Non-lethal (or nonlethal) weapons is a term used to describe weapons which can incapacitate, subdue, or alter the behavior of people without killing them or resulting in permanent harm. It is a misnomer, because the weapons can be lethal or crippling. Much of the recent publicity involves such weapons as bean bag guns and giant nets, which make for good public relations without revealing the more secretive technology. The real concern is electromagnetic and acoustic weapons (as well as chemical and biological agents), especially those that can be used covertly with "plausible denial."
Here is the draft of a book, online, from the Naval Studies Board. It is dated 2002 and titled An Assessment of Non-Lethal Weapons Science and Technology.
Examples of psychological effects were identified in the preceding sections on specific health effects. Much opportunity seems possible using systems that are explicitly designed to enhance communication, since information exchange is a principal medium of psychological effects. Notable among these were the acoustic technologies that provide communication through vastly different means.The Pentagon (Marine Corps) announced in March, 2001, that it is working to produce a new "non-lethal" crowd control weapon. The technique has been under secret development for ten years, according to press accounts. It uses EM radiation at higher than microwave frequences and is claimed to produce pain without permanent injury. Here is an article from the Air Force Times [*],which calls the weapon "perhaps the biggest breakthrough in weapons technology since the atomic bomb." Here is a New York Times article, and here is an ABCNews article [*] describing what sounds like the same weapon. Presumably the human subjects mentioned in the news articles were all consensual, though that is not explicitly stated.
The New York Times article mentions some human rights concerns about whether the devices are truly safe. They do not discuss any potential problems resulting from the ability of a government to disrupt street demonstrations with a wide-field weapon. They do not mention what a perfect torture implement a device which causes extreme pain but no direct physical damage would be. Readers of these pages also know that, combined with surveillance feedback, a remote aversive stimulus generating device could be used to attempt to behaviorally condition a person -- even remotely from a distant location.
Claims that such millimeter-wave weapons are safe are questioned in this UPI article from March 6, 2001, titled "Scientists dispute military 'raygun' claims." [*]
Adey, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a distinguished visiting professor of the Royal Society of Medicine, said Russian studies conducted some thirty years ago show that microwaves can effect white blood cells before the subject feels heat. "The question is whether this weapon could include a bundle of non-thermal effects that are not related to heating," he said.A Newsweek article from 1994, "Soon, 'Phasers on Stun'" describes the push for so-called non-lethal arms.
...the list of exotic technologies that could be harnessed for nonlethal weapons is already large and growing. It includes lasers, microwaves, sound waves, strobe lights, electromagnetic pulses, microbes, chemicals, computer viruses -- even giant nets......Sources tell Newsweek that the FBI consulted Moscow experts on the possible use of a Soviet technique for beaming subliminal messages to Koresh. The technique uses inaudible transmissions that could have convinced Koresh he was hearing the voice of God inside his head. The air force offered a top secret nonlethal system that, according to one source, "would have given [the FBI] the ability to make a surprise attack with a large number of agents." ...Here is a recent U.S. News article, by Douglas Pasternak, on the newest generation of weapons in development. It is from July 1997, and is titled " Wonder Weapons: The Pentagon's quest for nonlethal arms is amazing. But is it smart?" [*]
By using very low frequency electromagnetic radiation -- the waves way below radio frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum -- he [Eldon Byrd] found he could induce the brain to release behavior-regulating chemicals. "We could put animals into a stupor," he says by hitting them with these frequencies. "We got chick brains -- in vitro -- to dump 80 percent of the natural opioids in their brains,'"Byrd says. He even ran a small project that used magnetic fields to cause certain brain cells in rats to release histamine. In humans, this would cause instant flulike symptoms and produce nausea. "These fields were extremely weak. They were undetectable," says Byrd. "The effects were nonlethal and reversible. You could disable a person temporarily," Byrd hypothesizes. "It [would have been] like a stun gun."Byrd never tested any of his hardware in the field, and his program, scheduled for four years, apparently was closed down after two, he says. "The work was really outstanding," he grumbles. "We would have had a weapon in one year." Byrd says he was told his work would be unclassified, "unless it works." Because it worked, he suspects that the program "went black." Other scientists tell similar tales of research on electromagnetic radiation turning top secret once successful results were achieved. There are clues that such work is continuing. In 1995, the annual meeting of four-star U.S. Air Force generals -- called CORONA -- reviewed more than 1,000 potential projects. One was called "Put the Enemy to Sleep/Keep the Enemy From Sleeping." It called for exploring "acoustics," "microwaves," and "brain-wave manipulation" to alter sleep patterns. It was one of only three projects approved for initial investigation.This is the text of a brochure giving the planned schedule of talks at the classified 1993 Non-Lethal Defense conference held at Johns Hopkins. Among the speakers at the conference was Janet Reno. Topics of the talks include voice synthesis, RF weapons, the use of ELF EM waves as nonlethal weapons, and acoustic technology. Clearly, then, the FBI knows something about this technology.
Here is a DoD Draft Non-Lethal Weapons Policy [*] dated July 21, 1994. It is part of the MindNet collection archived at the MCF.
The term "adversary" is used above in it broadest sense, including those who are not declared enemies but who are engaged in activities we wish to stop. This policy does not preclude legally authorized domestic use of non-lethal weapons by U.S. military forces in support of law enforcement.In February, 1998, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress held hearings on Radio Frequency Weapons and Proliferation: Potential Impact on the Economy. These hearings dealt with anti-materiel weapons rather than anti-personnel weapons, but the testimony presented to the committee contains good general information on portable RF generation technology, etc.
This European Parliament Scientific and Technological Options Assessment Report is titled "The Physiological and Environmental Effects of Non-Ionising Electromagnetic Radiation." It is from March, 2001, and discusses nonthermal electromagnetic bioeffects.
...there are indications of non-thermal thresholds for biological effects of the order of a microwatt/cm2.This pair of articles about non-lethal weapons appears in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sept/Oct, 1994. The articles are "The 'Soft Kill' Fallacy" [*] by Steven Aftergood and "Oh yes... they're probably illegal" by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg.
HyperSonic Sound (HSS) is an acoustic system capable of projecting sounds to a person or object, based on the heterodyning of a pair of ultrasonic beams. Here are excerpts from a New York Times article from Mar. 23, 2003 describing the system. The subjective effect on a person is described as being like a sound inside the head. The newer versions can project a sphere of sound, not just a beam of sound. This technology is real, operative, and now in the open.
Acoustical techniques in nonlethal weapons are described in this New Scientist article from Sept. 7, 1996, "Perfect Sound from Thin Air." The article is by Gary Eastwood and describes a California company's plans to market a sound projection device based on acoustical heterodyning. (The company is American Technology Corporation.)
The system may also have applications in crowd control. Powerful, low-frequency sound can cause disorientation and nausea. In the 1960s, the US tried unsuccessfully to use low-frequency sound from helicopters to disable enemy soldiers in the Vietnamese jungle. But the sound sources needed were so intense that they almost shook the aircraft apart, and most of the sound was absorbed by those nearest to the loudspeakers. According to Norris, acoustical heterodyning could pinpoint an individual up to 200 or 300 metres away by positioning the interference zone correctly.HSV technologies is developing a non-lethal weapon that uses a pair of ultraviolet lasers [*] to ionize a path through the air to a human target. This path then acts as a conductor, along which electrical impulses are sent which mimic "the neuro-electric impulses that control skeletal muscles." They claim the external signals are imperceptible to the target except that they "tetanize muscle tissue."
The book Electromagnetism and Life by Robert Becker and Andrew Marino is online at Marino's web site.
These are excerpts from "Microwaves and Behavior," by Don Justesen, American Psychologist, Mar. 1975:
Human beings can "hear" microwave energy. The averaged densities of energy necessary for perception of the hisses, clicks, and pops that seem to occur inside the head are quite small, at least an order of magnitude below the current permissible limit in the United States for continuous exposure to microwaves, which is 10 mW/cm^2....Note that the published date is 1975. There is little doubt that improved modulation and microwave generation techniques have been developed in the meantime. This is a fairly sophisticated application of microwave harassment techniques. The same article notes that basic microwave heating can cause damage before sensations of heating are even noticed. Microwave attacks by thermal loading can inflict brain damage and other physical damage.To "hear" microwave energy, it must first be modulated so that it impinges upon the "listener" as a pulse or a series of pulses of high amplitude....
Sharp and Grove ... found that appropriate modulation of microwave energy can result in direct "wireless" and "receiverless" communication of speech. They recorded by voice on tape each of the single-syllable words for digits between 1 and 10. The electrical sine-wave analogs of each word were then processed so that each time a sine wave crossed zero reference in the negative direction, a brief pulse of microwave energy was triggered. By radiating themselves with these "voice-modulated" microwaves, Sharp and Grover were readily able to hear, identify, and distinguish among the 9 words. The sounds heard were not unlike those emitted by persons with artificial larynxes.
For more information, here is a summary and list of some microwave hearing articles on the web.
The Air Force Research Laboratory has some reports online concerning the bioeffects of RF radiation, including the Radiofrequency Radiation Dosimetry Handbook.
This report, by Julianne McKinney of the Association of National Security Alumni, was one of the first to openly describe microwave anti-personnel weapons and their use in harassment. Here is a copy at the Pink Noise site, " Microwave Harassment and Mind-Control Experimentation." [*]
In this report presented to the World Foundation for Natural Sciences on October 17, 1998 -- online at the Leading Edge site -- Nick Begich discusses non-lethal weapons systems. He considers especially the political aspects of such systems being used by governments against their own people.
A weapon which could intrude into the brain of an individual represents a gross invasion of their private life. The idea that these new systems could be created in the next several years should be cause for significant discussion and public debate. On July 21, 1994, Dr. Christopher Lamb, Director of Policy Planning, issued a draft Department of Defense directive which would establish a policy for non-lethal weapons in the United States. The policy was intended to take effect January 1, 1995, and formally connected the military¹s non-lethal research to civilian law enforcement agencies. The government's plan to use pulsed electromagnetic and radio frequency systems as a nonlethal technology for domestic Justice Department use rings the alarm for some observers. Nevertheless, the plan for integrating these systems is moving forward. Coupling these uses with expanded military missions is even more disturbing. This combined mission raises additional constitutional questions for Americans regarding the power of the federal government to use military systems in domestic police actions. In interviews with members of the Defense Department the development of this policy was confirmed. In those February, 1995, discussions, it was discovered that these policies were internal to agencies and were not subject to any public review process. In its draft form, the policy gives highest priority to development of those technologies most likely to get dual use, i.e. law enforcement and military applications. According to this document, non-lethal weapons are to be used on the government's domestic "adversaries." The definition of "adversary" has been significantly enlarged in the policy: "The term 'adversary' is used above in its broadest sense, including those who are not declared enemies but who are engaged in activities we wish to stop. This policy does not preclude legally authorized domestic use of the nonlethal weapons by United States military forces in support of law enforcement." This allows use of the military in actions against the citizens of the country that they are supposed to protect.This article by Tom Jaski, "Radio Waves & Life," in Popular Electronics, Sept. 1960, details some of the history of research into the biological effects of radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation. It describes research going back to the 1920s. Jaski also replicated some of these early results, as the following somewhat lengthy excerpt describes:
This brings to mind the work of a man who started publishing articles on this kind of subject more than 35 years ago. An Italian university professor named Cazzamalli placed human subjects in a shielded room, subjected them to high-frequency radio waves, and claimed to be able to record a "beat" which, he received on a simple untuned receiver consisting of a galena crystal, a small capacitor, antenna and sensitive galvanometer. Cazzamalli's equipment, as well as it can be determined from his early articles, is shown in Fig. 1.The one item which he never mentions, perhaps because he could not accurately determine it, is the power of his transmitter.
He published oscillograms purportedly showing variations of the "beats" when his subjects were emotionally aroused or engaged in creative efforts.
Later experiments delivered much more startling results: he found that some of his subjects would hallucinate under the influence of the high-frequency radio waves, which ranged all the way up to 300 MC.
The Cazzamalli experiments were carefully duplicated with modern equipment, of much greater sensitivity than his...
...a previous experiment had indicated in a rather startling way that power was not required to evoke effects in the human nervous system. In fact, there seemed to be some sort of resonant frequency applicable to each individual human...
To discover if this "something" was subjectively noticeable by an individual, a weak oscillator swept through the band of 300 to 600 MC with the request that the subject indicate any points at which he might notice anything unusual. The subjects were not allowed to see the dial.At a particular frequency between 380 to 500 MC for different subjects, they repeatedly indicated a point with almost unbelievable accuracy (as many as 14 out of 15 times).
Subsequent experiments with the same subjects showed that at the "individual" frequency, strange things were felt. Asked to describe the experience, all subjects agreed there was a definite "pulsing" in the brain, ringing in the ears and a desire to put their teeth into the nearest experimenter.
The oscillator in this case was putting out only milliwatts of power, and was placed several feet from the subject.