DescentBB

Marines' weapon loaded with 'scream'
http://www.femail.co.uk/pages/standard/ ... _page_id=2

US troops are to be armed with a stun gun that uses a baby's high-pitched scream to bring the enemy to its knees.

The gun, which will be issued to marines in Iraq this month, fires "sonic bullets" that can be targeted like a torch beam.

Anyone hit with a full blast would suffer excruciating pain, permanent deafness and some form of cellular damage. A prolonged blast could kill.

The "Secret Scream" gun as it is called, could revolutionise the way US troops deal with snipers, suicide bombers and riots in the turmoil of post-war Iraq.

The actual sound used is a recording of a baby's scream played backwards.

the bolded part i found somewhat disturbingly funny.
a baby's scream, backwards. who would've known?
i mean, what are these guys doing to discover this, playing LPs of baby's screams and "worship satan" backwards or something?
it's like something outof X-files. a backwards baby scream.

Interesting, use of HF is new -- from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2309505.stm:

A more sinister use of infrasonic waves is in the application of non-lethal weaponry.


Elephants are a focus for research

Since the 1950s, scientists have been developing infrasonic devices which produce acoustic waves in the 1 to 10 Hz range.

Sound waves at these frequencies were found to vibrate internal organs, incapacitating opponents for hours, even days and sometimes leading to fatalities.

The main difficulty in developing these types of weapon is the huge amplitudes required to make them effective, and then directing the waves to a specific point.

The frenchies have an infrasound weapon (4Hz) that turns your inside to mush for some time -- problems were always the collateral fatalities..

Edit: a good background paper can be found here

Edit2: RESEARCH ARCHIVE : Acoustic Trauma - Infrasound and Low Frequency Weapons for more background.

A stun gun that causes you to go deaf. Non-lethal maybe, but extremely cruel.

If I ever lost my hearing, I would be in hell. Utter hell for the rest of my life.

Wud you rather be ded?

Old news. It's part to the non-lethal push in the American arsenal. btw, the deafness aspect of that article is false reporting. Deafness would only occur if improperly used or accidently over-powered. I'm sure safeguards and limits will be built-in. It wouldn't make much sense to cause deafness since that would render it's deterrent effects useless. It's mostly for crowd control to stop mob actions, disperse crowds and reduce the ability of agitators to stampede large groups into a riotous state. Unlike teargas, sound cannot be thown away or used against riot controllers and won't obscure the landscape. Another deterrent under development is microwave emitters that will *burn* but not damage skin. That will likely be more controversial than using irritating noises. btw, great sources, [Grendel].

No offense to the military and it's cool high tech gadgetry but what's stopping the bad guys from simply wearing ear protection?

HF frequencies can usualy penetrate normal ear protection.

Good piont SS, althought if you look at the part of the French's weapon (4Hz I think) it vibrates your internal organs, which is through your body, not your ears.

And don't tell me they actually called it pihsrow natas.

Hahaha, that would be awesome.

Nitro, that's just roid trying (and failing) to be clever. Again.

Vibrateing internal organs? What about a directed blast at an external one?

WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

AceCombat wrote:HF frequencies can usualy penetrate normal ear protection.

I disagree. Ultrasonic waves are much easier to damp than low frequency ones due to the waves small wavelength combined with its highly directional nature AND we are not talking about preventing all of the sound from entering the ear, merely dampening it to levels that will not cause discomfort.

Nitrofox125 wrote:Good piont SS, althought if you look at the part of the French's weapon (4Hz I think) it vibrates your internal organs, which is through your body, not your ears.

I was replying to the original topic of the article however the low frequency weapon suffers from an almost equally problematic failure, the lack of directionality and it's inherent difficulty to dampen.

One of the things that makes guns great is the ability to only kill the target, the directionality, the difficulty to shield and low cost. Sound weapons which are not new BTW, suffer from either being to easy to protect against, being un-directional and/or being cost prohibitive when compared to a rather cheap bullet.

I personally favor a weapon based on attacking a persons vision either through a focused laser or high intensity UV strobing. But even this could be conteracted through Raybans, so I guess guns will be with us for some time.

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.

Isn't the point of these "humane" weapons that you can incapacitate an enemy soldier without doing long-term damage? I mean... if you're not concerned with long-term damage, shoot him with a real gun and be done with it.

The strobe light idea, or certain types of low-intensity lasers, could be interesting. So could certain sound weapons. Anything that would incapacitate or nauseate enemy soldiers (or rioters) without doing permanent damage would be a great innovation.

1) Lothar, these are not "humane" weapons because they are often not lethal any more than a flamethrower is designed to be "humane". It's just another way to kill or disable someone, which can be used in ways a .22 can't. Don't make the mistake of thinking that this thing was made with saving lives in mind.

2) they've been working on this for ages, but containing the output has been an issue forever, I'd love to see how they did it

3) These have a lot of crazy applications if you make it big enough. Like shaking apart tanks.

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.

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.

ever had a bad welding flash? it leaves u with an after-image for quite a while as well as a splitting head-ache & the feeling of some-one pouring sand into ur eyes. any welding flash also burns a spot onto the retina which is permanent, no repairs possible.
i read somewhere that the US army was 'looking into' [pun intended] lasers for the battlefield to blind the enemy & being a boilermaker/welder for over 30yrs & having had a quite a few of them; [welding flashes], it would to me seem one heartless weapon to use
cheers
rij

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.

Isn't the point of these "humane" weapons that you can incapacitate an enemy soldier without doing long-term damage? I mean... if you're not concerned with long-term damage, shoot him with a real gun and be done with it.

The strobe light idea, or certain types of low-intensity lasers, could be interesting. So could certain sound weapons. Anything that would incapacitate or nauseate enemy soldiers (or rioters) without doing permanent damage would be a great innovation.

One of the doctrines of modern warfare is that a severely wounded and possibly crippled enemy soldier is far better than a dead one, as he will consume way more resources of the enemy.

I believe this is simply a hoax. A high-frequency weapon could indeed be dampened pretty easily. Directing a low frequency weapons should be pretty difficult; it might however be done using several sound sources that will amplify the sound only at the target location where they needed to interfere appropriately.

Still, simple atmospheric influences and material obstacles would reduce the effect of such a weapon pretty much, at least if it is directed.

As an interesting side note: The Inka killed Spanish captives by putting them under huge bells and hitting the bells with soft sticks, so I've read. The very low frequencies the bells generated (about 1 Hz or so) tore the inner organs of the Spanish to pieces. Btw, talking about "turning your innards to mush", this process is irreversible.

The weapon consists of two parts, a megaphone the size of a commercial satellite dish mounted on an armoured vehicle, and a computerised operating system that aims and controls the sound waves.

There is a smaller version that can be held in the hand, similar to the soundwave gun used by Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report.

The Secret Scream sends out two ultrasonic waves at different frequencies.

Each set of waves is too high to hear, but they generate audible sound when they overlap. The effect is called "acoustical heterodyning".

it's do-able.

sounds like the weapons from Dune

Ah yes warlock, can we say sonic tank? that was my first impression.

it was called humane because it doesn't tear up a soldier like a .50 cal machine gun would.

Sheep: the ultimate goal of this line of weaponry is liquifying your lungs, so while the attack on hearing is a point right now, as they continue to improve it, it will become less and less so.

Well, I'll wait til UV laser diodes are available -- makes a wireless Taser possible. Click

huh? i thought those wireless "UVlaser = ionised air = conductive air path for electric shock" tasers were already in production.

UV lasers arn't hard to make. well... i guess they are.

I think you guys are missing something completely. Usually non-lethal weaponry is designed to be used on the home front. I.E. prisons, riot control, etc...

With this in mind, most non-lethal weapons are designed for the purpose of disorienting or incapacitating a "subject or subjects" in a humane non-lethal capacity. When you're dealing with a crowd of protestors that have gotten a little violent, you don't want to cause them permanent harm, lawsuits could start that way

Anything temporary might lead to unforeseen long term problems when dealing with human vision and hearing.

Now, plastering someone in the gut with a beanbag gun is another story . That gets the message across and leaves the victim with a nice welt. Very effective when combined with tear gas and humane to boot! We've all had welts in our lives sometime or another

Anyways, in the case of the topic at hand this weapon will be used in combat situations and I find it a pretty decent alternative to blowing someones head off BUT, then again thats what they're trying to do against us so hey, it might be too good for them.

Phoenix, they already have devices that use ultrasound to target and destroy cancerous growths inside people. Just wait until they miniaturize this technology. I'm sure a weapon along these same lines will be produced that CAN liquify any internals they deem worth liquifying

yes, Tyranny gets it. For the most part, these would be used in domestic settings. But one thing people have missed is that non-lethal weapons are also sometimes useful in battle -- provided that your qualm is with the government, rather than the military or citizens, of a particular country.

Diedel, in which countries does "modern warfare" consist of attempting to non-lethally but permanently injure as many enemy soldiers as possible? If you look at the most recent wars fought by the US (vs Afghanistan and Iraq) you'll notice our intent has not been to increase the burden on those societies, but to shred the governments with as little burden on the society as possible. We *could* run around shooting people in the legs and creating a huge burden on the Iraqi and Afghani people, but that's not how we do things in America. Considering we're footing the bill for restoring those societies, permanently injuring their soldiers would end up costing us in the long run.

Remember that our qualms are often with the leadership of a nation, rather than with its army or its people. Being able to disable and capture enemy soldiers, take out the government, and then release the enemy soldiers into society seems like something we might want to do. (It's something we already do, but I'd imagine we'd like to be able to do it more effectively.)

Phoenix, that is probably one of the silliest contentions I've ever read. So, instead of the quick and easy method of shooting someone, all this scientific research and tax money is going toward the ultimate goal of killing folks in really painful, slow and ghoulish manners. OK!

Lothar wrote:yes, Tyranny gets it. For the most part, these would be used in domestic settings. But one thing people have missed is that non-lethal weapons are also sometimes useful in battle -- provided that your qualm is with the government, rather than the military or citizens, of a particular country.

Ummmm, if you look at the first line in this post(after link)...

US troops are to be armed with a stun gun that uses a baby's high-pitched scream to bring the enemy to its knees.

Something tells me thats not a domestic usage.

Actually, I wouldn't put too much faith in that claim. It's obviously the interpretation of the writer. Non-lethal weapons will be used wherever they can be determined to be effective, be it drunken post-championship sporting event riots or mobs of frenzied Somalians. The purpose is to project more force with less personnel while eliminating the escalation/lawsuits that comes from excessive force leading to bloodshed or death. If a small squad of persons can semi-control hundreds without the use of deadly force I think that says alot about the proposed value of such devices.

SuperSheep wrote:

Lothar wrote:...non-lethal weapons are also sometimes useful in battle -- provided that your qualm is with the government, rather than the military or citizens, of a particular country.

US troops are to be armed with a stun gun that uses a baby's high-pitched scream to bring the enemy to its knees.

Something tells me thats not a domestic usage.

Which is exactly what the latter half of my quote says -- it's a non-domestic usage (which is something many people here have overlooked) wherein it's good to incapacitate the enemy without killing or permanently injuring them. But the design is based on the idea that it's useful to be able to temporarily incapacitate people without causing any permanent damage.

There seem to be 2 opinions going around:
1) non-lethal weapons are for domestic use only, and shouldn't do permanent harm
2) non-lethal weapons are for military use, and should do permanent harm

People are overlooking the opinion I've put forward: non-lethal weapons that don't do any permanent harm are good in both domestic and military settings. Despite what Diedel and others have said, the goal of our military is not always to kill enemy troops or to injure them so they burden their society. A doctrine of true modern American warfare is: take out enemy leaders and those who fight against you because they hate you, but minimize casualties among those who fight against you because it's their job. Such people will (for the most part) make it easier for you to rebuild their country because they'll be able to be productive citizens of your replacement government.

Could be worse. A guy I work with who's been in the military for 6 years was telling me about Sable(sp?) bullets. Anti-tank armor piercing rounds made with depleted uranium. The velocity of the bullet(according to him), is so fast, and the tank environment so sealed, that when the bullet exits the tank, it literally sucks everything(including people) that isn't bolted down out the hole.

I'd be curious to know if that is true(and/or accurate). According to him, they've been testing it on sheep and rabbits. Supposedly this bullet leaves a hole in the tank, and a trail of gore out the side of it. Now THAT is a sickening weapon.

bash wrote:The purpose is to project more force with less personnel while eliminating the escalation/lawsuits that comes from excessive force leading to bloodshed or death.

well yeah, but also becides teh horrible horrible lawsuits that have to be handled (they are horrible horrible things, something simply most be done, think of the childruuuun).

there's also the issue of "people do not enjoy killing one another"

from what i hear, army personel often need trauma counceling after killing people.
thankfully, it seems they are human too.

I was referring to injuries, not deaths.

That said, even more interesting are documented instances where police snipers have been unable to *take the shot* if they've been observing hostage-takers for an extended period of time. As a result, I believe it's now procedure in hostage situations to regularly rotate police sharpshooters so they don't form any mental bonds to the people they may be called on to kill.

roid's quote from the article wrote:The "Secret Scream" gun as it is called, could revolutionise the way US troops deal with snipers, suicide bombers and riots in the turmoil of post-war Iraq

What part of that was domestic? The snipers, suicide bombers, or the Iraq bit?

Bash wrote:Phoenix, that is probably one of the silliest contentions I've ever read. So, instead of the quick and easy method of shooting someone, all this scientific research and tax money is going toward the ultimate goal of killing folks in really painful, slow and ghoulish manners. OK!

Bash: it hasn't been that simple since battles had pre-arranged appointed times. This thing has tactical applications a .22 does not. Something tells me I've said that already. Primarily penetrating solid objects, such as fortifications. That's why I cited the flamethrower as a non-humane "unconventonal" weapon, as it is a "painful, slow and ghoulish" way to kill people, but it cleared out pillboxes (small machine gun bunkers) and urban pockets really really well, while a standard issue combat rifle did not.

The article, by in large, is quite inaccurate.

Snipers: Likely too far for sonic weapons and why wouldn't you just shoot the sniper?
Suicide bombers: Again, why would non-lethal weapons even be considered against a homocide bomber?
Turmoil: Um, I guess that nebulous adjective means rioting and mob violence. OK, here the writer is actually getting something right as it relates to the purpose of these weapons. That said, mobs come in all stripes and all locations, hence the flexibility to use these sorts of humane weapons domestically or in combat, with the level being dictated by the circumstances.

bash wrote:The article, by in large, is quite inaccurate.

Snipers: too far for such a weapon.
Suicide bombers: Why would non-lethal weapons even be considered?
Turmoil: Um, I guess that nebulous adjective means rioting and mob violence. OK, here the writer is actually getting something right as it realtes to the purpose of these weapons.

Dude this is just ignorant. Just because a sniper is far away from his target doesn't mean he's far away from the task force hunting him. This would DISABLE suicide bombers, as in they can't realize they're hit and set off their bomb before they finish dying. And for the last time, the finished version will not be nonleathal.

Dude this is just ignorant.

I agree, you are being quite ignorant about why these weapons were developed and what their purposes are.

bash you sure seem to be portraying you know a lot about this technology can and can't do, that seems to contradict what the article says.

but you know nothing of the sort.

the article says that it's quite focused compared to other sonic weapons of the past. it has a small area effect, it's small. as in you can effect 2-3 people at once. at greater range it'd be more.

the article says that it can be turned up for longer range, and that if it were used on this high range setting for close combat, it could harm or kill it's targets.

in the article they mention how it can be turned up for greater range, they mention how it can be used to fight snipers.

and you think it's lying?

Pentagon sources said it would be used in Iraq as an alternative to bullets to break up riots or protests, to stop suspects approaching check points and force snipers from buildings or caves.

Lying and poor analysis is not the same. The primary purpose is for crowd control and separating innocents from bad guys. Regarding snipers, a decent sniper can be quite distant and out of range (the article never indicates the weapon's range, btw, but I'm guessing it's nowhere near the range of a sniper bullet) for sonic weapons but I doubt that's what the article is referring to. If it is an instance where they could get close to a sniper that is using civilians as shielding/cover (say a room away or beneath a window), then, yes, it could be used to flush them into the open where in all liklihood they would be dispatched with a conventional lethal attack (read: bullet). But these are not designed as replacements for conventional lethal weapons. In situations where the threat is lethal, then that will be met with lethal weapons. You and others seem to think these are meant to up the cruelty factor when the opposite is true. They are designed primarily to disperse crowds in a manner that won't leave any lasting effects. The main point is ask yourselves why would you choose a non-lethal weapon or a non-lethal weapon turned up to lethal levels when facing a lethal threat if a conventional lethal weapon would be more logical to use?