> A futuristic new weapon in the U$ aresenal: the heat-ray gun…

The US military unveiled a diabolical new weapon recently.

According to the BBC,

The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds.

Called the Active Denial System, it projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling.

Active denial system? Gah. Sounds so stupid. Why not give it a more Star-Wars-esque name… something that sounds high-tech and dangerous?

Anyways, the BBC further says:

Military officials, who say the gun is harmless, believe it could be used as a non-lethal way of making enemies surrender their weapons.

Military officials say blah blah. After they invaded Iraq on trumped-up excuses, the only thing I’m prepared to believe from them is that Bush was conceived the night when… (oops, I was going to say something about psychos and pigs )

So this heat-ray gun is basically something like a taser. Okaaay…

And here’s what this weapon does, according to the BBC:

The prototype weapon – called Silent Guardian – was demonstrated at the Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.

A beam was fired from a large rectangular dish mounted on a Humvee vehicle.

The beam has a reach of up to 500 metres (550 yards), much further than existing non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets.

It can penetrate clothes, suddenly heating up the skin of anyone in its path to 50C.

But it penetrates the skin only to a tiny depth – enough to cause discomfort but no lasting harm, according to the military.

A Reuters journalist who volunteered to be shot with the beam described the sensation as similar to a blast from a very hot oven – too painful to bear without diving for cover.

Ouch. It hurts, to say the least. It works by focusing millimetre-waves at the target (i.e. a person).

They claim its “harmless”, but I have my doubts. It penetrates your skin, and heats it up to 50 degrees Celsius. If they point it at a person for more than a few seconds, I think there’s bound to be some sort of lasting “harm”.

But that’s not it. All weapons are meant to harm people, and the US military certainly has worse weapons, as in, stuff that can harm you a lot more than just heating you up a bit…

But the thing that really concerns me about this new weapon, and the reason I consider it a diabolical new weapon, is this:

Military officials said the weapon was one of the key technologies of the future.

“Non-lethal weapons are important for the escalation of force, especially in the environments our forces are operating in,” said Marine Col Kirk Hymes, director of the development programme.

The weapon could potentially be used for dispersing hostile crowds in conflict zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan.

It would mean that troops could take effective steps to move people along without resorting to measures such as rubber bullets – bridging the gap between “shouting and shooting”, Col Hymes said.

Yes, its a highly effective crowd control device. And as the reports say, its going to be used for dispersing hostile crowds in conflict zones. In other words, it is another weapon in the imperialist arsenal. The imperialist US military is going to find this handy when they go around romping through Third World nations in pursuit of economic and political hegemony.

But even more worrying is the fact that the US would probably supply this weapon to their allies in the War on “Terror”. In other words, regimes like Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh and other subservient Third World governments will doubtless receive this weapon from the US.

That means it will become harder to organize anti-government protests in cities where the government bans opposition. Imagine thousands of protestors marching in an anti-government protest in one of America’s client states. Imagine a line of riot police standing in their way. Violence begins but its all been done before: the police shoot rubber bullets, the crowd responds with stones and molotov cocktails. The riot police starts to fall back.

(Such scenes were common during the recent political crisis in Kathmandu, when Nepal’s reactionary monarch was forced to accede to popular demands by the working-class for their democratic rights)

And then, they bring in this monstrosity, this “Active Denial System” as they call it. Its mounted on a military vehicle, say, a Humvee or a truck.

It begins shooting its “heat rays”. The people hit by its “heat rays” fall, writhing in agony, their skin burning, their nerves on fire (literally).

Errr…did I mention it has an effective range of up to 500m?

It’s not just “Ouch! Ouch!” for a few people at the front of the crowd. It’s pain on a whole new level. A massive level. A collective level. The government troops can rotate that thing, pointing it at protesters in every direction, forcing them to run for cover. After that, the riot police swoops in to make a few arrests, and its all over. The protest is dispersed in minutes.

Now, lets not get too disheartened. I’m sure there’s a way to avoid this, of course. There has to be some sort of weakness to this weapon. Of course I have very little technical knowledge of this weapon, except what the US military itself revealed.

Here are some of the features of this futuristic device:

1 360-degree operation for maximum effect

> Silent Guardian prototype can be operated with a joystick
> Antenna 1.1m x 1.1m (45in x 45in) linked to transmitter unit
> Automatic target tracking

Okay, so they can rotate it around really fast. There’s a soldier inside the vehicle, using a joystick (video-game for the soldier, barbecue for the targets).

This means it’ll be harder to get behind the device to destroy it somehow.

If you try to move up on them from behind, they don’t have to turn the vehicle around. All they need to do is turn the device around, to focus on you. Ouch for you. Next target? Ouch for him/her. Next target…

2 Antenna sealed against dust and can withstand bullet fire

Okay. That dish on top of the vehicle can resist bullets, so stones won’t have much of an effect. No point shooting at it either, it resists bullet-fire.

I wonder if Molotov cocktails and petrol bombs could set it on fire or damage it in some way. Well, the only way to test the theory is to put it into practice.

3 Invisible beam of millimetre-wave energy can travel over 250m

So its highly effective for up to 250m, and has a maximum range of 500m.

That means you’ll have to throw a Molotov cocktail at it really fast, and run, hoping you’ve managed to destroy it or damage it. If you haven’t, you’re the next target.

Zap! OWWWWWW!

4 Heat energy up to 54C (130F) penetrates less than 0.5mm of skin

Manufacturers say this avoids injury, although long-term effects are not known

Ah, here’s the snag.

The US military says its “harmless”, but its long-term effects are yet to be discovered. They might zap people with this thing for decades and then realize it was more harmful than they thought it was. Why don’t they test it out on the Yankee Army itself, with its Commander-in-Chief being the first test subject?

Well, either way, the imperialists are going to make this world a very dangerous (and painful) place, if they keep coming up with new weapons of this type.

The people of the Third World will have to keep fighting. With their AK-47’s and petrol bombs, they must take on the imperialists even if they build a new Death Star to out-class the one that Darth Vader had. The Rebel Alliance, so to say, will not stop fighting the Empire until we demolish it forever.

Death to Imperialism.