Shooting Pain The Future of Heat-Beaming Weapons.*

If you're worried about terrorism, upset about the war in Iraq, and
depressed by global chaos, violence, and death, cheer up. We've just
invented a weapon that fires a beam of searing pain.

Three weeks ago, the U.S. armed forces tested it on volunteers at an Air
Force base in Georgia. You can watch the video on a military Web site. Three
colonels get zapped, along with an Associated Press reporter. The beam is
invisible, but its effects are vivid. Two dozen airmen scatter. The AP guy
shrieks and bolts out of the target zone. He says it felt like heat all over
his body, as though his jacket were on fire.

The feeling is an illusion. No one is harmed. The beam's energy waves
penetrate just one-sixty-fourth of an inch into your body, heating your skin
like microwaves. They inflame your nerve endings without actually burning
you. This could be the future of warfare: less bloodshed, more pain.

Military technology has always sought greater precision from longer range.
In the Gulf War, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, we exploited the increasing
accuracy of laser-guided bombs. In the post-9/11 terrorist hunt and the
occupation of Iraq, we've sent hundreds of remotely piloted aerial drones to
spy and kill. But the lives protected by drones are ours. The pain beam is
more ambitious: It can spare civilians and even the enemy. Precision isn't
just the ability to kill. Sometimes, it's ability to disperse and deter
without killing.

That kind of precision is becoming more important. Twelve years ago, the
Department of Defense observed that our armed forces were increasingly being
used for peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, and protection of civil society.
More of our enemies were blending in with, or disguising themselves as,
civilians. Through the media, more eyeballs, hearts, and minds could see the
infrastructure we destroyed. The DOD proposed the development of weapons "to
incapacitate personnel or materiel, while minimizing fatalities, permanent
injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property and the environment."
Like lethal weapons, nonlethal weapons have evolved from short- to
long-range. Batons and pepper spray required hand-to-hand combat. Water
cannons, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, and sting ball grenades have
extended our reach, but not far enough to keep soldiers clear of rocks or
small-arms fire. Some of our weapons are insufficiently discriminate. Tear
gas torments a whole crowd, not just the miscreants using it for cover.

Projectiles are also unpredictable. At long range, particularly in
crosswinds, rubber bullets can hit the wrong people, or the right people in
the wrong places. At close range, they can kill. Look at the absurdly named
"FN303 less lethal launcher." It's supposed to fire "non-lethal projectiles
at established non-lethal ranges." But when you're launching things, less
lethal is the best you can do.

That's where the pain beam comes in. Unlike projectiles, beams are "directed
energy." They travel in a straight line over long distances, ignoring
gravity and wind. They cause no more damage at 10 feet than at 1,000. Unlike
gas, they're discriminate. Raytheon, the pain beam's manufacturer, points
out that the weapon "allows precise targeting of specific individuals" and
that the pain "ceases immediately" when the beam is diverted or the target
flees.

The shift from hardware to software, from matter to energy, can do more than
control the unpredictability of weapons. It can control the unpredictability
of the people who fire them. Early nonlethal devices, such as rubber bullets
and Mace, often caused injuries due to abuse by hotheads. When the pain beam
was initially being developed, somebody accidentally fired it on a high
setting, inflicting a second-degree burn. The designers responded by
programming limits on the beam's power and duration.

Years of work have gone into making the beam safe. It's been tested
thousands of times on 600 volunteers. It's been reviewed and revised by a
human-effects review board, a human-effects advisory panel, and military
surgeons general. It's been tested for effects on skin cancer, fertility,
jewelry, and drunks. The results have been published in peer-reviewed
journals. Never has an organization licensed to kill jumped through so many
hoops to make sure nobody gets injured.
The nonlethal weapons program is a pacifist's dream. Its "vehicle
lightweight arresting devices" are built to stop cars with minimal damage,
allowing minor injuries only if you're "not wearing a seatbelt." Its
"acoustic hailing devices" are engineered to deliver sound waves "below
Occupational Safety and Health Administration hearing limits for prolonged
exposure." Its founding directive pledges to avoid environmental damage.
Even the less lethal launcher projectiles are "non-toxic."

But the ability to inflict pain without injury doesn't just make injury less
necessary. It makes pain more essential to military operations‹and easier to
inflict. To achieve the desired "repel effect," I have to make you suffer.
Knowing that your agony will be brief and leave no physical damage makes the
weapon easier to fire. It's almost as though, like the imagined flames on
the AP reporter's jacket, your pain isn't real.

That's the metaphysical gap nonlethal energy weapons exploit. The rain of
pain falls mainly in the brain. The long-range acoustic device, for
instance, "can target narrow sound beams at excruciating decibel levels, but
below the threshold of hearing damage," according to a military account of a
presentation by its project manager. Four months ago, Congress passed and
President Bush signed legislation to prosecute torture, defined as
intentional infliction of "serious physical or mental pain or suffering."
But that rule applies only in captivity. On the street, pain administration
won't be a crime. It'll be a policy.

Two weeks from now, military leaders will convene in London to discuss the
pain beam and the next generation of directed-energy weapons, including
microwaves and lasers. Law enforcement agencies are interested. Raytheon is
already advertising the technology for commercial applications. We're even
developing a "personnel halting and stimulation response" system‹yes, a
PHaSR‹to stun targets instead of killing them. But don't worry, nobody will
get hurt. Sort of.
A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday
Washington Post.