Pentagon gun will inflict pain from mile away

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Pentagon gun will inflict pain from mile away
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
05 March 2005


The Pentagon is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a new "energy pulse" weapon that can deliver a jolt of excruciating pain from more than a mile away. Researchers have expressed outrage that work used to control pain is now being used to develop such a weapon.

The weapons involve Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs), which fire a laser pulse that in turn generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid. It can cause temporary paralysis and knock a person off their feet. But documents uncovered by the Sunshine Project, a biotechnology watchdog, also reveal that the same technology could be used to kill a person.

One document, a contract between the Office of Naval Research and the University of Florida in Gainesville, where the research is being carried out, is headlined "Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser-induced plasmas". It says: "At their current stage of development, each system has lethal and non-lethal capacities ... Our research will examine the feasibility of PEP as a new generation non-lethal weapon."

A 2003 review of non-lethal weapons by the US Naval Studies Board, which advises the Navy and Marine Corps, said PEPs produced "pain and temporary paralysis" in tests on animals. The $500,000 (£260,000) study looks to optimise this effect and discover how to generate a pulse which triggers pain nerves without damaging tissue. The contract adds: "Pain is a primary component of all non-lethal weapons."

snip http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=616973