If You Build It, They Will Kill: U.S. Military Weaponry of the Near Future

[norml]

Published on Saturday, April 2, 2005 by TomDispatch.com
If You Build It, They Will Kill
U.S. Military Weaponry of the Near Future

by Nick Turse

Lets face it, making war is fast superceding sports as the American national pastime. Since 1980, overtly or covertly, the United States has been involved in military actions in Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sudan, the Philippines, Colombia, Haiti (again), Afghanistan (again) and Iraq (again) and that's not even the full list. It stands to reason when the voracious appetites of the military-corporate complex are in constant need of feeding.
As representatives of a superpower devoted to (and enamored with) war, it's hardly surprising that the Pentagon and allied corporations are forever planning more effective ways to kill, maim, and inflict pain -- or that they plan to keep it that way. Whatever the wars of the present, elaborate weapons systems for future wars are already on the drawing boards. Planning for the projected fighter-bombers and laser weapons of the decades from 2030 to 2050 is underway. Meanwhile, at the Department of Defense's (DoD's) blue-skies research outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), even wilder projects -- from futuristic exoskeletons to Brain/Machine Interface initiatives -- are being explored.

Such projects, as flashy as they are frightening, are magnets for reporters (and writers like yours truly), but it's important not to lose sight of the many more mundane weapons currently being produced that will be pressed into service in the nearer term in Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other locale the U.S. decides to add to the list of nations where it will turn people into casualties or "collateral damage" in the next few years. These projects aren't as sexy as building future robotic warriors, but they're at least as dangerous and deadly, so lets take a quick look at a few of the weapons our tax dollars are supporting today, before they hurt, maim, and kill tomorrow.

Set Phasers on Extreme Pain

Recently, the Air Force Research Laboratory called for "research in support of the Directed Energy Bioeffects Division of the Human Effectiveness Directorate." The researchers were to "conduct innovative research on the effects of directed energy technologies" on people and animals. What types of innovative research? One area involved identifying "biological tissue thresholds (minimum visible lesion) and damage mechanisms from laser and non-laser sources." In other words, how excruciating can you make it without leaving telltale thermal burns? And a prime area of study? "Pain thresholds." Further, there was a call for work to: "Determine the effects of electromagnetic and biomechanical insults on the human-body." Sounds like something out of Star Trek, right? Weaponry of the distant future? Think again.

In a TomDispatch piece last spring, I mentioned a "painful energy beam" weapon, the Active Denial System, that was about to be field-tested by the military. Recent reports indicate that military Humvees will be outfitted with exactly this weapon by the end of the year.


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http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0402-20.htm

[leveymg]

1. Great. First we torture them, then we capture them. Then we torture them

Ad nauseum.

Who wants to say it out loud: Crimes Against Humanity.

[Meeker Morgan]

2. Wharever they are saying now ...

... these will used for "crowd control", not primarily by the military.

[Selatius]

3. A good number of these weapons are "less than lethal"

That means they're designed to be used on non-combatants. (i.e. you and me) Yes, let's target anti-war activists and Democrats and unionists and socialists and environmentalists and everyone else who asks too many questions. I guess we should be fucking grateful to our federal government that it isn't simply tossing folks in front of execution squads like the Soviets or ovens like the Nazis.