Maximum pain is the aim of a new US weapon

Mar 2 05 New Scientist

http://www.newsfrombabylon.com/index.php?q=node/5598

Science and Ethics according to the Bush administration:

Stem cell research that holds the hope of reducing pain and suffering = BAD.

Pulsed Energy Projectiles which "deliver a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away" and are intended for use against rioters = GOOD.

Why do we need this technology to control rioters? Are rioters currently a huge problem in America? Why the need to be able to knock rioters off their feet from 2 km away? Why is this being touted for release in 2007? Is there any particular reason why it is being developed for that time? What kinds of situations might result in a riot of the magnitude deserving Pulsed Energy Projectiles? What will be the government's parameters in using them? What will differentiate a riot from a protest? Do they anticipate people taking to the streets and rioting? If so, why? I find this to be a quite ominous piece of information. The other military weapons and gear have always been purchased for use against other militaries. This is being specifically developed to control rioting Americans. Or rioting civillians of other countries.

Are these the kind of "rioters" they plan to use Pulsed Energy Projectiles on? Because these are the kind of people who look like they are so dangerous that our scientists need to be working night and day to figure out how to knock them off their feet from 2 km away with the most painful stimuli possible.

More dangerous Americans deserving Pulsed Energy Projectiles?

New Scientist link
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7077

Good God!

I had read about it (they used it in Fallujah ) but I thought it was tin foil hat material... So the weapon does exist!

Read this one about how THERE ARE SUCH WEAPONS ALREADY and they have been testing them in Iraq with people as their lab mice...

http://www.intl-news.com/modules.php?name=...article&sid=244

Microwaving Iraq: US Resorts to Electromagnetic Warfare
Posted on Saturday, January 29 @ 10:45:20 PST by joeb

War Games On the rooftop of a shrapnel-pocked building in the ruins of Fallujah, a team of GI’s stealthily sets up a gray plastic dome about two-feet in diameter. Keeping well back from the sight lines of the street and nearby buildings, they plug the cable connectors on the side of the “popper” into a power unit. The grunts have no clue what the device does. They are just following orders.

After powering up the unit, the grunts quickly exit the area. It is their commanders’ fervent hope that any male survivors enraged by brutal American bombardments that damaged virtually every building in this once thriving “City of Mosques”, displacing a quarter-million residents while murdering thousands of children, women and elders in their homes—will lose all incentive for further resistance and revenge.

by Will Thomas

“ Pacifying” Rays Pose New Hazards To Iraqis

“ Most of the worker-bees that are placing these do not even know what is inside the ‘domes’, just that they were told where to place them by Intel weenies with usually no nametag,” reports my source, a very well informed combat veteran I will call “Hank”.

“ Intel” stands for “intelligence” officers who target the most restive neighborhoods in a country gripped by anarchy and chaos. The lack of nametags indicates membership in a spooky “alphabet agency”, either within or outside the military chain of command. Similar “black: teams removed “Made In The USA” chemical weapons from Iraqi trenches after Desert Storm. [Bringing The War Home by William Thomas]

The grunts call the plastic devices “poppers” or “domes”. Once activated, each hidden transmitter emits a widening circle of invisible energy capable of passing through metal, concrete and human skulls up to half a mile away. “They are saturating the area with ULF, VLF and UHF freqs,” Hanks says, with equipment derived from US Navy undersea sonar and communications.

But its not being used to locate and talk to submarines under Baghdad.

2006 elections ?

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...21&#entry207821

; )

but in regards to the previous post - there was also the ability to cut all communications abroad etc i remember posting sometimes last year...

interesting comment on iraqi use...

The technology is not that new, they experimentet whit it already before the Vietnam war, but it was to big and clumsy, but the modern wonders of Microwave ovens small and afordable + other civilian breakthroughs have obiviously brought it back to the surface again.
But one of the lasting effects of this technology is permanent headache, severly increased possibilties for psykotic episodes, strokes, hallucinations, vomiting, permanent mental disabillities like schiziofrenia, memory loss both short and long term, fobias.
Not a nice way to go, and you can't diffrinciate whit this one it hits everybody not in a nuklear bunker equally.

Well, what do you know... The tin foil hat site was correct

Nonlethal weapons that, according to the story you cite "cause pain without lasting injury are to be issued to American troops in Iraq for the first time as concern mounts over the growing number of civilians killed in fighting"? Methinks we'd never want to see that, eh?

You know as well as i do Flydangler, that the main reason we keep our tempers in check and dont get overboard, is becourse our response whit an assaultrifle is permanent and deadly, we have to live whit the consequences and paperwork.
IF you have 'nonlethal' weapons to use against rioters, they will be used, frequently and against likely rioters too, and then everybody that might be a possible annoyance, it is human nature to use power when it's consequences do not strike back at you. And as i have tried to tell you all, the part of 'nonlethal' can be said to a little bit of a strecht, if you go insane or keel over dead 4-6 years down the road as a direct result of being hit whit said weapon, can you truly call it non-lethal?

I see your / the US military's point. I'm honestly conflicted about what to think about it's use in Iraq.

I see a good intention in the fact a nonlethal weapon is being used instead of cluster bombs. But I do fear abuse, as the US interrogators did with taser guns, dogs, broomsticks... And as it "leaves no marks" it would be hard to trackdown abuses.

But it is definitely better than removing someone's toenails like they apparently did in Guantanamo...


I also fear it's use at home, on me and my kids when we attend protests. And in police brutality, like Rodney King's case.

And as the original article in New Scientist tells us, the whole "non-lethal" and "no side effects" thing has not been tested fully. Using Iraqs as lab mice sounds pretty unethical to me.

In a vacuum I would definitely be against it's use here, in Iraq or anywhere

But in a word that has seen cluster bombs, Abu Ghraib, Sgrena's case, outsourcing torture ("rendition") to other countries and Guantanamo, not to mention 1,500 dead troops and several beheadings, it seems like this weapon is better than the other DEADLY alternatives and hopefully will keep our troops and citizens alive in Iraq.

I'm STILL against it's use in US citizens and US soil.

I sure would like to know what these guys definition of "injury" is. Weren't these the same guys we caught splitting legal hairs over the definition of torture?

Methinks the Telegraph article describes pretty well what the affects felt by one of the American researchers was.

The article 'twould also seem to give a good indication of where/how 'twould be used. Methinks if the scenario cited is what it's intended for 'twould be a good thing.

As to who split legal hairs, methinks 'twas the civilian leadership, not the military, eh?

If I hit someone with anything less than a high level of savagery I would likely not leave any lasting injuries and I certainly would not kill someone, so I am not restrained by the sure knowledge that hitting is likely to kill someone. Yet in my life I have very rarely ever hit anyone.

These weapons could certainly be abused, as just about all weapons have. You're not raising trivial issues. But the idea of stopping enemy soldiers by a weapon much less likely to lead to their death certainly sounds relatively humane, at least as far as a relatively inhumane business such as war goes.

ok, but depleted uranium?

that's effective, too (in a nagasaki manner), saves at least american lives (for a while), and like with asbestos and ddt, no imminent 'death/injury' to civilians, right?

the bastards and freaks and cancers etc come down the road, then, of course, 'wholly unconnected' with IT's use...

right?

another cute - you're at this point told it'd be a VERY good idea to limit kids cellphone use, but THIS would have no lasting effects?

rrriiight, you can sue people and companies over so idiotic things it's hard to believe those cases weren't thrown out of court before they were written for 'emotional distress' etc, but THIS 'humane???

smash your fist against a concrete wall - will you like it? a gun that's supposed to 'cause max pain without actually causing death' will exceed bu far anything those people who have had the bad luck to have had surgeries with muscle relaxant but no painkillers have ever felt. those sissies complain of having terrible nightmares every night, but, of course, nothing like this would ever happen to anyone having felt 'max pain'...

can you imagine still belonging to human race after 30 seconds of that?

this is not humane and i doubt it was even ever meant to be

And if it is totally whitout permanet means, then you would also have the perfect tool for torture, one tryout of this kinds of babies and you would probably admit to standing on the grassynole in 63' or tell everybody that Bush lite is the greatest statesman on earth, and off course are the Fox news fair and balanced

Battleships fit for duty
By Dennis Reilly

The 2006 National Defense Authorization Act would strike the battleships USS Iowa and Wisconsin from the Navy register and turn them into museums. This sounds attractive, but it would in fact erect monuments to folly, placing the lives of thousands of our Marines at risk. It would void the previous law, PL104-106, that instructed the Navy to keep two Iowa-class battleships readily available until the Navy certifies to Congress that it has fire-support capability that equals or exceeds that of the Iowa-class battleships. The Navy is unable to do this. Instead, it has taken steps detrimental to reactivation of these ships.

Why this reaction? Simply put, there has been a failure of strategic insight on the part of leadership. A July 2002 meeting between then Navy Secretary Gordon England -- now up for confirmation as deputy secretary of defense -- and the U.S. Naval Surface Fire Support Association focused on reactivating the battleships to provide the fire support that was then and is now missing. Mr. England stated that there was no need for that kind of firepower, as the only remaining threat was terrorism. When I brought up North Korea, China, Iran, and the impending war with Iraq, the Secretary replied: "We do not regard such scenarios as realistic." Iraq is now history. Fortunately we did not have to fight our way ashore.

The world, however, remains a dangerous place, and the threat of terrorism is still but one head on the hydra. While North Korea continues to churn out nuclear weapons, some 12,000 well-dug-in artillery tubes along the DMZ hold Seoul hostage with the threat of overnight obliteration. China's rapidly escalating military capabilities, alliances and thinly veiled threats are alarming. China clearly feels free to choose the time and means -- including force -- to resolve the Taiwan issue. How events will unfold in these places and in others, such as Iran, is anyone's guess. But one thing is sure. Should there be conflict in these areas, the Marines will be involved, and it will not be an antiterrorist action.

Based on its vision, the Navy has focused on the development of a destroyer, the DD(X), equipped with two long range guns. No doubt this would be useful in breaking up terrorist camps scattered about the Pacific littorals, but it is not the gun you would want to bring to a major conflict. The small mass delivered to target makes these rounds ineffective against hardened positions. The cost per round forces the Navy to admit that high-volume fire is unaffordable. Lacking armor, the ship is highly vulnerable, despite its low-radar cross section. The cost -- Congress demands a cap of $1.7 billion per ship -- is out of proportion to its usefulness.
What can a supposedly antiquated battleship bring to the fight? During the Vietnam War, the New Jersey was on station for 6 months. It wreaked havoc on the DMZ and in the North, including destruction of the deeply buried North Vietnamese Army (NVA) command headquarters. Had this ship been deployed throughout that war, a fair fraction of the 2,000 aviators killed, missing in action or captured as prisoners of war would have been spared. No statistic conveys the impact of the New Jersey's assault on the NVA better than the fact that North Vietnam demanded the withdrawal of the ship -- not the B-52s -- before it would continue with the Paris peace talks.

Technology now allows battleships to do far better. GPS guidance will ensure one-shot, one-kill of hard targets such as the North Korean gun emplacements and Chinese missile batteries. Shells weighing 525 pounds can reach as far as 115 miles in a life-saving time of only 3 minutes. Over the longer term, the battleship's potential is truly revolutionary. Studies show that its massive firepower could be projected to at least 460 miles. With enhanced firepower and the ability to steam between Inchon and the Formosan Straits in less than a day and a half, two modernized battleships would have a chilling deterrent effect on aggressive designs by either the Chinese or the North Koreans.

The Navy has misled Congress regarding the battleship's firepower, costs, survivability -- the Nevada survived two atom bombs -- and condition of equipment. The reality is that these ships could meet Marine Corps fire-support requirements in the near future. Nothing else can. Cost effective? Each battleship, with a reactivation and modernization cost of only $1.5 billion, has firepower equivalent to two aircraft carriers using only one-eighth the manpower. Moreover, the battleships' response is all-weather, is generally faster and is impervious to air defenses.

As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said, you go to war with the army you have. If in the future our brave Marines are getting butchered because of insufficient fire support, "the Army we have" then will be a result of the actions taken today. What should be done? Reactivate the battleships now. Would you rather have a museum or a live Marine?