While you weren't looking, Ray Bradbury took over weapons design at the
Pentagon.
by Brooke Shelby Biggs
March 8, 2001
Last week, the Pentagon unveiled its newest weapon: the Vehicle Mounted
Active Denial System (VMADS). It's being billed as a kinder, gentler weapon; "
non-lethal," "less than lethal," or "soft kill" in Pentagon parlance. In
other words it usually doesn't kill people; it just hurts them enough to make
'em run away. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?
Well, it makes you warm, anyway. VMADS shoots a concentrated beam of
electromagnetic energy at human targets -- sort of like a tank-mounted
microwave oven set on high with the door left open.
According to an Air Force spokesman at the unveiling, "It's the kind of pain
you would feel if you were being burned. It's just not intense enough to
cause any damage."
But according to scientists at Loma Linda University Medical Center,
long-term effects of exposure to the weapon are unknown, and may include
cancer and cataracts. "[The Pentagon's] claims are a bunch of crap," said
Prof. W. Ross Adey. "We've known that many forms of microwaves at levels
below heating can cause significant health effects in the long term."
And that's if the new weapon is used properly. According to the Marine Times,
the VMADS -- called the "people zapper" -- may be capable of inflicting far
more than brief discomfort when not used as directed; that is, for no more
than three seconds. "The amount of time the weapon must be trained on an
individual to cause permanent damage or death is classified." (In other
words, it only takes one 18-year-old recruit with a sick curiosity or a slow
watch to turn the thing deadly.)
In 1995, in fact, a military spokesman qualified the concept of "non-lethal"
weapons: "[I]t's really less lethal ... because these weapons if improperly
used could be lethal." Marine Col George Fenton, likewise, is on record in
the May 2000 National Defense Magazine saying the term "non-lethal ... does
not mean that they can't kill or injure." Reassuring, isn't it?
Think you have nothing to worry about because you have no plans to join the
army of some rogue state? You may be surprised one day to see VMADS -- or a
civilian law-enforcement version of the weapon -- on a city street near you.
VMADS and its "non-lethal" kin are being hyped by the Pentagon as "crowd
dispersal" devices, which makes them a handy tool for quelling civil unrest,
without the fuss and muss of rubber bullets and tear gas. According to the
defense journal Jane's, "The 'non-lethal' nature of these weapons might ...
encourage military forces to use them directly against civilians and civilian
targets." Indeed: A July 2000 Army newsletter featured a section called "
Civil Disturbances; Incorporating Non-Lethal Technologies."
So instead of donning bullet-proof vests and gas masks, activists at the next
Seattle-style protest might strap frozen HungryMan dinners to their bodies
when they take to the streets. At least they'll get a hot meal while they
wait to post bail.
Critics also note that the US loves to export its weapons technology. In Le
Monde in 1999, Steve Wright argued that the spread of non-lethal weapons like
VMADS will "spawn ever more advanced techniques of repression. And if
democratic countries let their arms manufacturers develop these techniques,
they will be exported to places less concerned about brutalizing their
populations."
International law seems fuzzy on this point. Although the Geneva Convention
doesn't address the science-fictionesque subject of laser weapons, an
amendment added in 1949 did ban "weapons, projectiles and materials and
methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary
suffering."
VMADS is just the tip of the non-lethal iceberg. In 1995, the Center For
Defense Information listed possible non-lethal weapons under consideration by
the Pentagon, including "super acids, goop guns, blinding lasers, non-nuclear
electromagnetic pulses, high power microwaves, laser weapons, infrasound,
computer viruses, and metal-eating microbes."
Human Rights Watch has been fighting the international development of
"blinding lasers" designed to cause irreversible eye damage. In 1995, the US
agreed to an international ban on blinding lasers, but continued development
of "dazzling lasers" or "dazzlers," another form of laser weapon targeting
human eyes. (Law enforcement groups are developing applications of this type
of weapon for police use, giving the high-tech toys groovy names like "The
Laser Dissuader").
And then there's the Anti-Personnel Beam Weapon that can stun or immobilize
humans from a distance of 100 yards by sending an electrical current through
a high-speed channel of ionized air.
According to one Web source, the US is also developing a sonic weapon which
causes "the bowels of enemy troops to spasm and their contents to liquefy,
thus reducing millions of soldiers to, as one government report says,
'quivering diarrhetic messes.'"
Finally, the US military is developing non-lethal low-frequency radio
technologies -- which conspiracy theorists suspect have mind-control
capabilities -- such as the much-criticized High Frequency Active Auroral
Project (HAARP).
It's easy to forget that the US military and intelligence communities are run
by a bunch of boys playing with really big toys. The Hanssen spy case, after
all, revealed that even after the Cold War was over, the CIA was actually
tunneling under DC streets and into the Russian embassy. Makes one wonder if
Tom Clancy has been writing policy for the past 20 years.
