US testing nonlethal weapons arsenal for use in Iraq Program fuses high technology with psychologyBy Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | August 5, 2005DAHLGREN, Va. -- If flashing lasers and blinding strobes don't disperse Iraqi protesters, perhaps a piercing whine will. If that doesn't work, a short but intense burning sensation on the skin should do the trick. If some bystanders are still lurking after all that, they may be suicide bombers, snipers, or other attackers. And US soldiers can isolate and try to stop them.Military futurists and engineers working on a crash program at the Naval Surface Warfare Center here last week demonstrated these new ideas for coping with the special challenges in Iraq: separating guerrillas from civilians, weeding out suicide bombers, and quelling mass disturbances without bloodshed.The technicians have devised a new arsenal of weapons intended to expose crowds to jarring -- and in some cases painful -- sensations in order to separate bystanders from those seeking to cause harm. The new weapons are scheduled to be shipped to Iraq as early as next summer. They fuse cutting-edge technologies with psychology that specialists say will cause a crowd to disperse, exposing suicide bombers and other attackers.''The future of our military commitments is going to emphasize stability and reconstruction," Lloyd Feldman, assistant director for the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation, said in an interview. ''This venue is not a free-fire zone and killing field. You need some way of differentiating the good, the bad, and the ugly."The year-old Project Sheriff is developing the first military vehicle to be equipped with traditional weapons as well as ''nonlethal" sensors to use against crowds of protesters or bystanders. It is the brainchild of a retired admiral, Art Cebrowski, handpicked by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to run the new Office of Force Transformation.But despite urgent requests from commanders in Iraq to get the tools to the front as quickly as possible, officials say they are still awaiting the funds to get the first three vehicles to Iraq by next year. Some of the estimated $20 million could come from existing Defense Department funds, the rest from Congress. The House proposed $10 million in May, but the Senate has not recommended any funds.Marine Colonel Wade Hall, a top project official, said he became angry after receiving a recent progress report. ''It works," he said. ''Why are we still here sitting around a table talking about it?"Still, engineers at this research facility in the Virginia countryside expect that the funding will come through and are moving quickly to complete and test the first of the vehicles, which will carry four different types of weapons to disperse crowds and identify potential bombersOne of the weapons that has been successfully tested is a heat beam developed by Waltham-based Raytheon Corp. that can ''bake" a person by heating the moisture in the first one-64th of an inch of the epidural layer of the skin. It was originally developed for the Department of Energy to keep trespassers away from nuclear facilities. The effects of the beam are likened to a severe sunburn. More than 400 military personnel who have been exposed to the ''millimeter waves" -- not the more commonly known and highly dangerous microwaves -- have exhibited no long-term effects, according to officials. Military lawyers have determined that the heat beam complies with the laws of war and does not cause unnecessary suffering.Raytheon last week received government permission to discuss the technology publicly for the first time.Another weapon, manufactured by American Technology Corp. in Topsham, Maine, is a large disk that blares instructions in several different languages and can broadcast deafening and highly irritating tones over great distances. The long-range device precisely emits a high-energy acoustic beam as far as five football fields away. To a reporter standing across the air strip from where it was set up in a hangar here, it sounded as if someone was shouting directly into his ear.The device ''has proven useful for clearing streets and rooftops during cordon and search, for disseminating command information, and for drawing out enemy snipers who are subsequently destroyed by our own snipers," the 361st Psychological Operations Company, which has tested the system in Iraq, told engineers in a report.Temporary exposure to the audio system, which is also under consideration by the Boston Police Department for crowd control, does not risk permanent hearing damage, company officials said.Another nonlethal technology set to go on the vehicle is a ''laser dazzler" that can dissuade potential snipers by temporarily but harmlessly blinding them and identifying the flicker from their scopes. There is also a high-powered white light so intense as to send any but the most determined attackers running in the opposite direction.If anyone appears willing to withstand the discomfort, ''I know your intent," Hall said. ''I will kill you."The vehicle will also offer troops added enhancements such as improved protection from roadside bombs, grenades, and an ability to automatically detect from what direction small-arms fire is coming from and return fire, as well as traditional weapons.But it is the less-than-deadly options that are most needed in the US arsenal, according to some military officials.The idea for such nonlethal weapons first grew out of the US military experience in Mogadishu, Somalia, more than a decade ago.US peacekeepers quickly found themselves surrounded by guerrilla fighters hiding among hundreds of unarmed women and children who were blocking intersections. In a desperate effort to disperse the people without running them down or killing them, US commanders ordered their armored vehicles to turn around and blow acrid exhaust into their faces.The need to separate combatants from innocents is even more pressing in Iraq, where rampant suicide bombings, ambushes, and terrorist attacks have killed nearly 2000 US soldiers and many more Iraqi civilians.''Those people need to see we are ethically and morally deserving of prevailing, and we are not so uncaring in the use of force that anyone who is Islamic and dresses a certain way is an enemy," said Feldman, the official in the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation. ''We don't have to rebelize an entire ZIP code simply due to the fact that there was a terrorist in the area. Our only recourse should not be to destroy an entire area."Feldman added that the new vehicle can ''put a message out that is undeniable and make sure people cannot plausibly say we didn't hear or understand, like the Italian journalists," who were shot, and one person killed, earlier this year while approaching an American military checkpoint in Baghdad.
I think something that's key in all this is that both Northern Alliance and enemy communications were, for the most part, CB radios. They would be arguing with each other in the heat of battle. The Taliban would be saying, "nanny, nanny, boo, boo" and the Northern Alliance would be saying, "hey, we're coming to get you." They would also tell the Taliban about this death ray. At Kunduz, we were negotiating back and forth to try to get these guys to surrender. They were saying, "We'll surrender, we'll march into your camp, but we want to keep our guns." Dostum finally said, "Put your guns down, take your jackets off, march in here or we're turning the Americans onto you with the death ray." Instantly you could see the guys bend over. They put their guns down, they took their cloaks off and they started marching in, in single file right up into the middle of our perimeter, because they knew that it was over if that death ray was coming out.
This was also perpetuated by the presence of the AC 130 Spectra gunship. They had a female fire support officer that was on the radio. Dostum heard her voice and he brought Mohammed Fazal, who's the former Taliban chief of staff. He's trying to delay this surrender in Kunduz while his forces are attempting to recapture Mazar-e-Sharif. Dostum brings Fazal near the radio so that he can hear this female voice. Fazal hears her voice as it's being explained to him, through the translators, that we have the angel of death overhead, from the AC 130 gunship. Dostum explains to him that we have the angel of death overhead and that we possess the death ray. If they don't surrender now all of their troops will burn in hell. Fazal jumped on the radio and his men were surrendering within minutes. ...
