{"id":7005,"date":"2012-03-12T10:31:07","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T17:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=7005"},"modified":"2012-03-12T10:31:07","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T17:31:07","slug":"us-military-unveils-ray-beam-latest-non-lethal-weapon-already-deployed-in-bahrain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=7005","title":{"rendered":"US military unveils ray beam latest non-lethal weapon &#8211; already deployed in Bahrain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>US military unveils ray beam as latest non-lethal weapon<\/strong><br \/>\nby Staff Writers &#8211; 10 March, 2012 -Space War<\/p>\n<p>A sensation of unbearable, sudden heat seems to come out of nowhere &#8212; this wave, a strong electromagnetic beam, is the latest non-lethal weapon unveiled by the US military this week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not gonna see it, you&#8217;re not gonna hear it, you&#8217;re not gonna smell it: you&#8217;re gonna feel it,&#8221; explained US Marine Colonel Tracy Taffola, director the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, Marine Corps Base Quantico, at a demonstration for members of the media.<\/p>\n<p>The effect is so repellant, the immediate instinct is to flee &#8212; and quickly, as experienced by AFP at the presentation.<\/p>\n<p>Taffola is quick also to point out the &#8220;Active Denial System&#8221; beam, while powerful and long-range, some 1000 meters (0.6 miles), is the military&#8217;s &#8220;safest non-lethal capability&#8221; that has been developed over 15 years but never used in the field.<\/p>\n<p>It was deployed briefly in Afghanistan in 2010, but never employed in an operation.<\/p>\n<p>The technology has attracted safety concerns possibly because the beam is often confused with the microwaves commonly used by consumers to rapidly heat food.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are a lot of misperceptions out there,&#8221; lamented Taffola, saying the Pentagon was keen to make clear what the weapon is, and what it is not.<\/p>\n<p>The frequency of the blast makes all the difference for actual injury as opposed to extreme discomfort, stressed Stephanie Miller, who measured the system&#8217;s radio frequency bioeffects at the Air Force Research Laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>The system ray is 95 gigahertz, a frequency &#8220;absorbed very superficially,&#8221; said Miller.<\/p>\n<p>The beam only goes 1\/64th of an inch (0.4 millimeter), which &#8220;gives a lot more safety.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have done over 11,000 exposures on people. In that time we&#8217;ve only had two injuries that required medical attention and in both cases injuries were fully recovered without complications,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, microwave frequency is around one gigahertz, which moves faster and penetrates deeper &#8212; which is how it can cook meat in an oven, said top researcher Diana Loree. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spacewar.com\/reports\/US_military_unveils_ray_beam_as_latest_non-lethal_weapon_999.html\"> &#8230;more<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D7005&amp;text=US+military+unveils+ray+beam+latest+non-lethal+weapon+-+already+deployed+in+Bahrain&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US military unveils ray beam as latest non-lethal weapon by Staff Writers &#8211; 10 March, 2012 -Space War A sensation of unbearable, sudden heat seems to come out of nowhere &#8212; this wave, a strong electromagnetic beam, is the latest non-lethal weapon unveiled by the US military this week. &#8220;You&#8217;re not gonna see it, you&#8217;re <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=7005#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2281],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7006,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions\/7006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}