Non Lethality Headlines & Recommendations Copyright 2003 Chris Morris & Janet Morris
W. K. Mahler
© 2003 Chris Morris & Janet Morris
All War Is Now Local
? In the twenty-first century, as a consequence of the fall of the Soviet
Union and the rise of CNN, the internet and globalization, terrorists and
rogue entities, often pan-national, are waging symbolic warfare against
modernity. Structures emblematic of globalizing influence are the high
value targets of techno-powered barbarism. The plight of Western-modeled
Israel, locked in an asymmetric struggle with an enemy expert in symbolic
warfare, points to the fate awaiting pluralistic societies unable to address
or adapt to the symbolic warfare mindset, and the tactics and strategies of
those who have no centralized economic infrastructure, no geographic
holdings at risk. This war is here, now, and because of the reach of global
media, everywhere is a lot closer to home than it used to be.
We face groups loosely knit by ideological affinities, more discrete and
difficult to track than religious bias or political allegiance: the groups
can be anywhere; they recognize each other's goals of destruction of an
embryonic world economy in which they cannot compete and of a rule of law
that they do not wish to apply to them. They must be overcome by measures
capable of disarming, disheartening and demoralizing them, not solely by a
strategy of eradication. Mere death and destruction wreaked by the West
accrue to this enemy's benefit, proving their thesis that annihilation is
still King in all struggles for earthly power and that massive projections
of power are the hallmark of the great Satan.
All war is local now. And now we all must prepare to counter these
transient adversaries in all their shapes and guises where we live, and in
the process preserve what we value most: our families, our beliefs, our
freedoms, our institutions, and our future. To do so effectively we will
need to create and utilize technological means and measures suited for use
here, where we live ? means that are life and property conserving,
environmentally friendly, and fiscally responsible. Such promising means
are being researched and developed by the Department of Defense under the
rubric of nonlethal weapons, although to date only scant funding has been
applied. It is important that this fledgling effort reach its
congressionally directed goal of coordinating all efforts aimed at providing
additional rheostatic force projection capabilities to contain conflict and
destruction while conserving life.
Breaking the Cycle of Retributive Violence Nonlethally
? Whenever we strike lethally, we risk making those who resort to terror
stronger. Whenever we amputate a tentacle of terror, the forges of
fanaticism are fanned. We play into a strategy of our adversaries who wish
to portray us as no better than cornered beasts, lashing out with no regard
for whom or what we destroy ? just like them. They use this portrayal to
inflame their constituents, attract new support, and justify their calls for
more and more extreme acts of retaliation. To win in this conflict we must
break this cycle, change the rules, and set new criteria for ultimate
victory based on our strength ? on our regard for life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. As we move against terror we must begin to signal our
ultimate intent by the way we use force, lest we become terror's patsies ?
or worse, its mimics.
We possess undeniable, overwhelming lethal capability. And our adversary
this time out is counting on us to overdo it in our efforts to eradicate
him, to adopt overkill as our standard operating procedure and provide him
endless rolls of martyrs with which to brainwash his young and fill his
zombie ranks to overflowing. To deny him this advantage and undermine and
defeat his strategy, we must complete our warfighting capacity by filling an
historic deficiency in warfighting options.
To our overwhelming lethal capacity we must add a final tier of no less
overwhelming nonlethal capabilities to use when closing with an enemy amidst
innocents ? especially our own. We must set a goal of being decisively
nonlethal if need be, destroying an adversary's ability to harm us while
minimizing harm to those around him as we do so. By completing our panoply
of coercive responses we will increase the dimensions of victory and
ultimately break the senseless cycle of retributive violence.
Stop Killing the Customer:
Open Trade Networks vs. Closed Fanatical Networks
? The world's economies are globalizing, far flung economic interests
working cheek by jowl together around the planet via analog and virtual
networks. These fragile networks must be defended against those who find
capitalism and the challenges of competing in a world economy too terrifying
to contemplate, and whose economic consumption model is currently
conflict-based.
The civilizing world no longer gets to keep what it conquers; it pays
reconstruction costs to rebuild and restore to economic function those it
damages. To the globalizing financial networks there are no enemies, only
competitors rushing to market and customers climbing toward preferred
trading status. For the global trade model, wars of attrition are
economically digressive and disruptive.
Rogue military states or terror networks on the other hand want to keep
what they can take, and pay can no heed to rule of law. For their model,
the soft symbolic infrastructure targets of trade are too tempting to
resist.
Targets of opportunity for the rogue are myriad, as are business
opportunities for the emergent 24/7 virtual world trading establishment.
Let us use every means at our disposal, including nontraditional, nonlethal,
and Mass Protection technologies, capabilities and responses to safeguard
the planet's trade and production systems and avoid killing tomorrow's
customers.
How Will We Know When We're Winning?
? Nonlethal Responses for A World in Which Death Creates Martyrs and
Destruction Creates Heroes
? Can we destroy an enemy's war-making fervor by destroying his war-making
capability? Certainly. How? With weapons that sterilize and destroy his
chemical and biological capabilities? Of course. With microbes that eat his
microbes? Certainly. With energy weapons to drive his warfighters from
their posts? Positively. Can we build a set of responses that will prevent
him from launching explosives against us, or prevent the detonation of those
explosives? Yes, we can. Can we destroy and disarm the electronics of his
war making machinery? stop his engines? destroy the ability of his suicide
commandos to destroy us along with himself? Absolutely. If we apprehend
this enemy, if we deny him a 'glorious' death and immediate entry into a
celestial brothel, but instead send him ignominiously to prison or return
him to his country in disgrace, will we be winning? Yes.
We Must Be Nonlethal In Intent, Not In Every Case
Convention law governs our actions in war. If and when our intent is
nonlethal, we must accept accidental, incidental, and corollary casualties.
If lethal weapons, as is the case today, must only be 30% lethal to be
considered effective, then no different criteria need be applied to allow us
to field nonlethal weapons. We must not let the ravenous defense
development community study this issue to death and beyond.
If the President will direct the departments to develop and maintain a
nonlethal capability, coupled with Weapons of Mass Protection from
terrorists, agricultural marauders, chemical/biological rogues, plus a
Modular Force capable of being more expeditionary, more mobile, more self
sustaining, and equip our troops with techniques, tactics and procedures
that allow them to wage symbolic, not attrition warfare, then we can prevail
against this enemy.
Nonlethals and NORTHCOM: The Acid Test for the Age of Chaos
? Rather than risk deforming our Constitution, the U.S. has created
NORTHCOM, Northern Command, and charged it with defending our shores,
borders, and infrastructure against terrorist enemies equipped with weapons
of mass destruction. Yet NORTHCOM has no charter for the kind of
other-than-lethal measures necessary to succeed against a stateside enemy
attacking symbolic targets in public places. There has even been some
question as to whether nonlethal weapons already developed by DOD can be
provided to NORTHCOM.
We must provide nonlethality in toto ? the policy, strategy, and
implementation of containment of conflict and containment of barbarism ? to
NORTHCOM if we are going to be equipped to fight an enemy who targets the
jewels of globalized societies. We must give NORTHCOM, and all other combat
commands, an expanded toolkit for dealing OPERATIONALLY with rogue attacks,
whether by U.S. citizens or aliens, since terror is not defined by
citizenship or ethnicity, but by affinity. U.S. citizens cannot be exempt,
any more than can citizens of other countries, from preemption, counters, or
any other measures to be taken against terrorist enemies. NORTHCOM, because
of its sensitive area of responsibility ? the continental United States ?
must serve as the nation's focal point for learning to fight this new war.
Joint Nonlethal Response Capability
? We have a weak, under funded Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate. Might
we make of it a useful, necessary policy support, a strategy and planning
capability that could be a jewel in our long-awaited crown of acquisition
reform? When nonlethal kits of anti-personnel weapons were needed by the
Marine Corps, Marine Corps Systems Command, with pitifully little funding,
provided them. Since then, few operationally-focused programs have been
developed; nothing new has been fielded. The original direction of Congress
to "rapidly develop and field" nonlethals has been forgotten, and only a
meager effort remains to coordinate the COCOMS (Combatant Commands/
Commanders) in defining their future mission needs for nonlethal
capabilities and responses. Instead, JNLWD hawks its technologies to
potential users as do all the other Science and Technology fiefdoms.
What is needed is to develop a nonlethal strategy with which to win, not
merely to fend off failure. A well funded and robust Joint Non-Lethal
Weapons Program is an obvious winner for a Department adapting to the
exigencies of projecting and protecting forces involved in urban theaters
far from home and the requirement to stand up a domestic defense capability
within our borders. Never has the Non-Lethal Directorate's mission been
more relevant and needed.
High Technology Alone Can Not Save Us from a Low-Tech Enemy
? No nation in the position that the United States now occupies, that of
world leader, has ever prevailed against low-tech enemies ready to die for
their beliefs. Every empire since the beginning of recorded time has
collapsed before the onslaught of barbarians who did not want to live within
the rules of civilization.
With casualty-intolerance and globalization come vulnerabilities that a
low-tech suicidal enemy can easily exploit. We must convert those
weaknesses to strengths. We cannot let bureaucracy's resistance to change,
and its need to survive and conserve itself, ignore the blind spots that all
great powers before us have suffered. We must change and adapt to defeat
this enemy: we must show him, and his children, that we can overwhelm him
across the entire spectrum of force projection. Rapidly developing life
conserving, fiscally responsible, environmentally friendly force projection
measures, including nonlethal systems and weapons of mass protection, are
necessary additions to a seamless overall military capability if we are to
prevail against terror any time, anywhere.
To Stop Killing The Customers, Develop A Military/Security Capability That
Behaves As A Global Immune System.
? Globalization has created a situation in which the entire world is a
valuable marketplace. It has all connected us into a global organism. We
must develop and deploy a military/security capability that reacts to
threats the way the white cells in the body's immune system react to
threats: by destroying the infection without killing the host body.
Destroying customers and the ability of customers to transact, by destroying
their infrastructure and economies, hurts everyone very much as if a deadly
virus has infected a person. Nonlethal responses and capabilities, paired
with Weapons of Mass Protection, offer the promise of ensuring the survival
and economic viability of the vast global customer base, and our global
organism.
Nonlethality will provide capabilities and responses to limit casualties and
damage to infrastructure and the environment.
Some examples:
- In situations such as Afghanistan, where the enemy may hide in caves,
tunnels, underground, or buildings, acoustics can drive people from hiding;
millimeter wave can identify the numbers and location of people behind
walls.
- To stop the free movement of known terrorists, fractal imagery and
informative feature mapping can match the fractal characteristics of skulls
of known terrorists against data bases through surveillance equipment in
toll booths, at ATMs, in airports and other public places.
- In situations such as Somalia and Iraq, where innocent women and children
were used as human shields, kinetic nonlethal weapons can provide our
fighters the capability to attack and disable the enemy without risking
death to innocents.
- Where biological weapons are stored and explosives will merely spread
spores over thousands of kilometers, munition delivered nanoparticles can
destroy spores on contact.
- Where chemical weapons are produced and stored, directed energy weapons
that can heat without explosive force can destroy stores and damage
production capabilities.
- Where damage to ships in ports or at sea is an issue, nonlethal vessel
stoppers can immobilize approaching craft until search or identification is
possible.
- Where clearing facilities of civilians or enemy personnel is the desired
result, olfactory agents can drive people from enclosed spaces; reactive
nanoparticles can clear areas of chemical or biological threats; directed
energy weapons can clear streets or areas of crowds or combatants.
- Where crowd control and channelization are the goal, a range of kinetic
nonlethal weapons are available to move and disperse crowds.
- For hijacked vessels, airplanes, trucks, trains, tanks and situations
where vehicles themselves may be used as weapons, calmative agents,
electromagnetic engine stoppers, tire and track destroying devices, portable
arresting barriers, as well as capabilities that render roads, bridges, and
vehicle approaches inaccessible or unnegotiable, provide new options.
- For apprehension or immobilization of suicide bombers or other individual
combatants, dart tasers allow instant immobilization of individuals at up to
26 feet. Ranges may be expanded over time.
- Nonlethal carrier munitions that are not in and of themselves lethal can
be developed to deliver nonlethal payloads at longer ranges.
- Directed energy weapons to puncture tires, engine blocks, or ignite
explosive dumps and stores can be used against supply lines and depots,
individual vehicles, or to cripple selected infrastructure components with
pinpoint accuracy.
- Thermal targeting can provide coordinates of incoming fire sources within
milliseconds of the event, zeroing weapons fired from concealed positions,
providing a range of options for immediate pinpoint response.
- For counter-proliferation, directed energy weapons can be used to destroy
electronic fusing and detonation systems, necessary to the triggering of
functional nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
- Directed energy and radio frequency weapons can destroy enemy
communications as well as the triggering mechanisms and fusing on many kinds
of mortars, missiles, and sophisticated projectiles.
NONLETHALITY RECOMMENDATIONS:
Presidential Decision Directive or Executive Order: DOD AND OTHER
DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES involved with national
security/terrorism/counterproliferation/CBW/, including agri-terrorism and
port security and especially Homeland Security, should be directed to
develop and maintain a National Nonlethal Capability and to rapidly develop
Nonlethal Responses
JNLWD should change its name/modus operandi/focus from Joint Nonlethal
Weapons Directorate to Joint Nonlethal Responses Directorate. JNL should
cease competing with developers and resume its coordination and stimulation
role, focusing on planning, strategy, interaction with the Combatant
Commands (COCOMs), coordination with Homeland Security, coordination with
NORTHCOM. JNLWD should take the lead in the drafting and creation of the
planning, strategy, and implementation guidance for Weapons of Mass
Protection.
Congress/Administration should direct each service and department to develop
a list of nonlethal requirements and capabilities, both near and long term.
DoD should make Nonlethality a priority at the planning and strategy level,
and direct JNL to coordinate with and support Homeland Defense, NORTHCOM,
and Homeland Security, and direct JNL to get out of the technology
development business and support the development of service and department
PMs for NL
D0D should direct the services to comply with Congressional direction and
make JNL the coordination center and budgetary as well as program authority
for strategic, operational, and tactical NLs, to include Air Force
classified programs and black programs.
JNL should develop a third-party, clean hands test capability and be
restricted from allowing services to test and approve their own nonlethals.
This third-party, clean hands independent test capability Nonlethal
Operations Center, is already conceptually developed and requires only
funding. JNL should be directed to shut down test efforts performed by
services on nonlethal weapons, including those at Picatinny (Army), Dahlgren
(Navy), Brooks Lab (Air Force). Conflict of interest issues should not be
allowed to obtrude into the designation of systems and capabilities or
responses, as well as weapons, as 'Nonlethal.'
JNL should hand off current, expensive, long-term directed energy programs
that may not be nonlethal and may not be legal to services or other
appropriate parties, and DoD should direct JNL not to let itself be used as
a cover for potentially illegal weapons development.
JDoD should direct JNL to step up and expand its COCOM Interaction program.
JNL should focus on developing a strategy and implementation plan based on
mission needs, evolving requirements.
DoD should fund JNL at a higher level, approximately $100M per year, and
direct JNL to expand its nonlethal outreach with universities that focus
scientists and technologists on finding NL solutions.
_______________________________________________________________________
M2 Technologies Inc. Chris Morris & Janet Morris
http://www.m2tech.us
W. O. M. P.: Weapons Of Mass Protection - Non Lethality
W. K. Mahler
http://www.mahlers.com/womp.htm