In the never ending technologically fueled arms war, the U.S. military’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate has apparently been testing quite fascinating (and scary) weapons, as reported in Popular Science. One, called the Active Denial System, the non-lethal pain gun “will fire a pulsed (in brief shotlike bursts) deuterium-fluoride laser that will produce an ionized plasma on whatever surface it hits. That in turn will cause both pain and a kinetic shock, and could literally knock people off their feet.”

Not tech enough? How about the Advanced Tactical Laser that produces a four-inch-diameter beam of energy that can slice through a tank from a distance of 9 miles. Nine miles. Think about that.

The author of the Popular Science piece decided he’d let them shoot the Active Denial System at him, and says that they “explained that I would be hit in the center of the back by a millimeter-wave directed-energy beam. It would be fired from a large dish mounted atop a cargo container on the hill. The beam, he said, would make the water molecules in my cells vibrate, heating the uppermost layers of skin to levels far beyond the human tolerance for pain, but it would not actually burn me.”

“In a small building half a mile away, a young Air Force technician, using a joystick and video monitor, aimed crosshairs at my back. After a brief delay to wait for a passing airplane to clear?none can be in the vicinity when experimental directed-energy weapons are tested; an alarming precaution, I thought?the countdown commenced from five. (Hackett had told me earlier that some volunteers never even make it to the end of the countdown.) About a half-second after ‘One,’ I felt a warm spot on my back. A millisecond later the heat intensified dramatically, as though someone were pressing an electric burner hard on my back. I expected to hear sizzling, to smell burning flesh. The pain exploded to the point where I was no longer actually thinking, and certainly wasn’t in any sort of control of my reactions. With a shout of “Yeow!” I involuntarily sprang out of the way. ”

Very interesting technology…. let’s just hope that it’s used properly. Just imagine if bad guys get this sort of ADS system and they can sit comfortably in their van and beam pain through the walls…