OT - US military unveils heat-ray gun

US military unveils heat-ray gun

BBC News - Thursday, 25 January 2007, 18:36 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6297149.stm

The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a
revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile
crowds.

Called the Active Denial System, it projects an invisible high energy
beam that produces a sudden burning feeling.

Military officials, who say the gun is harmless, believe it could be
used as a non-lethal way of making enemies surrender their weapons.

Officials said there was wide-ranging military interest in the
technology.

"This is a breakthrough technology that's going to give our forces a
capability they don't now have," defence official Theodore Barna told
Reuters news agency.

"We expect the services to add it to their tool kit. And that could
happen as early as 2010."

'Blast from an oven'

The prototype weapon was demonstrated at the Moody Air Force Base in
Georgia.

A beam was fired from a large rectangular dish mounted on a Humvee
vehicle.

The beam has a reach of up to 500 metres (550 yards), much further than
existing non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets.

It can penetrate clothes, suddenly heating up the skin of anyone in its
path to 50C.

But it penetrates the skin only to a tiny depth - enough to cause
discomfort but no lasting harm, according to the military.

A Reuters journalist who volunteered to be shot with the beam described
the sensation as similar to a blast from a very hot oven - too painful
to bear without diving for cover.

Crowd control

Military officials said the weapon was one of the key technologies of
the future.

"Non-lethal weapons are important for the escalation of force,
especially in the environments our forces are operating in," said
Marine Col Kirk Hymes, director of the development programme.

The weapon could potentially be used for dispersing hostile crowds in
conflict zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan.

It would mean that troops could take effective steps to move people
along without resorting to measures such as rubber bullets - bridging
the gap between "shouting and shooting", Col Hymes said.

A similar non-lethal weapon, Silent Guardian, is being developed by US
company Raytheon.

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