Non-lethal weapon readied for battlefield.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

A directed energy weapon that causes a sensation tantamount to a "bee sting all over the body" to those unlucky enough to be on the receiving end could be deployed before the end of this year, a senior Air Force official said.

Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the Air Force Material Command, told National Defense at the Milcom 2005 conference that the non-lethal weapon soon could reach battlefields in Iraq or Afghanistan. "We're months away from fielding it if we need to."

The weapon, called the active denial system, uses millimeter wave technology to inflict debilitating pain without causing death, Carlson said. It shoots a high-frequency beam at the target and penetrates the skin at a third of a millimeter, about the depth of pain-sensing nerves, according to an Air Force news release.

The weapon uses a relatively small amount of power that can be provided by a truck battery. One weapon has already been mounted on a Humvee and tested in the Nevada desert, Carlson said. It has a 1-kilometer range, and can strike an individual or widen its beam slightly to target three or four individuals grouped closely together.

"We can focus it down to an individual ... up to a kilometer away, and it essentially feels like ... a bee sting all over your body, and that's enough to dissuade just about anybody from pulling a trigger on a weapon or igniting a bomb," Carlson said in a speech.

The weapon could be mounted on an aircraft and aimed downwards to clear the way for special forces to land, Carlson said. "You turn that thing on, and I assure you people are going to stop what they're doing," he added.

The millimeter wave band lies in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwave and infrared. Its development has been slow because the technology was prohibitively expensive. Now that costs are declining, more applications are being explored, particularly in the communications and sensor fields.

Its proponents tout several potential uses in the defense and homeland security sectors, including enhanced satellite communications. Different frequencies in the band can have different applications. Its ability to penetrate walls and clothing has spawned proposals to use it at airports to detect weapons and in urban combat settings to seek out enemy combatants inside buildings. All this is possible because the human body emits small amounts of millimeter waves.

The active denial weapon is the vanguard in a suite of similar applications the Air Force is pursuing...