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__The head of the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate continues to insist that his pain ray is going to be shipped out to Iraq, soon. But he still hasn't been able to clear the biggest hurdles to sending the "Active Denial System" to war: the Defense Department bureaucracy, and a squeamish public.
At a conference the other day, Inside Defense notes, Col. Kirk Hymes said that he
"would anticipate within the first half of 2008, we may see this [Active Denial] system deployed to Iraq.”
But, he added, that the skin-heating weapon “still hasn’t been accepted by the government yet. Raytheon [the manufacturer] is still finishing up the final tweaking, if you will, to get it to where the government will accept it.”
Once that has been done, the government will conduct a capabilities and limitations assessment and then make a decision “once we verify that the environment is still such that it’s needed in Iraq,” Hymes said.
In other words, don't hold your breath.
Troops in Iraq have asked for the pain ray, over and over again. It's still stateside -- in large part, because of a (completely understandable) fear that Active Denial would be seen as a tool for torture. As the AP noted in August, "The main reason the tool has been missing in action is public perception. With memories of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal still fresh, the Pentagon is reluctant to give troops a space-age device that could be misconstrued as a torture machine."
And what's true for soldiers goes double for cops. Which is why the idea that the Pima
County or the L.A. Sheriff's Department is about to start using the pain ray -- as this article suggests -- just doesn't fly. Sure, the system has a high-profile advocate in L.A.'s Commander Sid Heal, who has called the weapon the "Holy Grail of crowd control."
UPDATE: David Hambling says, "As it happens, US cops can use it, and very probably will. An article coming up in Wired News soon will explain why... Also, I have a piece on why it's not as safe as they say, coming up in the Guardian newspaper this Thursday."
ALSO:
* Military Zips Lip on Pain Ray Accident
* Heat Beam Targets "Angry Mob"
* 2008: Year of the Pain Ray?
* I Was a Pain Ray Guinea Pig
* Pain Ray Zaps Through Windows, Fries Sailors
* Pain Ray 2.0: People-Zapper on the Move
* Pain Ray 2.0: Heat vs. Heat Gun
* Pain Ray Heading for L.A. Streets?
* New Active Denial System = Next iPod?
* No Pain Ray for Iraq
* Pain Ray Injures Airman
* Video: Pain Ray Fries Reporter
* New Robo-Weapon: Paralyzing Floodlight
* Marines Wants Pain Ray, ASAP
