The U.S. mission in Afghanistan centers around swaying locals to its side. And there’s no better persuasion tool than an invisible pain ray that makes people feel like they’re on fire.
OK, OK. Maybe that isn’t precisely the logic being employed those segments of the American military who would like to deploy the Active Denial System to Afghanistan. I’m sure they’re telling themselves that the generally non-lethal microwave weapon is a better, safer crowd control alternative than an M-16. But those ray-gun advocates better think long and hard about the Taliban’s propaganda bonanza when news leaks of the Americans zapping Afghans until they feel roasted alive.
Because, apparently, the Active Denial System is “in Afghanistan for testing.”
An Air Force military officer and a civilian employee at the Air Force Research Laboratory are just two of the people telling our pal Sharon Weinberger that the vehicle-mounted “block 2″ version of the pain ray is in the warzone, but hasn’t been used in combat.
Update: “We are currently not testing the Active Denial System in Afghanistan,” Kelley Hughes, spokesperson for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, tells Danger Room.
So I ask her: Has it been tested previously? She hems and haws. “I’m not gonna get into operational,” Hughes answers.
Hughes also disputes the assertion that Active Denial creates a burning feeling. “It’s an intolerable heating sensation,” she says. “Like opening up an oven door.” [end of update]
For years, the military insisted that the Active Denial System — known as the “Holy Grail” of crowd control — was oh so close to battlefield deployment. But a host of technical issues hampered the ray gun: everything from overheating to poor performance in the rain. Safety concerns lingered; a test subject had to be airlifted to a burn center after being zapped by the weapon. (He eventually made a full recovery.) And then there were concerns about “the atmospherics” — how the locals might react — when they learned that the United States had turned a people-roaster on em. “Not politically tenable,” the Defense Science Board concluded.
I pinged Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s staff about the use of Active Denial in Afghanistan. I’ll let you know if I hear anything back. But a few months ago, a source told me that a representative from the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate was in Afghanistan. Did that mean Active Denial was about to be put into action? Nope, the source said. “She’s just out getting some atmospherics on use of non-lethals.”
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Wednesday night that waterboarding authorized by former President George W. Bush was torture and that the information it gained from terror suspects could have been obtained by other means.
Obama reaffirmed that “waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. . . . “I believe that waterboarding was torture. And I think that … whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.”
Learn something new every day. I had not heard of the Active Denial System. We do use Long Rang Acoustic Devices (LRADs)though. They are very effective in deterring those with unknown intent.
It appears the update is that there is no story here? The story is something is happening but the update is that the story is all incorrect?
And if it was, this seems more in the line of rubber bullets then water boarding. You are stretching your assumptions.
"Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity." "Light houses are more useful then churches" -Ben Franklin "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it." - John Adams
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