Will energy ray see action in Iraq?

waltky · 08-29-2007, 09:28 PM

Granny says, "Dat's right, dere ya go, zap `em inna butt with a raygun...

Energy beam weapon could be used in Iraq; But officials refuse, concerned non-lethal effects could be seen as torture
Aug 29, 2007

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Saddam Hussein had been gone just a few weeks, and U.S. forces in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, were already being called unwelcome invaders. One of the first big anti-American protests of the war escalated into shootouts that left 18 Iraqis dead and 78 wounded. It would be a familiar scene in Iraq's next few years: Crowds gather, insurgents mingle with civilians. Troops open fire, and innocents die.

All the while, according to internal military correspondence obtained by The Associated Press, U.S. commanders were telling Washington that many civilian casualties could be avoided by using a new non-lethal weapon developed over the past decade. Military leaders repeatedly and urgently requested — and were denied — the device, which uses energy beams instead of bullets and lets soldiers break up unruly crowds without firing a shot.

It's a ray gun that neither kills nor maims, but the Pentagon has refused to deploy it out of concern that the weapon itself might be seen as a torture device. Perched on a Humvee or a flatbed truck, the Active Denial System gives people hit by the invisible beam the sense that their skin is on fire. They move out of the way quickly and without injury.

More Energy beam weapon could be used in Iraq - Innovation - MSNBC.com

waltky · 10-16-2007, 12:42 AM

Invisibility Cloak Coming Soon?...

Invisibility Made Easier
Oct. 15, 2007 - A new way to create metamaterials that bend light in unusual ways may have brought practical applications closer.

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In the past year, the media have been abuzz with talk of an exotic class of materials, called metamaterials, that could be used to make flat and distortion-free lenses, powerful microscopes, and even cloaking devices that make objects invisible. But versions of the materials suitable for practical applications have been difficult to make. Now researchers at Princeton University have demonstrated metamaterials that are both higher performing and much easier to manufacture, perhaps bringing these applications closer to reality.

"It's quite an important step," says Igor Smolyaninov, a research scientist at the University of Maryland who works with metamaterials. "It's much less expensive than anything else that people are doing."

Light passing from one ordinary material into another bends slightly--think of how a straight stick in water looks bent--but light passing into a metamaterial bends in the opposite direction. Metamaterials thus have what's called a negative index of refraction. A lens made from such a material wouldn't have to be curved. (It's the curvature of an ordinary lens that enables it to focus incoming light.) Metamaterials could also be used to route electromagnetic waves around an object, rendering it invisible. Already, researchers have demonstrated a cloaking device that makes objects invisible to microwaves, and others have created materials that negatively refract electromagnetic waves in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. But until now, metamaterials have had to be patterned with intricate shapes smaller than the wavelength of light they're meant to manipulate. Consequently, materials that work with light of microscopic wavelengths, such as infrared and visible light, have been difficult to make. Because of the way they produce negative refraction, existing metamaterials have also had a strong tendency to absorb light, making them impractical for use in optics.

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bizwiz · 10-16-2007, 10:03 AM

The advances in warfare technology is awesome! I think teleportation devices are actually not far off from reality.

waltky · 11-01-2007, 02:32 AM

Granny says they could use the invisible tank to sneak up on `em from behind an' zap `em inna butt!

British Defense Researchers Create Invisible Tank
Wednesday, October 31, 2007 : British defense researchers have invented an invisible tank — or at least a way to make a tank invisible.

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London's Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Sun all report on tests conducted by the Ministry of Defence last week in which a tank rolled across a field, completely invisible to observers standing at a certain point. "This technology is incredible," an unnamed soldier was quoted by the Daily Mail and Sun. "If I hadn't been present I wouldn't have believed it. I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees — but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun."

Before bloggers start making comparisons to Harry Potter and Romulan spacecraft, it must be noted that the "technology" relies on heavy use of camera and projectors. Basically, a camera films the background, which is then projected upon a special surface applied to something in the foreground — in this case, a tank.

One person was willing to go on the record in all three British newspaper stories — theoretical physicist Sir John Pendry of Imperial College London, one of the world's leading experts on surface reflectivity and lead author of a widely reported paper last year that said a "cloak of invisibility" would theoretically be possible.

"The drawback at the moment is the dependence upon cameras and projectors," the Sun quoted Pendry, who did not confirm an implied connection with the defense project. "The next stage is to make the tank invisible without them — which is intricate and complicated, but possible."

FOXNews.com - British Defense Researchers Create Invisible Tank - Science News | Current Articles

waltky · 03-04-2008, 12:27 AM

Terrorist zappin' ray gun...

The Pentagon's Ray Gun
March 2, 2008 - A Non-Lethal Weapon Straight Out Of Buck Rogers

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What if we told you the Pentagon has a ray gun? And what if we told you it can stop a person in his tracks without killing or even injuring him? Well, it’s true. You can’t see it, you can't hear it, but as CBS News correspondent David Martin experienced first hand, you can feel it. Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq. But it's still not there. That because in the middle of a war, the military just can't bring itself to trust a weapon that doesn't kill.

It's a gun that doesn't look anything like a gun: it's that flat dish antenna which shoots out a 100,000-watt beam at the speed of light, hitting any thing in its path with an intense blast of heat. An operator uses a joystick to zero in on a target. Visible only with an infrared camera, the gun, when fired emits a flash of white hot energy -- an electromagnetic beam made up of very high frequency radio waves.

Col. Kirk Hymes, head of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, is in charge of the ray gun which is being tested at Moody Air Force Base in southern Georgia. The targets at the base are people, military volunteers creating a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq, like angry protestors advancing on American troops, who have to choose between backing down or opening fire. Off in the distance, half a mile away, the operator of the ray gun has the crowd in his sights. Unlike the soldiers on the ground, he has no qualms about firing away because his weapon won't injure anyone.

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sunken · 03-05-2008, 03:22 PM

It does sound like an interesting item for crowd control, although the not injure anyone remains to be seen. That is what was said about tasers too, yet they are killing people. However, that is better than having to shoot bullets into the crowd which are guaranteed to hurt people.

Cookies · 03-07-2008, 03:19 PM

I watched the news when it showed a demo. I think this will be an effective way to control large crowds. Like sunken said, this will not do too much damage.

What happens if it is misled to the face? x_X

waltky · 08-22-2008, 09:47 PM

Granny says, Dat's right - get `em in yer sights an' zap dem terrorists inna butt with a ray-gun...

Will the US Develop a Death Ray?
Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008 : A band of pre-eminent scientists and war-fighters has concluded that the nation's military might isn't powerful enough for the 21st Century; and so the National Research Council (NRC), an independent, congressionally-chartered body charged with assessing scientific issues, is urging the Pentagon and Congress to get cracking on developing a weapon capable of hitting any target in the world within an hour of being launched.

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The NRC's Committee on Conventional Prompt Global Strike Capability believes that there are threats (like nuclear terrorism) that the Pentagon's fleets of attack planes and missiles cannot handle and which have to be stopped with the immediacy of the push of a button by a future U.S. President. It's not quite a "death ray" but it's the closest existing technology can get to that fantasy weapon. Still, skeptics roll their eyes and say that the report's authors are like a bunch of junior high school boys who have seen all the James Bond movies and believe that if a weapon can be built, it must be built.

To be sure, there are serious arguments both for and against developing such a system. Part of the justification is that the U.S. military already has such a capability. Unfortunately, it's nuclear, which renders it worthless for anything but Armageddon. But for about $1 billion, over the next three years, the nation could convert some Trident missiles — now limited to carrying nuclear warheads in their submarine launchers — to non-nuclear weapons. The plan favored by the NRC panel would replace two of the 24 nuclear missiles on each of the Navy's 12 Trident subs with conventional-armed missiles.

For the past two years, Congress has blocked Bush Administration plans to develop such a weapon. Lawmakers are concerned that Russia, and soon China, might mistake the launch of a conventionally-armed Trident with the start of a nuclear war against them — and respond in kind before realizing they were mistaken. The NRC panel dismissed this concern, saying various steps — including informing Moscow and Beijing of conventional launches — could be taken to minimize such an error.

The plan backed by the panel calls for putting up to four non-explosive "dispersible kinetic energy projectiles" atop each missile. Each GPS-guided projectile would contain about 1,000 tungsten rods that would strike the target at a mile a second (a fuse could spew them more widely across the ground, with less impact, or let all 250 pounds hit the same point for maximum destruction). The force of a single rod, the report says, would be similar to that of a hefty 50-caliber bullet. The lack of any explosive would generate precise mayhem, "comparable to the type of limited damage caused by meteor strikes," it adds.

More Will the US Develop a Death Ray? - TIME