Pentagon inks deal on portable milli-wave raygun tech American weaponry globocorp Raytheon has been awarded a contract by the US military to improve the state of the art in microwave blasters for ground troops, offering "lighter-weight, non-lethal" rayguns as an alternative to deadly force. The company announced a deal with the Pentagon's Joint Non Lethal Weapons Directorate ( …
The biggest problem with RF weapons is that the nasty 'ole radio waves are easily reflected off metal objects. Unlike all of those crappy movies, and crappier cop shows, where hiding behind a car protects you against everything from a pea-shooter to a thermonuclear blast, this is probably the only occasion where sheltering behind a vehicle would render your assailants impotent (unless of course they start shooting, afterwards). In fact, a tinfoil hat might even be more than merely a fashion statement under these circumstances too.
Although the most effective way for soldiers to not kill civilians is still for them to not to invade other countries in the first place. However if national (in)security makes a country pathologically incapable of resisting the urge to reign death and destruction down on far away places, then not killing the locals is probably a small step forward.
would be really useful for the politicians. Tie them to every CCTV camera and, given how common these are in the UK, you could fry everyone in the country in minutes.
In fact, you could play a low level of pain over all your subjects continuously, and only lower it as a present to the few who perform well in your eyes. Or perhaps you could have the occasional pain-free public holiday?
No need for expensive 'special rendition' flights any more. Torture your slaves from the privacy of your own luxury villa....
I really need a 'God of the Old Testament' icon, but Bill will have to do.
P.S. - where is the Paris angle?
opera or classical music for clearing rowdy drunks and ner-do-wells. Well, rowdy drunks wont necessarily feel much pain... but space denial outside specific times might be nice. Link it in to a burglar alarm and a big sign. Take your time responding, random time on, random time off.... word will get around.
just a thought...
Bring me my patent application form.....
Just read this article and realised that it sounded familiar - the episode of CSI:NY that aired in the UK on Saturday used one of this micro-death-ray thingies.
But, if this is representative of the real device then it's definitely not "non lethal" - the poor victim had his pacemaker explode! And he also got some pretty 'good' burns from spectacles, wrist watch etc.
Maybe with our Home Sec (Wacky Jacqui) they can automate the body scan to death ray transition, thereby removing the need for inconvenient/expensive trials. How do you like your crims sir/madam - medium rare or well done? Trouble is, I seem to remember that the CSI device also did a good job of zapping the local CCTV camera - oops!
(Coat icon because someone's bound to come up with some sort of anti-death ray body armour).
Isn´t it the name of a movie starring Eddie Murphy where he goes to a gun convention where there is a weapon with embedded microwave oven?
Pun on another movie...
'Set your phasers to extra crispy'
Wait, one more, given the opportunity...
'Beam me up, Scotty. Oh, beam my coat up too.'
Pete wrote:
>TV = fiction
I'm sure the BBC News or Discovery channels would love to hear that they're no better than Hallmark, MTV, etc.
>> But, if this is representative of the real device
My bad - didn't explain myself properly here - wasn't suggesting for a nanosecond that Raytheon et al were programme consultants. And yes, I'm also aware that no-one's suggesting some kind of sci-fi microwave focusing widget for the real device - unlike the one in CSI, (plus there's the small matter of the behaviour of high energy beams in atmosphere). Point I was trying to make is that 'non lethals' can have lethal effects that are directly obvious - like tasers/tear-gas killing folks with cardiac-problems/asthma respectively.
Anyway back to the Perl manual I'm reading - can't wait to see how the story pans out. Usual deal - good cast, but the dialog sucks. ;)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
