Less Than Lethal in the News

["Millennium's End Notebook" <me-notebook@xxxxxxx>]

Time
July 29, 2002
Pg. 46

Beyond The Rubber Bullet

The Pentagon's effort to create nonlethal weapons that hurt but don't kill
has set off its own fire storm

By Lev Grossman

The U.S. armed forces don't do much shooting anymore. Even in Afghanistan,
they engage in more advising and guiding than gunplay. Soldiers today are
asked more often to keep the peace or defuse demonstrations, and the last
thing they want in those situations is to fire a lethal weapon. That's why
the Pentagon is spending more and more research-and-development dollars on
weapons that stun, scare, entangle or nauseate - anything but kill.

The U.S.'s nonlethal-weapons programs are drawing their own fire, mostly
from human-rights activists who contend that the technologies being
developed will be deployed to suppress dissent and that they defy
international weapons treaties. Through public websites, interviews with
defense researchers and data obtained in a series of Freedom of Information
Act requests filed by watchdog groups, TIME has managed to peer into the
Pentagon's multimillion-dollar program and piece together this glimpse of
the gentler, though not necessarily kinder, arsenal of tomorrow.

DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS -- Imagine a cross between a microwave oven and a
Star Trek phaser: a tight, focused beam of energy that flash-heats its
target from a distance. Directed energy beams do not burn flesh, but they do
create an unbearably painful burning sensation. The Air Force Research
Laboratory has already spent $40 million on a humvee-mounted directed-energy
weapon. Expect to see it in the field by 2009.

ANTITRACTION MATERIAL -- Sometimes keeping an enemy down but not out is good
enough. The Southwest Research Institute in Texas has created a sprayable
antitraction gel for the Marines that is so slippery it is impossible to
drive or even walk on it; one researcher describes it as "liquid ball
bearings." Spray the stuff on a door handle, and it becomes too slippery to
turn. The antitraction gel is mostly water, so it dries up in about 12
hours. It is also nontoxic and biodegradable.

MALODORANTS -- Working for the Pentagon, the Monell Chemical Senses Center
in Philadelphia has formulated smells so repellent that they can quickly
clear a public space of anyone who can breathe - partygoers, rioters, even
enemy forces. Scientists have tested the effectiveness of such odors as
vomit, burnt hair, sewage, rotting flesh and a potent concoction known
euphemistically as "U.S. Government Standard Bathroom Malodor." But don't
expect to get a whiff anytime soon. Like all gaseous weapons, malodorants
once released are hard to control, and their use is strictly limited by
international chemical-weapons treaties.

PROJECTILES -- No one likes rubber bullets - not the people being fired at
nor the people doing the firing. "It's very easy to put out an eye, to blind
someone," says Glenn Shwaery, director of the Nonlethal Technology
Innovation Center. "How do you redesign a projectile to avoid that?" The
answer is, with softer, flatter bullets, beanbags and sponges that spread
out the impact and hit like an open-handed slap from Andre the Giant.
Shwaery's team is looking into an even more radical solution: "tunable"
bullets that can be adjusted in the field to be harder or softer as the
situation warrants. "We're talking about dialing in the penetrating power,"
he says. ?It's the difference between 'Set phasers on stun' and 'Set phasers
on kill.'"

WEBS AND NETS -- Spider-man has competition. A firm called Foster-Miller,
based in Waltham, Mass., has created the WebShot, a 10-ft.-wide Kevlar net.
Packed in a cartridge and fired from a special shotgun, the WebShot can
entangle targets as far away as 30 feet. Bigger nets can work on bigger
targets. The Portable Vehicle Arresting Barrier, developed for the Pentagon
by General Dynamics in Falls Church, Va., is a tough, elastic web that
springs up from the ground in an instant to block a road. It can stop a
7,500-lb. pickup truck traveling 45 m.p.h. and then wrap around it to trap
the occupants inside.

REAL RAY GUNS -- Further out on the horizon, the line between weapons
development and science fiction becomes perilously thin. Mission Research
Corp. of Santa Barbara, Calif., is working on a pulsed energy projectile
(PEP) that superheats the surface moisture around a target so rapidly that
it literally explodes, producing a bright flash of light and a loud bang.
The effect is like a stun grenade, but unlike a grenade the pep travels at
nearly the speed of light and can take out a target with pinpoint accuracy.
Or picture this: a flashlight-size device, currently in development at HSV
Technologies in San Diego, that transmits a powerful electric current along
a beam of ultraviolet light. Shine that light on a human target, and you
have a wireless taser that can paralyze targets as far away as 2 km.

DRUGS, BUGS AND BEYOND -- Even their supporters agree that "nonlethal
weapons" is a dangerous misnomer and that any of these devices has the
potential to injure and kill. What is more, some of them may not even be
legal. Over the past three months, a chemical-weapons watchdog organization
called the Sunshine Project has obtained evidence that the U.S. is
considering some projects that appear to take us beyond the bounds of good
sense: bioengineered bacteria designed to eat asphalt, fuel and body armor,
or faster-acting, weaponized forms of antidepressants, opiates and so-called
"club drugs" that could be rapidly administered to unruly crowds. Such
research is illegal under international law and could open up terrifying
scenarios for abuse. "This is patently quite dangerous and irresponsible,"
says human-rights activist Steve Wright, who, as director of the Omega
Foundation, works with Amnesty International to monitor nonlethal weapons.
"What the U.S. invents today, others, including the torturing states, will
deploy tomorrow." Just how much is that magic rubber bullet worth to us?
Maybe some science fiction should remain fictional.

With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington