Weight, size issues stymie fielding of directed energy weapons.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Nonlethal Weapons

The Defense Department's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate has developed a beam of energy that can force an enemy combatant to leave an area without causing him any wounds.

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Another device can stop a vehicle dead in its tracks without so much as a nick on the body paint. When the beam is turned off; the driver can restart the engine and continue on without any damage to the motor or electrical system.

These technologies work, and the legal, ethical and treaty issues have been resolved. But there are familiar problems preventing them from reaching troops: size, weight, power and price.

Currently, it soldiers or Marines want to bring these directed energy, non-lethal weapons into a battle zone, they will need an entire truck to haul one system there.

And that's not good enough, said David Law, technology division chief at the joint program.

"How do we make these things more operationally useful and get them into a form factor that will be acceptable to the war fighter?" he asked.

The directorate wants to take these technologies off the test ranges and into the field. It recently held an industry day at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., in preparation for a raft of requests for proposals that will be released in 2013. Program managers outlined several items on their wish list that they hope will take the technology to the next level. In the immediate future, they just want to shrink what the program already has down to where the devices are part of a truck instead of the whole truck.

The beam that forces a subject to quickly vacate an area is called active denial. It uses millimeter waves to heat the first layer of skin from stand-off distances. The sensation is so overwhelming that even the toughest Marine volunteers hit with its energy bolt away. The technology has been in development since the 1990s, and as early as 2005 at the height of the Iraq conflict, engineers had mounted a system on the back of a Humvee.

That was seven years ago, and it still takes a tactical wheeled vehicle to carry the system and provide its power.

"Everyone wants to repel, deny or move people," Law said. "With this technology, you can do all three of those things." But the potential users are asking, "Can you make it cheap enough for us? Can you make it small enough for us?"

For military thinkers, the promise of directed energy is clear, especially when applied to non-lethal applications.

Marine Corps Col. Tracy Tafolla, director of the...