty of good uses. But it's right that people should be concerned about the potentially bad ones. In that case, though, I'm thinking that my instinct upon getting hit with a pain-causing weapon would be to mash the accelerator and try to drive out of range. Also, I don't think it would be all that effective on someone inside a metal car.
      - jberryman 16y ago
        maybe. or the presence of bigass pain rays and unmanned flying killing machines could make us look like the kind of oppressors that you wouldnt mind blowing yourself up to overthrow
        gaius 16y ago
bombs 16y ago
If it was able to penetrate a car body, it'd be a great asset for checkpoints and roadblocks — surely better than live-round warning shots. Do they have those anymore? It'll help in riots and other such things, I'm sure. It sure is a nice, big target for insurgent RPGs though! I wonder in what ways it'll be protected — even mounted on a heavily armoured vehicle, the dish would be vulnerable to damage, right?
- billswift 16y ago
  Home-made ARAD designed to home in on the device's frequency, sure it's a narrow beam, but there are ways around that.
gaius 16y ago
I bet most of the outraged commenters went right back to playing Call Of Duty 2: Modern Warfare after that.
raganwald 16y ago
Given both of our countries' track records, if the police had easy access to a device that could inflict great pain without leaving a trace on the human body, the ethics of crowd control would be the least of my misgivings.
mrbgty 16y ago
What kind of protection could be used to block it?
- dagobart 16y ago
  And, given that it heats water, what if it gets applied to someone in heavy rain, say with clothes soaked? Would it go so far to effectively boil the person?
lwhi 16y ago
Its deployment will lead to an increase in the use of moderate force to control groups of people. If the actual weapon is classed as non-intrusive, it could potentially be used in situations where Police wouldn't usually use force. Political protests, general non-cooperation, etc.. The idea worries me a lot. The people who invent this kind of thing really must be quite peculiar, to be able to function without moral objection.
korch 16y ago
I bet this contraption is trivially circumvented for less than $100 of gear. It's just microwaves, and there are many ways of shielding and rending them inert. But it's fantastic that DoD spent billions to create this high PR weapon that they will probably never use effectively.

34 points by tomerico 16y ago

I wonder if metal mesh clothing, a wearable Faraday Cage, would defeat this device similar to the screen used on microwave ovens. From what I have read it's been fine-tuned to a specific frequency that penetrates the skin so far and is prefect for causing the nerves to react. If so it should be easy to create a suit that would nullify the effect using a metal mesh suit and helmet.

Rhapso 16y ago

Finally, a weaponized mobile microwave gun! If you are afraid of getting hit by one of these, do not wear contacts! You can handle melted plastic on your skin, but you do not want it on you eyes (contacts have a lot of water in them thus they would heat up fast. Unlike your eyes, contacts melt)

wtallis 16y ago
How hot do contact lenses need to be to melt? I would hope that by the time your contacts could absorb enough energy to melt, you would already be in enough pain to force your eyes shut.
- Rhapso 16y ago
  There has yet to be a real study of such things, but... there is info like this out there http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1702897/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1702897/posts http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725095.600 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725095.600 if too much water on the skin causes horrible burns I do not want to think about what would happen to the water in contacts or even in your eyes.
blueberry 16y ago
I am sure most people in Afghanistan prefer contacts to glasses. This is very useful info for them.

code_duck 16y ago

Oh boy! I'm looking forward to when this is deployed on US citizens. It will only be a few years out, you know. Maybe it will be another great innovation like Tazers, which police can use to attack citizens as an alternative to being civil. Need a handheld version first, though. I guess this model will only be good for repressing protests.

hugh3 16y ago
Even if you don't think it's likely to be used against US citizens, I imagine the Chinese Government is not far behind in the development of this sort of technology.
- code_duck 16y ago
  Indeed, and each will be selling such technology to other governments eventually.
maqr 16y ago
We used that sound cannon truck on our own people in Pittsburgh during the G-20 protests. Nobody seemed to care much either, even though it can easily cause permanent hearing loss. If the cops had the pain ray, they would have used it just the same.
nickpinkston 16y ago
The G20 protest in Pittsburgh was the first time the LRAD (sound cannon) was used on US Citizens (me included). It wasn't bad - people brought eye plugs, but I see no easy way to combat this either - short of tin-foil hats that is ;-) Scary times ahead!

tocomment 16y ago

Could this be used a form of "organic" pest control. Would it deter insects from crops? If nothing else it would seem to keep birds away from berries, etc.

motters 16y ago
That's a good point. You might be able to have a rotating beam passing over a crop, although if aimed at the crop it might have a negative effect due to the surface water heating aspect. Perhaps there are particular frequencies which might be effective against insects, but leave crops unharmed.
- qohen 16y ago
  Raytheon, the maker of this system, is already pursuing agricultural applications, though apparently they are focussed on preventing frost-damage (via Slashdot): http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2010/06/25/raytheon-turns-swords-into-plowshares/ http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2010/06/25/raytheon-turns...
  - motters 16y ago
    The other problem would be that only a minority of insects are pests, and others are beneficial. You wouldn't necessarily want to deter all insects.
dagobart 16y ago
I initially thought along the same lines, but not outdoors. Depending on the energy consumption, this technology might serve as a nice protection inside buildings. Like areas where you don't want unauthorized personel to go to. For everyone else you could "lower the shield" for the moment of passing-through.

paul9290 16y ago

Here's a video about it from The History Channel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmuyLIrSjxI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmuyLIrSjxI

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Never before in the history of humanity have governments been able to effectively control each person in a large population so effectively as today. A famous general once said "It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it." This has the same problem as tazers: some things are supposed to be difficult, ugly, and nasty to do, like bringing a population to bear under rule of law, or convincing an unarmed (or lightly-armed) mob that there is no need to protest. The folks that think that these things are somehow more humane are living in a delusional world. These things only solve a short-term problem at the expense of creating a much worse problem later on. Having said that, they also look very interesting in terms of doing things like patrolling the North Korean border. Hard to launch an invasion if all of your soldiers feel like they are on fire. And I support the use in Afghanistan -- there are lots of good things these tools can accomplish. But overall I think this is a step backwards, not forwards.

hugh3 16y ago
Never before in the history of humanity have governments been able to effectively control each person in a large population so effectively as today Compared to, say, ancient Egypt?
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Yes. There's a problem of scale with any centralized authority. While it's relatively easy to have total control over a population of a few thousand, span-of-control problems mean that multiple levels of managers must be involved the larger the populace. Note that I am not saying that folks are more oppressed now than at any other time in history (aside from obvious examples). I am saying that the ability for a central authority to monitor and control each person's behavior has scaled enormously. Every large enough organization experiences a tremendous degree of infidelity between the authority's wishes and how those wishes are actually carried out. Most folks look at some huge thing like, say North Korea, and think that there is one person completely in charge, and on paper it looks like that. But reality doesn't work like that at all. Instead central authorities in large systems constantly have to use persuasion, politics, and marketing tactics to get their wishes fulfilled. This was true with ancient Rome and much as today. So there is a constant give-and-take between the ideals and plans of leaders and the zeitgeist of the ruled. This, along with regularly-changing leadership, allows organizations to learn and adapt. Effective organizations embrace this tension and provide a means for regularly changing course, sometimes in a dramatic way. But what if leaders didn't have to worry about all those middle-level guys and discontent? What if you could have one central person/group that could monitor each person's actions minute-to-minute, applying various forms of non-lethal pain every time the person steps out of line? Don't like the food prices and want to go downtown to yell at the leaders? Well maybe we'll let you feel like you are on-fire for a few minutes and see how likely you are to try that again. Caesar doesn't have to worry about the Senate or governors in the provinces or the mob any more -- with computers and non-lethal population control, he can effectively manage hundreds of millions as easily as he could some bloke sitting in front of him in the same room. The state-of-monitoring discussion is for another thread. The key point here is that monitoring and control becomes a lot more palatable if nobody is getting hurt, so by inventing lots of forms of non-lethally controlling folks, leaders can squeeze tighter and tighter. Never before in history has it been that way. When the United States passed prohibition, everybody nodded their heads and drank anyway. Over time, it was painfully obvious what a disaster prohibition was. It's not that way today. Back then, to enforce prohibition you had to have tens of thousands of cops and FBI agents who were true believers and willing to harm and kill people to enforce the law. Those people simply didn't exist. The people who passed prohibition had morals, righteous feelings, and a majority vote on their side, but they wanted the impossible from the population. Today we're cutting way back on the systemic checks -- it only takes one true-believer in prohibition somewhere in the government to do some data mining of cell phone locations over time to easily find out where all the gin joints are. It only takes one or two guys to deploy some non-lethal force on those establishments to make them off-limits -- all without the nasty political fall-out of people harmed or killed -- or the practical requirement of actually having a big enough percentage of the population that supports enforcement (instead of just enactment) We live in an incredible time in history. We're seeing this massive system of state control develop on a scale that would boggle the minds of folks just fifty years ago. I'm hoping for a century or two of Pax Romana before we end up with a Caligula -- but I wouldn't bet on it.

robryan 16y ago

Does this thing have the ability to do something low level enough for people to feel it without any real discomfort? I think if it works like that it would be the only setting you need 99% of the time people would just scatter knowing they didn't want what was coming next.

wtallis 16y ago
There are ways to turn down the amplifier (by reducing the voltage to the cathode or the cathode heater), but it would be more practical to simply turn on the device before anybody gets close enough to be subject to really intense radiation.

mfukar 16y ago

I find it disturbing that an article about a new kind of weapon is neutrally worded, with a positive spin at the end.

gaius 16y ago
Gotta be better than shooting holes in people.
- hugh3 16y ago
  As long as it's only used in circumstances where shooting holes in people is the alternative, yes.
  - gaius 16y ago
    The military have a huge issue at checkpoints, if you ask a driver to stop and he doesn't, then you can't take the risk he didn't understand; he could be a suicide bomber. So they open fire. This provides a means to say, in any language, stop. So it will save lives.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Oh, I'm sure it has plenty of good uses. But it's right that people should be concerned about the potentially bad ones. In that case, though, I'm thinking that my instinct upon getting hit with a pain-causing weapon would be to mash the accelerator and try to drive out of range. Also, I don't think it would be all that effective on someone inside a metal car.
    - jberryman 16y ago
      maybe. or the presence of bigass pain rays and unmanned flying killing machines could make us look like the kind of oppressors that you wouldnt mind blowing yourself up to overthrow
      - gaius 16y ago

bombs 16y ago

If it was able to penetrate a car body, it'd be a great asset for checkpoints and roadblocks — surely better than live-round warning shots. Do they have those anymore? It'll help in riots and other such things, I'm sure. It sure is a nice, big target for insurgent RPGs though! I wonder in what ways it'll be protected — even mounted on a heavily armoured vehicle, the dish would be vulnerable to damage, right?

billswift 16y ago
Home-made ARAD designed to home in on the device's frequency, sure it's a narrow beam, but there are ways around that.

gaius 16y ago

I bet most of the outraged commenters went right back to playing Call Of Duty 2: Modern Warfare after that.

raganwald 16y ago

Given both of our countries' track records, if the police had easy access to a device that could inflict great pain without leaving a trace on the human body, the ethics of crowd control would be the least of my misgivings.

mrbgty 16y ago

What kind of protection could be used to block it?

dagobart 16y ago
And, given that it heats water, what if it gets applied to someone in heavy rain, say with clothes soaked? Would it go so far to effectively boil the person?

lwhi 16y ago

Its deployment will lead to an increase in the use of moderate force to control groups of people. If the actual weapon is classed as non-intrusive, it could potentially be used in situations where Police wouldn't usually use force. Political protests, general non-cooperation, etc.. The idea worries me a lot. The people who invent this kind of thing really must be quite peculiar, to be able to function without moral objection.

korch 16y ago

I bet this contraption is trivially circumvented for less than $100 of gear. It's just microwaves, and there are many ways of shielding and rending them inert. But it's fantastic that DoD spent billions to create this high PR weapon that they will probably never use effectively.