Deployment of ray gun pushed up

[unhappycamper]

A nonlethal ray gun originally slated for fielding in 2010 could be deployed as soon as next year.


Deployment of ray gun pushed up
By Richard Lardner - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Oct 26, 2007 11:51:59 EDT

QUANTICO, Va. — There’s no doubt this oversized ray gun can deliver the heat. The question is, how soon can the weapon, which neither kills nor maims, be delivered to Iraq?

At a rain-soaked demonstration of the crowd-dispersal tool here Thursday, military officials said the Active Denial System — known for making intended targets feel as though they are on fire — could be deployed early next year. That’s much sooner than the estimate given when the weapon was first demonstrated in January — that it would be ready for fielding in 2010.

More weapons still need to be built and undergo testing before being shipped, a slow-going process at odds with urgent demands from U.S. commanders for the device.

What the troops may see as needless delays, Pentagon officials view as necessary steps toward fielding a weapon never used before in combat. The device uses energy beams instead of bullets and lets soldiers break up unruly crowds without guns.

That means fewer civilian casualties, a key ingredient to success in Iraq.

“We’ve been perfecting the art of the lethal since Cain and Abel,” said Marine Corps Col. Kirk Hymes, director of the Defense Department’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/ap_raygun_071026/

[liberal N proud]

1. Preparation for martial law

[NYVet]

2. Would you rather that we go back to the old ways or dispersing crowds?

Which included water cannons, police dogs, and cops with nightsticks and guns like we had in the South during the civil Rights era?