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Wonder Weapons
The Pentagon's quest for nonlethal arms is amazing. But is it
smart?
BY DOUGLAS PASTERNAK
Tucked away in the corner of a drab industrial park in Huntington
Beach, Calif., is a windowless, nondescript building. Inside, under
extremely tight security, engineers and scientists are working on devices
whose ordinary appearance masks the oddity of their function. One is cone
shaped, about the size of a fire hydrant. Another is a 3-foot-long metal
tube, mounted on a tripod, with some black boxes at the operator's end.
These are the newest weapons of war.
For hundreds of years, sci-fi writers have imagined weapons that might
use energy waves or pulses to knock out, knock down, or otherwise disable
enemies--without necessarily killing them. And for a good 40 years the
U.S. military has quietly been pursuing weapons of this sort. Much of this
work is still secret, and it has yet to produce a usable "nonlethal"
weapon. But now that the cold war has ended and the United States is
engaged in more humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, the search for
weapons that could incapacitate people without inflicting lethal injuries
has intensified. Police, too, are keenly interested. Scores of new
contracts have been let, and scientists, aided by government research on
the "bioeffects" of beamed energy, are searching the electromagnetic and
sonic spectrums for wavelengths that can affect human behavior. Recent
advancements in miniaturized electronics, power generation, and beam
aiming may finally have put such pulse and beam weapons on the cusp of
practicality, some experts say.
Weapons already exist that use lasers, which can temporarily or
permanently blind enemy soldiers. So-called acoustic or sonic weapons,
like the ones in the aforementioned lab, can vibrate the insides of humans
to stun them, nauseate them, or even "liquefy their bowels and reduce them
to quivering diarrheic messes," according to a Pentagon briefing.
Prototypes of such weapons were recently considered for tryout when U.S.
troops intervened in Somalia. Other, stranger effects also have been
explored, such as using electromagnetic waves to put human targets to
sleep or to heat them up, on the microwave-oven principle. Scientists are
also trying to make a sonic cannon that throws a shock wave with enough
force to knock down a man.
While this and similar weapons may seem far-fetched, scientists say
they are natural successors to projects already underway--beams that
disable the electronic systems of aircraft, computers, or missiles, for
instance. "Once you are into these antimateriel weapons, it is a short
jump to antipersonnel weapons," says Louis Slesin, editor of the trade
journal Microwave News. That's because the human body is
essentially an electrochemical system, and devices that disrupt the
electrical impulses of the nervous system can affect behavior and body
functions. But these programs--particularly those involving antipersonnel
research--are so well guarded that details are scarce. "People [in the
military] go silent on this issue," says Slesin, "more than any other
issue. People just do not want to talk about this."
Projects underway. To learn what the Pentagon has been doing,
U.S. News talked to more than 70 experts and scoured biomedical and
engineering journals, contracts, budgets, and research proposals. The
effort to develop exotic weapons is surprising in its range. Scores of
projects are underway, most with funding of several hundred thousand
dollars each. One Air Force lab plans to spend more than $100 million by
2003 to research the "bioeffects" of such weaponry.
The benefits of bloodless battles for soldiers and law enforcement are
obvious. But the search for new weapons--cloaked as they are in
secrecy--faces hurdles. One is the acute skepticism of many
conventional-weapons experts. "It is interesting technology but it won't
end bloodshed and wars," says Harvey Sapolsky, director of the Security
Studies Program at MIT. Says Charles Bernard, a former Navy
weapons-research director: "I have yet to see one of these ray gun things
that actually works." And if they do work, other problems arise: Some
so-called nonlethal weapons could end up killing rather than just
disabling victims if used at the wrong range. Others may easily be
thwarted by shielding.
Sterner warnings come from ethicists. Years ago the world drafted
conventions and treaties to attempt to set rules for the use of bullets
and bombs in war. But no treaties govern the use of unconventional
weapons. And no one knows what will happen to people exposed to them over
the long term.
Moreover, medical researchers worry that their work on such things as
the use of electromagnetic waves to stimulate hearing in the deaf or to
halt seizures in epileptics might be used to develop weaponry. In fact,
the military routinely has approached the National Institutes of Health
for research information. "DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency] has come to us every few years to see if there are ways to
incapacitate the central nervous system remotely," Dr. F. Terry Hambrecht,
head of the Neural Prosthesis Program at NIH, told U.S. News. "But
nothing has ever come of it," he said. "That is too science fiction and
far-fetched." Still, the Pentagon plans to conduct human testing with
lasers and acoustics in the future, says Charles Swett, an assistant for
Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. Swett insists that the
testing will be constrained and highly ethical. It may not be far off. The
U.S. Air Force expects to have microwave weapons by the year 2015 and
other nonlethal weaponry sooner. "When that does happen," warns Steven
Metz, professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Army War College,
"I think there will be a public uproar. We need an open debate on them
now."
Laser ethics
What happened with U.S. forces in Somalia foreshadows the impending
ethical dilemmas. In early 1995, some U.S. marines were supplied with
so-called dazzling lasers. The idea was to inflict as little harm as
possible if Somalis turned hostile. But the marines' commander then
decided that the lasers should be "de-tuned" to prevent the chance of
their blinding citizens. With their intensity thus diminished, they could
be used only for designating or illuminating targets.
On March 1, 1995, commandos of U.S. Navy SEAL Team 5 were positioned at
the south end of Mogadishu airport. At 7 a.m., a technician from the Air
Force's Phillips Laboratory, developer of the lasers, used one to
illuminate a Somali man armed with a rocket-propelled grenade. A SEAL
sniper shot and killed the Somali. There was no question the Somali was
aiming at the SEALs. But the decision not to use the laser to dazzle or
temporarily blind the man irks some of the nonlethal-team members. "We
were not allowed to disable these guys because that was considered
inhumane," said one. "Putting a bullet in their head is somehow more
humane?"
Despite such arguments, the International Red Cross and Human Rights
Watch have since led a fight against antipersonnel lasers. In the fall of
1995, the United States signed a treaty that prohibits the development of
lasers designed "to cause permanent blindness." Still, laser weapons are
known to have been developed by the Russians, and proliferation is a big
concern. Also, the treaty does not forbid dazzling or "glare" lasers,
whose effects are temporary. U.S. military labs are continuing work in
this area, and commercial contractors are marketing such lasers to police.
Acoustic pain
The next debate may well focus on acoustic or sonic weapons. Benign
sonic effects are certainly familiar, ranging from the sonic boom from an
airplane to the ultrasound instrument that "sees" a baby in the uterus.
The military is looking for something less benign--an acoustic weapon with
frequencies tunable all the way up to lethal. Indeed, Huntington
Beach-based Scientific Applications & Research Associates Inc. (SARA)
has built a device that will make internal organs resonate: The effects
can run from discomfort to damage or death. If used to protect an area,
its beams would make intruders increasingly uncomfortable the closer they
get. "We have built several prototypes," says Parviz Parhami, SARA's CEO.
Such acoustic fences, he says, could be deployed today. He estimates that
five to 10 years will be needed to develop acoustic rifles and other more
exotic weapons, but adds, "I have heard people as optimistic as one to two
years." The military also envisions acoustic fields being used to control
riots or to clear paths for convoys.
SARA's acoustic devices have already been tested at the Camp Pendleton
Marine Corps Base, near the company's Huntington Beach office. And they
were considered for Somalia. "We asked for acoustics," says one nonlethal
weapons expert who was there. But the Department of Defense said, "No,"
since they were still untested. The Pentagon feared they could have caused
permanent injury to pregnant women, the old, or the sick. Parhami sees
acoustics "as just one more tool" for the military and law enforcement.
"Like any tool, I suppose this can be abused," he says. "But like any
tool, it can be used in a humane and ethical way."
Toward the end of World War II, the Germans were reported to have made
a different type of acoustic device. It looked like a large cannon and
sent out a sonic boomlike shock wave that in theory could have felled a
B-17 bomber. In the mid-1940s, the U.S. Navy created a program called
Project Squid to study the German vortex technology. The results are
unknown. But Guy Obolensky, an American inventor, says he replicated the
Nazi device in his laboratory in 1949. Against hard objects the effect was
astounding, he says: It could snap a board like a twig. Against soft
targets like people, it had a different effect. "I felt like I had been
hit by a thick rubber blanket," says Obolensky, who once stood in its
path. The idea seemed to founder for years until recently, when the
military was intrigued by its nonlethal possibilities. The Army and Navy
now have vortex projects underway. The SARA lab has tested its prototype
device at Camp Pendleton, one source says.
Electromagnetic heat
The Soviets were known to have potent blinding lasers. They were
also feared to have developed acoustic and radio-wave weapons. The 1987
issue of Soviet Military Power, a cold war Pentagon publication,
warned that the Soviets might be close to "a prototype short-range
tactical RF [radio frequency] weapon." The Washington Post reported
that year that the Soviets had used such weapons to kill goats at 1
kilometer's range. The Pentagon, it turns out, has been pursuing similar
devices since the 1960s.
Typical of some of the more exotic proposals are those from Clay
Easterly. Last December, Easterly--who works at the Health Sciences
Research Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory--briefed the Marine
Corps on work he had conducted for the National Institute of Justice,
which does research on crime control. One of the projects he suggested was
an electromagnetic gun that would "induce epilepticlike seizures." Another
was a "thermal gun [that] would have the operational effect of heating the
body to 105 to 107" degrees Fahrenheit. Such effects would bring on
discomfort, fevers, or even death.
But, unlike the work on blinding lasers and acoustic weapons, progress
here has been slow. The biggest problem is power. High-powered microwaves
intended to heat someone standing 200 yards away to 105 degrees Fahrenheit
may kill someone standing 10 yards away. On the other hand,
electromagnetic fields weaken quickly with distance from the source. And
beams of such energy are difficult to direct to their target. Mission
Research Corp. of Albuquerque, N.M., has used a computer model to study
the ability of microwaves to stimulate the body's peripheral nervous
system. "If sufficient peripheral nerves fire, then the body shuts down to
further stimulus, producing the so-called stun effect," an abstract
states. But, it concludes, "the ranges at which this can be done are only
a few meters."
Nonetheless, government laboratories and private contractors are
pursuing numerous similar programs. A 1996 Air Force Scientific Advisory
Board report on future weapons, for instance, includes a classified
section on a radio frequency or "RF Gunship." Other military documents
confirm that radio-frequency antipersonnel weapons programs are underway.
And the Air Force's Armstrong Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas
is heavily engaged in such research. According to budget documents, the
lab intends to spend more than $110 million over the next six years "to
exploit less-than-lethal biological effects of electromagnetic radiation
for Air Force security, peacekeeping, and war-fighting operations."
Low-frequency sleep
From 1980 to 1983, a man named Eldon Byrd ran the Marine Corps
Nonlethal Electromagnetic Weapons project. He conducted most of his
research at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda,
Md. "We were looking at electrical activity in the brain and how to
influence it," he says. Byrd, a specialist in medical engineering and
bioeffects, funded small research projects, including a paper on vortex
weapons by Obolensky. He conducted experiments on animals--and even on
himself--to see if brain waves would move into sync with waves impinging
on them from the outside. (He found that they would, but the effect was
short lived.)
By using very low frequency electromagnetic radiation--the waves way
below radio frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum--he found he could
induce the brain to release behavior-regulating chemicals. "We could put
animals into a stupor," he says, by hitting them with these frequencies.
"We got chick brains--in vitro--to dump 80 percent of the natural opioids
in their brains," Byrd says. He even ran a small project that used
magnetic fields to cause certain brain cells in rats to release histamine.
In humans, this would cause instant flulike symptoms and produce nausea.
"These fields were extremely weak. They were undetectable," says Byrd.
"The effects were nonlethal and reversible. You could disable a person
temporarily," Byrd hypothesizes. "It [would have been] like a stun gun."
Byrd never tested any of his hardware in the field, and his program,
scheduled for four years, apparently was closed down after two, he says.
"The work was really outstanding," he grumbles. "We would have had a
weapon in one year." Byrd says he was told his work would be unclassified,
"unless it works." Because it worked, he suspects that the program "went
black." Other scientists tell similar tales of research on electromagnetic
radiation turning top secret once successful results were achieved. There
are clues that such work is continuing. In 1995, the annual meeting of
four-star U.S. Air Force generals--called CORONA--reviewed more than 1,000
potential projects. One was called "Put the Enemy to Sleep/Keep the Enemy
From Sleeping." It called for exploring "acoustics," "microwaves," and
"brain-wave manipulation" to alter sleep patterns. It was one of only
three projects approved for initial investigation.
Direct contact
As the military continues its search for nonlethal weapons, one
device that works on contact has already hit the streets. It is called the
"Pulse Wave Myotron." A sales video shows it in action. A big,
thuggish-looking "criminal" approaches a well-dressed woman. As he tries
to choke her, she touches him with a white device about the size of a pack
of cigarettes. He falls to the floor in a fetal position, seemingly
paralyzed but with eyes open, and he does not recover for minutes.
"Contact with the Myotron," says the narrator, "feels like millions of
tiny needles are sent racing through the body. This is a result of
scrambling the signals from the motor cortex region of the brain," he
says. "It is horrible," says William Gunby, CEO of the company that
developed the Myotron. "It is no toy." The Myotron overrides
voluntary--but not involuntary--muscle movements, so the victim's vital
functions are maintained. Sales are targeted at women, but law enforcement
officers and agencies--including the Arizona state police and bailiffs
with the New York Supreme Court--have purchased the device, Gunby says. A
special model built for law enforcement, called the Black Widow, is being
tested by the FBI, he says. "I hope they don't order a lot soon," he adds.
"The Russian government just ordered 100,000 of them, and I need to
replenish my stock."
The U.S. military also has shown interest in the Myotron. "About the
time of the gulf war, I got calls from people in the military," recalls
Gunby. "They asked me about bonding the Myotron's pulse wave to a laser
beam so that everyone in the path of the laser would collapse." While it
could not be done, Gunby says, he nonetheless was warned to keep quiet. "I
was told that these calls were totally confidential," he says, "and that
they would completely deny it if I ever mentioned it."
Some say such secrecy is necessary in new-weapons development. But
others think it is a mistake. "Because the programs are secret, the
sponsorship is low level, and the technology is unconventional," says
William Arkin of Human Rights Watch Arms Project, "the military has not
done any of the things to determine if the money is being well spent or
the programs are a good idea." It should not be long before the evidence
is in.
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