Quantico US Marine Corps Base, Virginia—A sensation of unbearable, sudden heat seems to come out of nowhere—this wave, a strong electromagnetic beam, is the latest nonlethal weapon unveiled by the US military this week.
“You’re not gonna see it, you’re not gonna hear it, you’re not gonna smell it: you’re gonna feel it,” US Marine Col. Tracy Taffola, director the Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate, Marine Corps Base Quantico, explained at a demonstration for members of the media.
The effect is so repellant, the immediate instinct is to flee—and quickly, as experienced by Agence France-Presse at the presentation.
Taffola is quick also to point out the Active Denial System (ADS) beam, while powerful and effective at the 1,000-meter range, is the military’s “safest nonlethal capability” that has been developed over 15 years but never used in the field.
The beam was deployed briefly in Afghanistan in 2010, but it was never employed in an operation.
The technology has attracted safety concerns possibly because the beam is often confused with the microwaves commonly used by consumers to rapidly heat food.
“There are a lot of misperceptions out there,” Taffola said, adding the Pentagon was keen to make clear what the weapon is and what it is not.
The frequency of the blast makes all the difference for actual injury as opposed to extreme discomfort, stressed Stephanie Miller, who measured the system’s radio frequency bioeffects at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
The system ray is 95 gigahertz, a frequency “absorbed very superficially,” Miller said.
The beam only goes 1/64th of an inch (0.4 millimeter), which “gives a lot more safety,” she explained.
“We have done over 11,000 exposures on people. In that time we’ve only had two injuries that required medical attention and in both cases, injuries were fully recovered without complications.”
In contrast, microwave frequency is around 1 GHz, which moves faster and penetrates deeper—which is how it can cook meat in an oven, said Diana Loree, a top researcher.
With the transmitter, a wave 100 times the power of a regular microwave oven cannot pop a bag of popcorn “because the radio frequency is not penetrating enough to internally heat the material,” Loree stressed.
The US military envisions a wide array of uses for the ray beam—mob dispersal, checkpoint security, perimeter security, area denial, and infrastructure protection.
To avert accidents, the operator’s trigger in a truck far from the action has an automatic shutoff after three seconds for safety, Taffola said.
“This provides the safest means and also provides the greatest range,” he said.
The Pentagon has not yet decided to order any of the ADS system, but Taffola said his team would be ready if asked.