Defence Contractor Unveils 'Agony Ray'
A variation of the Silent Guard 'heat ray' weapon as it appears on the streets of Baghdad
Raytheon, one of the world's biggest profiteers of war and human misery, has puts its latest anti-human money spinner on display at a British arms show.
It's a heat ray. Or to be more precise, it's a pain ray. And we're not talking "Ow, I stubbed my flipping toe" pain. We're talking "Oh Good Holy Christ! Fucking Kill Me Now!" levels of pain.
I had to read this story from the UK Daily Mail a couple of times, not because I didn't believe that an American corporation will soon be selling an horrific instant pain machine on the world market, but because I first read about 'silent sound' and 'invisible light' weapons in a book about the future, back in the late 1970s. It was terrifying to read of it then. To read today that a heat/pain ray is a reality, and is being packaged, marketed and sold is merely numbing.
Back then, I tried to imagine what kind of world we would be living in where weapons that made you feel like your entire body was burning, that your flesh was melting off your bones, were not only being used against 'the enemy' but against people in the streets of our cities and towns.
Now I know what kind of world : this world. Our world today.
Raytheon don't like people calling their heat ray a heat ray, even though it is a heat ray. They've come up with a far more hideous and anti-human name for this monstrosity.
Raytheon call it - Silent Guardian :Silent Guardian is making waves in defence circles. Built by the U.S. firm Raytheon, it is part of its "Directed Energy Solutions" programme.
A square transmitter as big as a plasma TV screen is mounted on the back of a Jeep.
When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation - similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker - that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings.
It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile.
Silent Guardian is supposed to be the 21st century equivalent of tear gas or water cannon - a way of getting crowds to disperse quickly and with minimum harm. Its potential is obvious.
In tests, even the most hardened Marines flee after a few seconds of exposure. It just isn't possible to tough it out.
This machine has the ability to inflict limitless, unbearable pain.
...it is easy to see the raygun being used not as an alternative to lethal force...but as an extra weapon in the battle against dissent.
Silent Guardian and the Taser are just the first in a new wave of "non-lethal" weaponry being developed, mostly in the U.S.
These include not only microwave ray-guns, but the terrifying Pulsed Energy Projectile weapon. This uses a powerful laser which, when it hits someone up to 11/2 miles away, produces a "plasma" - a bubble of superhot gas - on the skin.
A report in New Scientist claimed the focus of research was to heighten the pain caused by this semi-classified weapon.
And a document released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act talks of "optimal pulse parameters to evoke peak nociceptor activation" - i.e. cause the maximum agony possible, leaving no permanent damage.
Perhaps the most alarming prospect is that such machines would make efficient torture instruments.
They are quick, clean, cheap, easy to use and, most importantly, leave no marks. What would happen if they fell into the hands of unscrupulous nations where torture is not unknown?
The agony the Raytheon gun inflicts is probably equal to anything in a torture chamber - these waves are tuned to a frequency exactly designed to stimulate the pain nerves.
Dr John Wood, a biologist at UCL and an expert in the way the brain perceives pain, is horrified by the new pain weapons.
"They are so obviously useful as torture instruments," he says.
"It is ethically dubious to say they are useful for crowd control when they will obviously be used by unscrupulous people for torture."
We use the word "medieval" as shorthand for brutality. The truth is that new technology makes racks look benign.
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Curiously, Raytheon's own marketing department has now dropped the term 'non-lethal' when promoting Silent Guardian. They now use the more disturbing term 'less-than-lethal'.
The Daily Mail story claims that this weapon, that shoots invisible rays of extremely convincing pain in focused beams at humans dozens of metres away, might one day be used for torture. It already has. Guaranteed. If they're testing it on US Marines, you can rest assured that this horror has been unleashed on prisoners in 'black' CIA prisons around the world, and in Iraq's Abu Ghraib.
The other point is this : the weapon has not been solely developed for use in war zones. You will one day, soon enough, find the police in your country armed with more portable, and more powerful, versions of this heat ray. Such weapons, like tasers, are called non-lethal. Non-lethal means they're not supposed to kill. But they do, of course. And people will eventually die when this heat ray is used to disperse protesters, or to stop huge crowds of desperate people trying to withdraw their own money from crashing banks.
We have already lost the war on "extremists" and "terrorists" when our societies see the deployment of such weapons as this heat ray as both necessary and acceptable. A human being thought up the idea of this agony ray.
Someone worked out how to build it. Someone else thought it was such a great idea that it should go into production. Others then worked out ways to market it and sell it to legitimate governments and brutal dictatorships alike around the world.
Someone, many someones, will make a lot of money from the sales of this most perfect instrument of brutal torture. But nobody they know will ever be on the receiving end of this heat ray that burns the flesh so convincingly, your brain instantly panics and actives the flight response - you run screaming. Of course, if you happen to be strapped to a chair, or a table, when the heat ray is turned on you, you can't run. You can only scream.
Nobody else created the world where such weapons are now acceptable, or deemed to be necessary.
'They' didn't do this to us.
We did it to ourselves.
