WASHINGTON (PNN) - May 8, 2013 - The Pentagon’s electromagnetic pain weapons are about to make a new friend. It’s an anthropomorphic test dummy that’s going to get blasted by everything the Pentagon’s non-lethal weapons agency can throw at it.
In its latest round of small business research proposals, the Fascist Police States of Amerika Navy announced that it’s seeking a sensor-outfitted “human surrogate” for use in an array of non-lethal weapon tests. That includes “electromagnetic radiation in the L, S, and W bands,” noted the request for proposal. Even further, there are plans to subject the luckless mannequin to everything from noise, blast pressure, electrical currents, thermal energy, and light from flashbang grenades.
Eventually, the goal is to “quickly collect data to understand injury potential by detecting, presumably via sensor systems, the effects of various non-lethal stimuli on different parts of the human body,” said Alicia Owsiak, deputy chief of the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate Technology Division. The JNWLD, which manages the Pentagon’s non-lethal weapons program, is coordinating the tests. “Given that the risk of injury for non-lethal stimuli is often influenced by hit location, the test target is envisioned to be a human surrogate with respect to internal and external anatomy.”
That means these dummy people will have dummy organs.
The agency didn’t comment on the specifics of how electromagnetic weapons like the military’s Active Denial System could be used against a dummy or how its organs could be designed to react. Kelly Hughes, a spokesperson for the directorate, said the surrogate will be “a common test target that can be used across the spectrum of non-lethal stimuli.” But the Pentagon has spent years testing electromagnetic weapons against people, although only for short (and painful) bursts that feel like stepping into an oven when you’re subjected to it - owing to the millimeter waves triggering the skin’s heat-sensitive nerve endings, or nocicepters.
The reason for all the testing is obvious: electromagnetic weapons are unsettling and the goal isn’t to inadvertently kill or seriously injure people. The Pentagon has envisioned the Active Denial System, for instance, as more of a riot control weapon of sorts, able to disperse an unruly mob with its bursts of pain. Being hit with its waves causes no apparent permanent or significant injury - the pain stops when you move away from its waves. But sustained exposure on maximum power can cause severe burns. A brief (and never-used) deployment to Afghanistan was cut short after it became a symbol for Taliban propaganda.