Lothar wrote:Attacking someone's vision through use of lasers (in such a way that it will be permanently damaged) is lame. Attacking their hearing in such a way as to cause deafness is also lame. If you're not shooting to kill, don't shoot to cause blindness or deafness or permanent disability in any other way. You're not doing enemy soldiers any favor if you're turning them into a cripple instead of a corpse.
Are wars humane? Guess that could be another thread altogether, but I wasn't lookin to start a fight, just suggesting that if one wishes to disable, sight is a better option IMHO because a deaf soldier can fight, a blind one can't(not in so much as would be practical)
Kyouryuu wrote:The thing about a strobe weapon is wouldn't it be predicated on the surroundings being dark? Plugging in a disco strobe light in the middle of Iraq's desert as the sun beats down probably won't accomplish much.
I wasn't thinking so much about a disco strobe rather focused UV in the form of a pulse. Guess the word strobe was the wrong one in this case
I did a little research myself into high power pulsed light and found that you could indeed leave a nice spot on a persons retina for several minutes using a very powerful flash unit and yes, it tends to work better at night due to the increased sensitivity of the persons eyes, increased pupil dilation and contrast but it would leave a spot during the day as well.
Liken it more to looking straight at the sun for a couple seconds. You can produce an equivalent amount of focused energy and create a similar spot effect using flash lamps and some hefty caps.
And for the record...I am not advocating blinding the enemy, but leaving them temporarily blinded(minutes) could be more humane than simply shooting them and could lead to less casualties on both sides.
As for the sound weapons, I have seen various approaches tried since the early 80's and the only thing I can really see the HF approach good for is crowd control. And as has already been mentioned in this post, what happens when the HF works a little too well? or when the enemy decides to use ear protection? or when the enemy(think radical fundamentalists for a second) destroy their own hearing to be immune to the weapon? Too many variables some of which are less humane than simply putting 2 in the head. My 2 cents.