The effort to disable electronics has remained mostly secret. But in 2001, the Air Force publicly announced that it had made substantial progress in developing microwave weapons that target people, when it unveiled the Active Denial System.
Development of the system began in the 1990s with the Air Force's efforts to explore the biological effects of microwaves. A project code-named Hello studied how to modulate the clicking or buzzing sounds produced by microwave heating in the inner ear, to produce psychologically devastating 'voices in the head'. 'Goodbye' explored the use of microwaves for crowd control. And 'Good Night' looked at whether they could be used to kill people.
Hello goodbye
Only the Goodbye effect went into development as a weapon. Further bioeffects research was conducted in secrecy at Brooks Air Force Base near San Antonio in Texas, but even that program almost stalled when the weapon was ready to move from animal to human testing. Hans Mark, a nuclear engineer at the University of Texas at Austin who was then the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering, paid a visit to Brooks in 2000 to check out the work. “Dr Mark didn't believe in the effect,” recalls Beason, “and he actually had a shouting match with one of the main researchers.” But Mark's approval was needed to advance the project, so he agreed to be subjected to the beam.
The Air Force got its human tests. The Brooks scientists joke that “you've never seen a political appointee run so fast”, says Beason.
Mark says that his doubts about the Goodbye effect were rooted in what he calls the “extravagant claims” made by its advocates. If nothing else, he says, the superconducting electromagnet that powered the system's pulse generator required a cooling system too big and cumbersome to be used in the field. Mark says that he allowed the system to proceed to human testing not because he was convinced that it would work, but because after exposing himself to the beam, he decided that human testing at least wouldn't harm anyone. “Almost all of this program has been a waste of money,” he says.
Mark's concerns have proved prescient: efforts to deploy the weapon have been futile. At the 2001 unveiling, the defense department touted the Active Denial System for use in peacekeeping missions in places such as Kosovo and Somalia. But after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the US Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate offered to deploy the Active Denial System to the region, it was rebuffed.
“We knew it wasn't reliable,” said Franz Gayl, the Marine Corps's science and technology adviser, in an interview last year. Worse, he said, the pulse generator was so big that it had to be carried on its own utility vehicle. “That was a recipe for disaster,” said Gayl, “because the operators are going to be a target.” And worst of all, he said, before use the system had to be cooled down to 4 kelvin — a process that took 16 hours.
The defense department tried to deploy the weapon in Afghanistan in 2010, but it was sent home unused. In the same year, California rejected a smaller version meant for use in prisons. The device was built by defense contractor Raytheon of Waltham, Massachusetts, which declines to discuss it.
Other weapons have fared little better. The Air Force Research Laboratory developed an HPM system called MAXPOWER to detonate roadside bombs remotely, but it was the size of an articulated lorry — too unwieldy to be deployed in Afghanistan. The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, the defense department's bomb-fighting agency, declined to discuss the system, citing classification issues. But it did say that, as of 2011, it was not funding MAXPOWER.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIronic isn't it? Just last month you had a news blurb right in your own magazine about some physicists who sucessfully produced a MASER using a Laser pumping system I believe. Wasn't the article something like, "First Practical Maser (Microwave Laser) Is Built". Look it up with the search option on the term MASER. Maybe sometimes pre-conceptions can get in the way of innovation? Of course, there's a long way to go yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI definitely feel it would be worth having somethings like those weapons and am in favour to carry on with the research. New ideas and materials might bring solutions. I saw a picture of the first cavity magnetron, it was as big as a desk. A few months later they made them small enough to fit them into 1940 era fighter planes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow - the "Active Denial System" - how appropriate!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn a clear day (with low atmospheric humidity) this technology might be considered threatening. What with global warming, will the future effectiveness of such weapons be increased or decreased?
Yes, by all means, lets fund some more of these stories - they're priceless!
Right, but a MASER generates a focused, coherent electromagnetic beam (not necessarily microwaves), whereas this article implies that we are looking for more of an area or theater capability and a globular radiative path.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't believe that we are talking about the same concept.
Yes, my point was (at least I intended it to be) that the military view of a MASER as a "weapons system" blinded them to any "out of the box" innovative thinking. That fact (and the fact that any military research has basically been classified for 50 years) has basically stopped any research on possible other uses and advances in MASER technology. Look at that Scientific American article I mentioned in my previous post. It appeared on 16 August 2012.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe advances mentioned in that 16 August article are:
1. The entire apparatus sits easily on a tabletop.
2. It operates at room temperature. No extreme low temperature cooling required.
3. It produces a coherent directed beam of microwave radiation at what is still a relitivly low power...but nearly a million times higher than any other Maser before.
The difference in results, in my opinion, is that this new research was simply done to see if the idea worked, all the previous military reaserach was to make a weapon.
They simply ignored anything that didn't "look like" a weapon. That pre-conception made them blind to other possible uses of a low power Maser.
Or as the saying goes, "When all you want to do is break rocks, everything looks like a hammer to you."
Nicely put, but as I recall the correct saying (one of my favorites) is: 'To a man whose only tool is a hammer, every problem appears to be a nail'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, that one doesn't quite fit here...
If they want a tactical area weapon, what is wrong with simple microwave sources from a few microwave ovens being grouped together with 1 side unshielded and run by battery? I'm not saying it would be small or low power but it should be unpleasant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe FBI stole N. Tesla's papers upon his death; they've remained hidden since the 1940's. Tesla, of course, had invented a "Death Ray" useful to, perhaps, being a winning game-changer in WW-2, Korea, Vietnam, and a few other conflicts. Where are Tesla's papers today?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this«Despite 50 years of research on high-power microwaves, the U.S. military has yet to produce a usable weapon» I found the above news extremely encouraging. Perhaps one day we will learn to devote our intellectual and economic capital to something more rewarding (if less profitable for some) than attempting to find new ways to kill or otherwise incapacitate people....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHenri