Back in July I reported that Raytheon (No. 4 on Washington Technology’s “Top 100 List of Prime Defense Contractors,” with $5,170,829,645 in revenue) was developing a microwave “non-lethal” weapons (NLW) system for the U.S. Army.
At a cost of $25 million, five truck-mounted NLWs will soon be shipped off to Iraq for heavy-lifting in Iraqi cities for use against militant oil workers and citizens should U.S. energy multinationals finally get their greedy little hands on that nation’s oil wealth. A slimmed-down version of the Active Denial System (ADS) is sought for deployment in the “homeland. According to Aviation Week,
Raytheon is kicking off a U.S. Army program to mount Joint Silent Guardian non-lethal, directed energy weapons–with a range of more than 250 meters–on Ford 550 commercial trucks for crowd control.
The high power microwave (HPM) device heats water in a person’s outer layers of skin to the point of pain. Tests have shown that the effects can reach through cracks in and around concrete walls and even through the glass of automobiles, company officials say. (David A. Fulghum, “High Power Microwave Nearly Operational,” Aviation Week, October 9, 2008)
