I
recently was invited to
the Pentagon to watch a
film depicting field
tests of a new weapons
program called the
Active Denial System,
which, it occurred to
me, could have been
named by an unhinged
cognitive therapist. The
live-action video opened
on a vista reminiscent
of Iraq or Afghanistan.
Scattered amid the scrub
of a desert plain, angry
demonstrators howl
unintelligible slogans
and advance menacingly
on a handful of soldiers
who nervously pivot
their rifles back and
forth trying to deter
the mob. For safety's
sake during this test
run, the ''crowd'' --
played for the most part
by off-duty soldiers --
flings bright green
tennis balls at the
uniformed servicemen
instead of rocks. As one
member of the crowd
hurls a ball, a soldier
operating the Active
Denial System (it looks
like a squat satellite
dish) targets an unruly
protester in the
weapon's viewfinder,
squeezes a trigger that
releases a beam of
energy and, in a split
second, one ''civilian''
howls and scampers away,
fanning his rear end.
Other demonstrators
suffer similar fates,
yelping and fleeing in
panic, as if they have
encountered a wall of
invisible fire. After
tumbling backward, the
horde spins around,
pointing and hollering
like a Stone Age tribe
encountering modern
weaponry for the first
time.
What
they were feeling was a
blast of electromagnetic
energy that causes a
great deal of pain but
does no lasting harm.
That, in essence, is the
point of a new
generation of nonlethal
weapons being developed
by the military: to
enforce and do battle
without killing, or in
the words of the Defense
Department, ''to
incapacitate personnel
or materiel, while
minimizing fatalities,
permanent injury to
personnel and undesired
damage to property and
the environment.'' Along
with the Active Denial
System, the military is
testing bullets that
disintegrate in mid-air,
propelling their
nonlethal payload to
their targets, slimy goo
that stops people in
their tracks and,
eventually, guns that
shoot pulses of plasma
energy that stun and
disorient.
In an
era when the American
military increasingly
finds itself in
situations where
civilians and combatants
can be difficult to
distinguish between, and
when the line between
soldiering and policy
has blurred, nonlethal
weapons could prove
useful. At the same
time, such nonlethals
might be abused, like
any other weapon. Still,
in a world where the
tolerance for
''collateral''
casualties is fast
diminishing and where
soldiers return home
haunted by their
''kills,'' such novel
weapons, if made to
work, could well make
war less hellish. Sue
Payton, a deputy
undersecretary of
defense who screened the
film for me, put it this
way: ''The less killing
we do, the better.''
Imagine the plight of a
soldier guarding a
crucial road or a
checkpoint in a war zone
who sees a truck
barreling toward him.
The driver fails to heed
his calls to stop. Does
the soldier let the
truck keep coming and
risk a possible suicide
bombing? Or does he
shoot and, as more than
one American soldier in
Iraq has belatedly
realized, kill an
innocent driver or even
an entire family who
bore no ill will but
simply didn't understand
his warnings?
It's a
predicament that could
one day be solved by a
nonlethal weapon, I
learned recently from
David Karcher, who runs
the Joint Non-Lethal
Weapons Directorate in
Quantico, Va., the
military's central
research facility for
this new generation of
armaments. To illustrate
his point, Karcher first
showed me a film clip of
an enormous truck
driving over a
blanket-size swatch of
spiked netting, only to
screech to a halt as the
wheels and axle get
caught in the net.
Marines used it
successfully in Haiti
this spring, Karcher
said, and a related
technology -- webs of
fabric shot out of a
cannon into the path of
oncoming motorboats --
can entangle propellers
and keep suspicious
small craft from coming
too close to warships.
Next, Karcher showed me
a video of a liquid
weapon so farfetched it
could have come from
James Bond's arsenal:
the Mobility Denial
System is a fluid that
can be dispensed from a
backpack or a tank.
''It's like a thick goo,''
Karcher explained. ''It
has the friction
coefficient of wet
ice.'' Any area sprayed
with it instantly
becomes impassable.
''You can't walk on it,
drive on it; you can't
land or take off an
airplane.'' Karcher said
he had tried it out
himself: ''I resembled
the scarecrow in 'The
Wizard of Oz.' You
really can't stand on
it.''
Any of
these so-called
countermateriel weapons
might be used to secure
a perimeter, deny access
to a building or simply
make an airfield or
another strategic site
unusable. But the bulk
of the directorate's
efforts are focused on
what happens when the
enemy -- or someone
whose intent you can't
discern -- manages to
get within firing range.
''What we really want to
do,'' Karcher explained,
''is give people more
choices between shouting
and shooting, more tools
between the bullhorn and
the bullet.''
The
Modular Crowd Control
Munition -- a device
that hurls hundreds of
tiny rubber ''sting
balls'' -- slows or
stops a mob with no
casualties. Other
weapons currently being
employed rely on blunt
trauma to deter: the
M1006 Sponge Round, a
projectile with a
foam-rubber nose, can
deliver a serious body
blow. It originated in
the arsenals of law
enforcement and was
subjected to a battery
of safety tests by the
military before being
used overseas.
Such
weapons have their
drawbacks, of course.
Sting balls, sponge
rounds and other
projectiles in the
nonlethal arsenal have a
limited range and
accuracy. If a shot is
off -- if the victim is
hit in the eye, for
instance -- he or she
may well suffer
permanent damage.
Moreover, a healthy
20-year-old will
withstand a nonlethal
assault far better than
an 80-year-old who may
accidentally find
himself caught in the
crossfire. But both will
end up with nasty
bruises.
As the
Pentagon works to make
these nonlethal systems
safer, it also confronts
the challenge of how to
keep them effective.
Susan LeVine, a civilian
scientist at the
directorate, says that
she faces this conundrum
daily: ''How can you
have a weapon with a
nonlethal effect that's
good enough to be
effective but won't
cause serious injury or
death?''
The
newest generation of
nonlethals, now in the
initial stages of
development, may provide
an answer, LeVine said.
''We're about to turn
the corner from the
blunt-impact munitions
to more high-tech,
advanced directed-energy
capabilities,'' she told
me. Asked what
''directed energy''
means, she explained,
''speed-of-light
delivery, unlimited
magazine, precision
effects. You've got
beams of energy and
minimal collateral
damage.'' These proposed
new weapons range from
programs that use
electromagnetic waves or
lasers to fry a
vehicle's wiring to the
Pulsed Energy
Projectile, or P.E.P.,
an embryonic design that
one day may fire packets
of plasma energy that
pummel and disorient
people with explosive
bursts of light.
The
Active Denial System
belongs to this class of
directed-energy weapons,
but it works in a more
subtle fashion than the
P.E.P., relying instead
on millimeter wave
energy to heat the top
layer of the skin. ''It
causes palpable pain,''
LeVine said, ''and the
effect is very
universal, all ages and
genders.'' And unlike
many nonlethal weapons,
the A.D.S. can operate
beyond small-arms range,
enabling an operator to
deter a foe long before
a potentially fatal
clash occurs.
Raytheon,
which developed the
Active Denial System for
the Pentagon, says it is
testing it in the field
and fixing technical
glitches before
delivering a working
system mounted on a
Humvee. After a
demonstration for the
news media scheduled for
later this year, the
military will decide if
it wants to invest
additional financing for
its development.
LeVine
asked if I would like to
try it out. She took me
over to a small metal
box that looked like an
air purifier, explaining
that it fires a beam of
energy like the one used
in the A.D.S. I would be
on the target end of
things. I put my index
finger near an aperture
on the side of the box.
I took a deep breath and
moved my finger in front
of the hole. ''Nyaaah!''
I cried out. A burning
sensation similar to
what you would feel
touching a hot stove
made me immediately
withdraw my hand. Almost
instantly, the pain
faded. LeVine smiled to
reassure me and said,
''We've all touched it,
and our fingers are
still here.''
Nonlethal weapons first
gained attention in the
90's, thanks to the
efforts of Gen. Anthony
Zinni, who was director
of operations for
American troops in
Somalia in 1992. ''When
we arrived,'' Zinni told
me, ''we were confronted
with demonstrations,
looting and crowd
situations that didn't
require the use of
lethal force. The troops
felt frustrated because
they didn't have
anything but their
rifles and bayonets to
deal with the situation.
One day I came across
some of our troops
trying to hook up wires
to their car batteries
so that they could keep
people at bay using
electric shocks.'' Zinni
quickly banned these
makeshift gadgets, but
he asked Central Command
for nonlethal weapons.
All he received were
cases of pepper spray.
A year
after the United States
turned Somalia over to
the United Nations,
Zinni returned to escort
the blue-helmeted
peacekeepers as they
left the country. This
time, he assembled an
array of nonlethals that
already had proved
effective in law
enforcement, including
''sticky foam,'' a
sprayable substance that
can glue a suspect to
the ground; stinger
grenades that explode
into rubber shrapnel
that deters; spikes
called caltrops capable
of puncturing tires; and
many others.
Word
spread quickly of
Zinni's experiments with
sticky foam. ''I became
the poster boy for this
in the beginning, and
some senators and
congressmen became
interested,'' he said.
In 1996, Congress
created the Joint
Non-Lethal Weapons
Program, later endowing
it with an annual budget
of approximately $25
million. The Marines
were granted executive
responsibility for the
program, but each of the
services plays a role in
development.
The
Joint Non-Lethal Weapons
Directorate brings its
most promising
technologies to the
attention of the various
armed services. In the
event a prototype
developed by the
directorate catches the
eye of the Navy, say,
that branch assumes
responsibility for
procuring the system.
Law-enforcement
officials also monitor
prototypes in the hope
of finding weapons that
can be used in policing.
After
a relatively modest
beginning, the
directorate has won
advocates in high
places, among them Adm.
Arthur Cebrowski, who
runs the Defense
Department's Office of
Force Transformation,
established by Donald
Rumsfeld to help
re-engineer the armed
forces into what he
envisions as a nimble,
mobile, high-tech
fighting machine. When I
visited Cebrowski
recently, he outlined
what he calls ''issues
of regret'' -- things
the military should
embrace now or forever
rue the consequences.
Nonlethals topped the
list.
''The
way we currently outfit
or train our people,
they are confronted with
these binary choices,''
he said, the most
consequential choice
being shoot or don't
shoot. ''Yet we know
that combat doesn't
necessarily resolve to
binary choices. It's an
enormously complex and
dangerous undertaking.
Shouldn't we have a more
nuanced weapons
capability to go with
this?'' Introducing
nonlethals into combat,
he contended, ''will
change the character of
war.'' When I asked him
about the bottom-line
benefits of this change,
his response was blunt:
''The general rule is
fewer dead people is
better than more dead
people.'' He added that
he believes there is a
''moral imperative to
suppress the violence of
statecraft.''
That
may seem like an obvious
point, but it's a
relatively new one for
the military to embrace.
Mike McBride, a
specialist in nonlethal
weaponry at Jane's
Information Group, an
internationally
respected firm that
gathers and provides
military analysis, told
me, ''the idea that you
can neutralize the enemy
without killing them is
an increasingly
attractive
proposition.'' He said
that ''we're heading
toward the day when,
like 'Star Trek,' you
can set the phaser on
stun. That's the holy
grail of
less-than-lethal
weapons.'' But, he
cautioned, ''Whether
we'll ever get there, I
don't know.''
War is
not likely to get any
less bloody or deadly
anytime soon, supporters
of nonlethal weaponry
say, unless more money
starts flowing through
the pipeline. After an
initial increase in
financing from $9.3
million in 1997 to $43.4
million in 2004, the
directorate's budget is
slated to increase
moderately to $61.3
million by 2009. The
Council on Foreign
Relations, which has
issued three reports on
nonlethal weapons over
the past decade,
recently criticized the
current rate of
financing and
recommended the
directorate get between
$200 million and $400
million a year.
''The
budget of the parking
lots at the Pentagon is
bigger than the
nonlethal weapons
program,'' said Janet
Morris, president and
C.E.O. of M2
Technologies. She and
her husband, Christopher
Morris, founded M2, a
defense contracting and
consulting company, to
bring promising
technologies to the
attention of the
government. Both have
worked as members of the
Council on Foreign
Relations' task force.
Not surprisingly, they
are supporters of
nonlethal weapons and
outspoken critics of the
military establishment,
which they feel is the
principal obstacle to
their widespread use.
''The resistance comes
from the mind-set of the
20th-century military,
which holds that you
bring lethal force to
bear in an overwhelming
way,'' Christopher
Morris said.
His
comment points to what
may be at the crux of
the debate over
nonlethal weapons:
should this country be
sending its armed forces
into ambiguous
situations like
Afghanistan, Iraq and
Kosovo, where soldiers
are expected to perform
humanitarian duties in
tandem with their
traditional roles? Those
in the military who see
their exclusive role as
defending the nation
with deadly force say no
-- not only to this kind
of peacekeeping mission
but also to the
nonlethal weaponry that
could make it more
effective.
Indeed,
if Zinni's support of
nonlethals grew out of
the peacekeeping mission
in Somalia, so did
resistance to them. At
the time, an Army
officer wrote an article
for the Navy publication
Proceedings titled
''What Price Sticky
Foam?'' claiming that
the introduction of
nonlethal weaponry would
confuse soldiers and
erode their fighting
edge. Conservative
commentators like Jeanne
Kirkpatrick, the former
United Nations
ambassador, weighed in
on the subject, claiming
that President Clinton
had foisted the weapons
on Zinni, a claim Zinni
dismisses.
Soldiers
themselves seem to think
nonlethals have their
place. Those I spoke to
who have used them in
combat situations became
avid proponents. Lt.
Sandy Bucher, a platoon
leader stationed in Al
Kut, Iraq, served in the
first military police
battalion in that
country to receive
nonlethal weapons and
ordered the use of
sting-ball rounds to
confront hostile crowds.
Nonlethals, she told me,
offer a way out of
delicate situations that
leaves few, if any,
casualties.
It's a
refrain I heard
repeatedly from soldiers
who have used nonlethals.
Maj. Steve Simpson, who
served in Afghanistan,
recently used
blunt-impact munitions
to protect the perimeter
of a compound housing
some senior military
leaders. The problem of
the military, he said,
is that ordinarily a
soldier has few options
between doing nothing
and doing everything. ''Nonlethals
bridge that gap,'' he
said. Simpson, who wrote
the first instruction
manual on the use of
nonlethals in 1996, said
that the senior
leadership of an Army
unit arriving in
Afghanistan approached
him recently, wanting to
know more about
nonlethals. ''I was
pleasantly surprised,''
he said. ''I see
nonlethals as an
integral part of all
future operations.''
Mindful
of the potential of
nonlethals to limit
casualties and head off
public-relations
disasters, the military
has equipped a growing
number of units overseas
with Non-Lethal Weapons
Capability Sets, a
collection of
countermateriel and
counterpersonnel
devices. It's a step
toward a more systemic
embrace of nonlethals,
but a preliminary one at
best. Indeed, the tools
available in these kits
are no more advanced or
effective than the ones
that accompanied the
military in Somalia
nearly a decade ago.
A futuristic rifle
called the XM29 may one
day make it possible for
soldiers to toggle back
and forth between lethal
and nonlethal
capabilities in an
instant. The gun has two
magazines: one in the
front containing regular
rounds and one in the
rear holding a smaller
number of very large
bullets carrying
nonlethal payloads. (A
soldier chooses which to
use, depending on the
situation.) A laser
range finder sits atop
the whole contraption.
''The same lethal weapon
has the ability to use a
nonlethal device without
changing any of the
operating procedures or
mechanisms on the
weapon,'' explained Col.
Peter Janker, who runs
the Armaments
Engineering and
Technology Center at
Picatinny Arsenal in New
Jersey.
At
first glance, the XM29
looked pretty lethal to
me, particularly the
sizable bullets in back.
But the girth of those
bullets allow them to
carry rubber balls,
pepper spray or anything
that can be crammed into
the projectile. ''The
carrier system -- the
bullet -- is lethal, no
matter what the
filling,'' Steve Toth, a
civilian contractor who
works closely with
Janker, conceded. The
solution is a curious
mix of high-tech and
low-tech. When a soldier
aims the XM29 and
presses the button, a
laser range finder
measures the distance to
the target, and a
microprocessor sets a
carefully calibrated
fuse in the bullet
proportionate to the
distance between the gun
and the target. When the
soldier pulls the XM29's
trigger, the bullet
fires conventionally and
then explodes a few feet
short of the target. The
charge hurls the
nonlethal payload
forward at a relatively
slow speed while
simultaneously
counteracting the
velocity of the bullet.
Of
course, there's always
the danger not only that
the mechanism could
misfire but also that
someone could step into
the flight path after
the gunner fires. So
scientists are now
trying to develop a
prototype that will use
a ''proximity fuse,''
meaning the bullet will
self-destruct as soon as
it senses something --
or someone -- in its
way.
The
directorate is also
developing an artillery
shell that could turn a
conventional mortar into
a nonlethal weapon. Like
a bullet fired by the
XM29, this armament had
a similar problem when
first conceived. ''You
can pack rose petals in
a conventional mortar,
but the mortar cartridge
itself is a brick
falling out of the
sky,'' Toth said. ''So
the trick here is how we
slow down the carrier
vehicle to a safe
speed.'' To show the way
it works, Toth picked up
a shell casing with what
looked like helicopter
blades sticking out of
it. Using the same
aerodynamic principles
that enable a maple seed
to waft to the ground,
the shell can be fired
by a conventional mortar
and float harmlessly to
the earth as it
dispenses a nonlethal
payload.
But
these devices have yet
to reach the
battlefield, and won't
in the near future. For
the time being, the only
weapon in the field that
possesses both a lethal
and a nonlethal
capability is a
standard-issue M4 rifle:
one variation includes
an M203 grenade launcher
with a payload of rubber
shrapnel, the other an
X26E Taser stun gun
attached to the front
end, which zaps its
victims with an electric
current, paralyzing
them. ''Now when a
person goes into a room,
instead of going in with
the Taser and having to
drop it and transition
to the rifle, he can go
in with lethal'' (Janker
gestured with his
trigger finger on the
M4) ''or nonlethal'' (he
waggled his finger on
the Taser). He went back
and forth several more
times: lethal, nonlethal,
lethal.
Janker
took the gun with him on
a recent trip to Iraq,
where it found admirers
among the troops. Thanks
to Janker, M4-Taser
combinations found their
way into the hands of
soldiers in Iraq. ''Now
we'll get some
feedback,'' he said.
There's something
oxymoronic about ''nonlethal
weapons.'' The term
invites unrealistic
expectations about their
safety and application.
Indeed, many early
proponents of nonlethals
wanted to call them
''less-than-lethal
weapons,'' in the
recognition that
mistakes do happen. But
the unease nonlethals
arouse goes beyond
semantics. Stephen
Goose, director of the
arms division of Human
Rights Watch, is
critical of what he
terms the ''excessive
secrecy'' surrounding
many nonlethals,
particularly exotic
technologies like the
Active Denial System.
''There hasn't been any
policy discussion in
public, or legal
discussion in public, as
to whether this is
consistent with
international law,'' he
said.
Nonlethal
armaments do undergo a
legal review within the
military to ensure
compliance with
international laws and
treaties. Joseph
Rutigliano, an attorney
with the Marine Corps
who is responsible for
evaluating the different
nonlethal armaments,
said that most ''raise
very few issues.'' The
chief exceptions are
those that fall under
the scope of the
Chemical Weapons
Convention, which,
Rutigliano noted,
''prohibits the use of
riot-control agents such
as tear gas in offensive
military operations.''
A
category of nonlethal
armament that might come
under scrutiny in this
regard is the one known
as ''malodorants'' --
weapons that emit highly
nauseating smells that
can incapacitate. One
such agent synthesized
under the guidance of
the directorate combines
the odors of human
excrement and rotting
flesh. Kansas State
University was
conducting environmental
tests of malodorants as
late as last month, but
the military claims
that, at present, it is
not moving forward with
plans to ''weaponize''
the odors, partly for
fear of violating the
Chemical Weapons
Convention.
Only a
handful of advocates of
nonlethals believe the
convention should be
rewritten to make room
for these agents. Janet
Morris of M2
Technologies would like
to see ''calmative
agents'' -- weaponized
versions of Valium and
other drugs -- deployed
in battle. ''The current
convention forbids us
from using chemical
agents to chase people
off the battlefield,''
she noted dryly. ''We
can't tranquilize them.
No, we have to shoot
them.''
Some
critics of nonlethals
argue that even with
strict adherence to
international treaties,
they are still cause for
concern. Stephen Goose
worries that they will
erode the so-called
force threshold. While a
soldier in Iraq might
refrain from using
lethal force in certain
situations, Goose
pointed out, he or she
might be tempted to
apply nonlethal methods
in situations that don't
merit it.
Claudio
Cordone, the legal
director for Amnesty
International, is more
optimistic. He agrees
with Goose up to a
point, but he encourages
''anything that provides
for a use of force that
isn't lethal.'' More
broadly, he argues that
nonlethals could
''encourage an approach
to fighting that
minimizes the harm to
people and things, even
if that harm is lawful
under the laws of war.
If nonlethals allow for
the containment of the
savagery of war, it's a
good thing.''
Still,
if weapons like the
Active Denial System
leave no mark on a
victim's body, couldn't
they be used for
torture? ''There's
always that potential,''
Cordone concedes. And
Goose adds, ''What
happens when some of
these weapons get into
the hands of militaries
with poor human rights
records?'' He paints an
Orwellian picture in
which repressive regimes
obtain nonlethal weapons
to keep restive
populations in check
without resorting to the
sort of bloodshed that
can earn a country
unwanted attention.
It's
too early to tell
whether directed-energy
nonlethals like the
A.D.S. might one day be
misused or how the next
generation of armaments
in development will
change soldiering. Sue
Payton, who showed me
the A.D.S. video at the
Pentagon, compared the
A.D.S. to Wilbur and
Orville Wright's first
plane. Back then, Payton
mused, ''You would have
said: 'What can this
thing really do? It can
only fly 120 feet and
can hardly carry a
person.''' She paused.
''We're at that stage
with directed-energy
nonlethals. It's the
first baby step.''
Stephen
Mihm, who teaches
history at the
University of Georgia,
last wrote for the
magazine about identity
theft.