[TalonDJ]

This E beam is a sort of sniper rifle, it hits hostiles one at a time

Nah, it can be set to wide areas. The beam will get blocked some by people in the front of the crowd but enough will get by them to effect at least the first few banks of people when those panic and move it will hit more. And since they seem to be talking about using it against armed mobs you only really need to disarm and disrupt the first few ranks of people to kill the mobs momentum.

The slick water idea might work ok on a concrete street but how would it work on a rocky dusty road in a third world town? Might as well as just hit them with the vomit gas. Clean up will be easier.

[timer]

It would be interesting to see which method worked better in ACTUAL field conditions. How much does this E beam weapon cost vs a terrorist w/an RPG or mortar? I mean, really, do we think they won't be shooting BACK at us? As to the slickery water hose on sandy roads/areas, easily checked out w/o millions in tests...inexpensive low tech often works just as well as expen$ive high tech to do the job of non-lethal calming of a mob.