Over the last decade, the US military’s pain ray — a clumsy weapon that uses millimeter waves to burn the outer skin layer of targets by making the water molecules twitch — has been a public relations disaster.
No one wants to see their career go down in flames over it, accused of torturing civilians. Sent to Afghanistan, it was withdrawn without being used. One can only imagine how popular it would be there now, with what looks like the entire country, except for the paid toadies, up in arms over the American presence.
A sensation of unbearable, sudden heat seems to come out of nowhere — this wave, a strong electromagnetic beam, is the latest non-lethal 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,” explained US Marine Colonel Tracy Taffola, director the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, Marine Corps Base Quantico, at a demonstration for members of the media.
Taffola is quick also to point out the “Active Denial System” beam, while powerful and long-range, some 1000 meters (0.6 miles), is the military’s “safest non-lethal capability” that has been developed over 15 years but never used in the field.
It was deployed briefly in Afghanistan in 2010, but 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,” lamented Taffola, saying the Pentagon was keen to make clear what the weapon is, and what it is not.
The Pentagon has not yet decided to order any of the ADS system, but Taffola said they would be ready if asked.
From where I stand there’s little misperception. It’s viewed as a weapon for use in torturing unarmed civilians. And it has no application against an armed angry crowd, as opposed to journalists who, over the years by virtually hundreds, have gamely consented to be shot by it in return for a story.
More recently, it’s maker — Raytheon — has tried to peddle a smaller version into California prisons, where it could be used to shoot prisoners rioting in an enclosed room.
And it would seem fairly obvious its makers saw an opening for revival when the OWS crowds hit streets nationwide late last year. (DD blog wrote on the non-lethal arms peddlers being ready for this, here.)
It would also appear obvious the same people would be advocates for its use against Afghans rioting over the burning of Qurans.
The pain ray’s most remarkable property has been the doggedness of its salesmen. For over a decade they, along with a considerable number of journalists, have tried to sell this odious thing onto Americans streets and the desperate places of the world. And they have, somewhat surprisingly, failed again and again at it.
The pain ray has been in newspapers, magazines, on the Internet and on television, from 60 Minutes to Futureweapons on cable, all to no avail.
Yet.
So my question, perhaps rhetorical, is when will the people pushing it be, justifiably. reassigned or fired?
Look guys, you’ve had long enough. Can’t you just go back to burning ants with a magnifying glass or something?
Looking ahead 20 years was the subject of my last question posed to readers. The responses varied in tone …
A comprehensive perspective was contributed by L.R.K., from South Euclid, whose full comments appear online.
He has a cautionary view of the future …
“What will the world look like in twenty years? That is a very interesting question. I wrestle with it because my grandchildren will be in their mid-20s then. In the next 20 years we, the United States, will be or have been engaged in at least two regional wars. I don’t like the idea; but our enemies tend to choose us (as with Afghanistan) rather then we them (as with Iraq). My nightmare is not a nuclear war, which although possible is not likely, but an EMP attack which would put American society back to the 1820s. It would be totally devastating, and also relatively inexpensive, and therefore is more likely.”
The Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy is everywhere, indelibly written into a unique mythology alleged modern Americans hold dear.
At the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, androids and jargon reign.
How do we know?
From the agency’s solicitations for design proposals, compelling evidence showing no trace of human thought or need for skills in use of the English language.
DARPA’s Adaptive Vehicle Make portfolio programs is aimed at compressing at least five-fold the development timelines for new complex cyber-electro-mechanical systems such as military vehicles. Under AVM, DARPA is pursuing the development of several elements of enabling infrastructure aimed at radically transforming the systems engineering/design/verification (META2/META-II), manufacturing (IFAB)
and innovation (vehicleforge.mil) elements of the overall make process for delivering new defense systems or variants. Each of these capabilities is largely generic, i.e, applicable to any cyber-electro-mechanical system.
In order to excercise these capabilities in the context of a relevant military system, DARPA intends to build FANG — the Fast, Adaptable
Next Generation Ground Vehicle — a new heavy infantry fighting vehicle …
The on-going META program is on track to deliver an integrated capability for: [rest of astonishing run-on sentence deleted] …
DARPA recognizes that the metalanguage specification developed and being refined under the META program and associated follow on efforts is key to the representation of component and context models to be developed under TA1 and TA2. Similarly, the manufacturing model specification being developed under the IFAB program is essential to the representation data assembled under TA3. While these efforts are incomplete , they are mature enough to form the basis of this effort under this BAA …
And, yes, that was as excruciating to transcribe as it was to read.
It cannot have been produced by warm-blooded humans.
Where the whatevers that composed it made on our planet? If not, when did they arrive here?
And what is it like to be in a lunch room with them?
Questions which, obviously, have no answers. The META, perhaps not developed under the TA1 and TA2, does not fit the BAA.
A no byline story on the website of the South Korean newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, discusses the always said to be coming but never quite arriving electromagnetic pulse bomb.
A military officer who asked to remain anonymous on Sunday claimed South Korea has developed basic technology that will one day allow it to produce a so-called electromagnetic pulse bomb capable of paralyzing all electronic equipment. The bomb is a kind of Bigfoot of warfare.
“But another military source said the technology is a long way from being usable as a weapon,” concludes the paper.
File under: Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy, SK office.
This week James Arbuthnot, a Tory member of Parliament brought the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy to the UK, resulting in a burst of stories on how England could be thrown back to the time of the movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, or whatever passes for it in merry Old England.
The Defence Select Committee said the resulting radiation pulse could disrupt power and water supplies, UK defence and satellite navigation systems.
Its chairman, Tory MP James Arbuthnot, said an attack was “quite likely”.
Mr Arbuthnot added: “it would actually have a far more devastating effect to use a nuclear weapon in this way than to explode a bomb in or on a city. The reason for that is it would, over a much wider area, take out things like the National Grid, on which we all rely for almost everything, take out the water system, the sewage system.
“And rapidly it would become very difficult to live in cities. I mean within a matter of a couple of days.
“I wish the government would address this with rather more energy and cohesion and focus. I think sooner rather than later.”
A quick look at it shows part of the Conservative Party mesmerized by the US Cult of EMP Crazy lobby, specifically EMPAct America, and one of its old members, Avi Schnurr. Schnurr is also part of the Bomb Iran/Israeli missile defense lobby and here he is in an old YouTube video for EMPAct America.
“Airplanes could fall from the sky,” he says. It would be back to the days of horse and buggy, no ice cubes in the ice tray, and so on. Readers know the script.
See the witnesses list here and the list of presented “evidence,” here.
And reliance on EMPAct America’s old study, referred to as the EMP Commission Report is shown here.
Schnurr testified on non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons also, a favorite topic of EMPAct America, for at least a decade.
Non-nuclear EMP weapons, like radiofrequency weapons, can damage and destroy electronics locally. Such weapons have short ranges, kilometers for some military systems to meters for devices improvised by terrorists or criminals. Industrial EMP simulators, intended to test commercial systems for hardness against interference from stray electronic and radio emissions, are on the open market and can be purchased by anyone. At least one such EMP simulator is designed to look like a suitcase, can be operated by an individual, and is powerful enough to damage or destroy the electronic controls that regulate the operation of transformers and other components of the power grid. Armed with such a device, and with some knowledge about the electric grid, a terrorist or lunatic could blackout a city.[36]
44. Avi Schnurr said:
The biggest issue with non-nuclear EMP weapons is that the complexity and threshold required to produce them is minimal, to say the most. At the summit meeting in Washington DC, for example, there were two Assistant Secretaries of Defence, a Deputy Under-Secretary and the Pentagon’s chief lawyer, all of whom expressed grave concerns over this risk—the non-nuclear EMP risk in particular, but the risk of EMP in general. The non-nuclear EMP risk is much shorter-range. However, that range, which could be 100 metres, a fraction of a kilometre or a kilometre—under certain circumstances, which I could discuss separately, it could be multiple kilometres—includes the risk of having a field strength that would be even greater, although limited in extent, than a nuclear EMP […]. We had a speaker at that summit who described, to the extent he was allowed to describe it, a device that he built from hardware he acquired from retail stores in the United States, which he had built into a van.[37]
45. A number of nations are thought to be undertaking research into the development of non-nuclear EMP attack weapons, but the Government does not currently regard them as a serious risk …
In the main, Arbuthnot’s report for Parliament relies entirely on material now five to ten years old, and entirely the product of the US electromagnetic pulse defense lobby.
From the Arizona wire, Tim Ralston, the man who blew off his thumb with an errant gun blast on National Geographic‘s Doomsday Preppers:
He’s not worried about Mayan prophecies or weird predictions about the end of days, the worst case scenario for Tim Ralston is an electromagnetic pulse attack by a rogue country.
“If they dropped one bomb in our atmosphere — about 300 miles — say, above Kansas City, it will set off a chain reaction that in a millisecond our power grid as we know it would be shut down for well over two years,” Ralston said.
Ralston, married father of two from Scottsdale, is getting national media attention for the doomsday precautions …
“No, shooting your thumb off isn’t some ‘Prepper’ rite of passage,” reads the caption on a video chronicling the matter.
The collateral damage of the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy, in action.
[Early] last year, [Rick Santorum] warned that the United States itself could be vulnerable to an Iranian electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack — a scenario in which a nuclear weapon is detonated above the United States, knocking out electricity and communication technologies across the country,” writes some unremarkable person at Foreign Policy.
While I’m not watching any more episodes of National Geographic’s pitiful series, Doomsday Preppers, that doesn’t mean press releases for it go unseen. Published to to maximize the appearance of one of the show’s profiled preppers, it advertises a a fellow who has unsurprisingly built a business on survivalism.
Much of Doomsday Preppers is obviously devoted to the acquisition of survival gear and militaria.
For example, the appeal of the doomsday shovel must be its adaptability born in the tradition of the battlefield entrenching tool. It is not only for digging a hole but also for bashing those who would steal your dried corn, pemmican and preserves in the head.
Witnesses say a surveillance drone has crashed into a refugee camp in the Somali capital.
Drones have been used by the U.S. to attack or observe al-Qaida-linked militants in the Horn of Africa nation.
Refugees and soldiers in Mogadishu’s Badbado camp say they watched the drone crash Friday into a hut made of sticks, corrugated cans and plastic bags.
Sacdiyo Sheikh Madar, a refugee at the camp, says African Union peacekeepers came to remove it.
Police officer Ali Hussein says the drone was shaped like a small plane. A similar drone crashed into a house in Mogadishu last year.
Are we threatened by those who live in huts of sticks, corrugated cans and trash bags?
Our national security leadership apparently thinks an awful lot of stupid or just-don’t-care people do.
There’s a deep immorality here. If you don’t see it why are you reading this blog?
Formal addition of a new category: Bombing Paupers.
Best song, ever. Share and post it to places where it will be sure to infuriate. Some people need to be kicked and informed there are many who don’t share their views on US military and technological supremacy.
Working hard at it, another bog standard journalist churns out his bog standard feature on electrical doomsday, at the Boston Globe.
Contained therein, all the assertions and scenarios delivered by authority, again demonstrating what I’ve come to believe is a profound defect in the American national security mind brought on by US paranoia and the growth of the fear-based economy.
A few months back, I made the mistake of falling asleep with the television on, tuned to C-Span. While a torpid House hearing on finance lulled me to sleep, sometime during my REM rebound I found myself in the middle of a Day After-style nightmare. Turns out, I was emerging from my slumber during a forum dominated by EMPact America, a well-funded advocacy group spreading the word about the looming threats of an EMP attack.
These guys know how to scare the daylights out of you. The most prominent EMP hawk is Newt Gingrich, who peppered some of last year’s presidential debates with mini-lectures about the threat. “Without adequate preparation,??? Gingrich said at one EMP conference, “we would basically lose our civilization in a matter of seconds.??? There is real science behind the EMP fears, though some energy and national security analysts contend the EMP lobby greatly exaggerates the threat. (Boldface mine. It took years to force this unattributed concession.)
Analyst Sue Tierney is far more concerned about cyber threats. No bomb needed – just serious hacking qualifications, and these days it seems everybody knows a gloomy 17-year-old who’s got those. In what is widely believed to have been an Israeli-American covert effort, the Stuxnet computer worm was unleashed on the Iranian nuclear program in 2010, ruining about a fifth of the centrifuges the country uses to enrich uranium. It would be naive to think our country won’t eventually find itself on the other side of a similar attack.
Several years ago, Tierney was part of a National Academies task force charged with identifying the grid’s vulnerability to terrorists. With the World Trade Center in mind, the task force largely concentrated on trying to anticipate another Al Qaeda-style conventional attack. If Tierney were serving on the task force right now, she says, she would push for even more focus on guarding against cyber threats.
But the chairman of the task force, Granger Morgan, says that what continues to worry him the most is the havoc that bad guys could cause with relatively little technological savvy. “If I’m a terrorist, I can shut down the power system in a lot simpler ways than using a valuable nuclear device,??? says Morgan, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a noted authority on the grid. “All I need to do is destroy a bunch of major substations.??? Despite all the talk about strengthening security after 9/11, he says, “big transformers continue to sit there on pads out in the open, with only chain-link fences around them.???
Any way you look at it, these are real threats that need to be treated seriously. Don’t take my word for it. After Morgan’s task force finalized its report, the US Department of Homeland Security swooped in and classified the document. Federal officials didn’t want to give the terrorists any ideas. Not that they need any.
“Don’t take my word for it.” Good advice many sensible people will probably heed.
One would assume the Department of Homeland Security has classified many things. This being the case classification is not necessarily any imprimatur of a dangerous reality waiting to unfold.
Anyway, here again: National security experts like grains of sand on the beach, each with their version of doomsday. Always reliant on argument from authority in a country where the government and business interests aligned with security spending have spent the past decade destroying the legitimacy of such argument.
In a side note it’s worth mentioning the national publicity accruing to Newt Gingrich has actually hurt the relatively insignificant Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy lobby. It’s easy to see he’s utterly despised by a majority in Washington. So are his ideas.
Even though they may appear on C-SPAN, anyone can really if they throw a luncheon/talk in DC, EMPAct America is so out of power in recent months they resorted to employing a spammer to post backlinks to themselves in the comments sections. My spam filter kept catching them. Eventually they gave up on it. (Oops, spoke to soon. Just spied another in the spam filter for the old blog which stopped updating over a year ago.)
Found in my my inbox yesterday: “It is not difficult, nor does it take a nation-state, to compromise the North American electric grid.”
Those now dispensing judgment from on high are not gods, though they must feel like it. The people striking mortals down with drones are doubtless as capable as anyone else of self-deception, denial and cognitive illusions. More so, perhaps, as the eminent fictions of the Bush years and the growing delusions of the current president suggest …
These power-damaged people have been granted the chance to fulfill one of humankind’s abiding fantasies: to vaporise their enemies, as if with a curse or a prayer, effortlessly and from a safe distance …
[One] danger is acknowledged in a remarkably candid assessment published by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which also deploys drones, and has also used them to kill civilians. It maintains that the undeclared air war in Pakistan and Yemen “is totally a function of the existence of an unmanned capability – it is unlikely a similar scale of force would be used if this capability were not available”.
The author also seems to argue that by not being put at risk, as Americans were when they had to dispense with the Japanese and the Germans in WWII, there is no deterrent to use.
However, deterrence can be thought of as deferred, put off to some future date as vengeance since the only way those attacked can retaliate is through terrorism, should the created enmities last long enough.
However, the use of terrorism on the US, or on clients, is always seen in this nation as a reason to turn loose more drones.
And I’m still waiting for someone, other than here, to dig into the issue of the haves bombing the have-nots. Strictly speaking, it’s a war of impunity against paupers. Drones will never be turned loose on those who have the money to immediately take action.
In this, Iran has a deterrent should they get the bomb. And Pakistan has the ability to make a similar threatening noise.
Through diplomatic channels it becomes plausible to suggest to American leadership that unless the war of impunity ceases, there are other far less pleasant methods of escalation than standard state-sponsored terrorism they’re prepared to let us come to grips with. Maybe such a thing would be a bluff. And maybe not.
In the old Star Trek episode — Mirror, Mirror — the evil Kirk had something called the Tantalus Field, a weapon to disappear enemies with impunity. The good Kirk chose not to use it to get himself out of a jam although in the hands of his alternative evil Federation girlfriend, it was.
