<HTML>Die millionenfach erscheinende, legendäre Zeitung des amerikanischen Militärs „Stars and Stripes“ berichtet heute (14.9.04) in ihrer Ausgabe für Europa und den pazifischen Raum als Hauptbeitrag über das „Project Sheriff“. In diesem Projekt sollen kombinierte tödliche/nichttödliche Waffensysteme für den Einsatz im Irak und andernorts angewandt und getestet werden. An erster Stelle wird hierbei das Active Denial System vorgestellt, eine "counter-personnel directed energy weapon", die mit Mikrowellen schießt. Da diese Waffe als kombinierte tödliche/nichttödliche Waffe angewandt werden soll, vor allem in Städten, wird zwischen den Zeilen klar, daß damit nicht nur höllische Schmerzen, sondern je nach Einstellung der Mikrowellenstrahlung auch Verletzungen bzw. das Kochen innerer Organe und tödliche Verbrennungen beigebracht werden können. - Am Ende des Artikels wird ersichtlich, daß sich nicht nur das Militär, sondern auch andere Organisationen wie das FBI für diese Waffen interessieren.
Troops in Iraq to get combined lethal/nonlethal weapons system
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www.estripes.com]
[Stars and Stripes is a Department of Defense-authorized daily newspaper distributed overseas for the U.S. military community.]
ARLINGTON, Va. — A new sheriff is coming to town.
The Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation is designing a combined lethal and nonlethal weapons system to be fielded to Army and Marine Corps units in Iraq by summer, 2005, in an experiment called “Project Sheriff.”
The concept is to retrofit ground vehicles already in the services’ inventories with an array of new lethal and nonlethal systems, giving troops working in urban terrain more options, especially when deciding how to deal with potential noncombatants or civilians being used as shields, said program director and transformation strategist Col. Wade Hall, a 23-year veteran of the Marine Corps.
Like a sheriff, Hall says.
“He’s not there to cause destruction. He’s there to keep the peace, but has the option to go to destruction status if he needs it,” Hall said.
The Pentagon hopes to launch the system in Iraq in June or July, equipping four to six Army and Marine Corps vehicles with a combination of off-the-shelf technology and systems being developed…
A goal of the Office of Force Transformation is to cut through the years and years it used to take the department to introduce a new system, he said, while assuring that the technology employed is well-studied and the office is not sacrificing safety for the sake of speed.
Designers see the systems being used for missions such as armed reconnaissance, raids, crowd control, security patrol and vehicle checkpoints.
While no decisions have been made on which systems will be used, managers have narrowed the field to a few for consideration, Hall said.
Among them is Raytheon Company’s nonlethal Active Denial System, a counter-personnel directed energy weapon that projects a speed-of-light millimeter wave of energy that makes skin feel like it’s on fire.
According to studies done by the Air Force Research Laboratory, which developed the technology in a joint effort with the Marine Corps and Raytheon, the invisible beam penetrates the skin to a depth of less than 1/64 of an inch and produces heat that within seconds becomes intolerable, said lab spokeswoman Eva Hendren.
The sensation stops when the individual moves out of the beam. The beam does not cause injury because its penetration is so shallow, Hendren said…
While the Pentagon is taking the lead in developing Project Sheriff, other agencies interested in the experiment’s progress include the Justice, Energy, and State departments and the FBI, Hall said.</HTML>
