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" A crowd control weapon? Are we going to be controlling crowds in Iraq? Or using non lethal weapons against terrorist?"

Same question. Personally I think this is a joke. Where does one aim the weapon at? An exposed hand, face, head, perhaps a foot that is in an open sandal. How does one focus on an exposed part within a crowd of "hopped up wildmen". Are they going to stand still, so that you can warm their big toe? If so, what do you do when they quickly step aside from the beams mommentary heating action, pull an AK47 from their overdress and nail you?

This is a joke at best. And on the serious side, good Lord be with our guys as they have to use the weapon instead of having their standard combat rifle in hand.

If the DOD buys into this one, then I am really going to start wondering. Perhaps Raytheon's CEO should be amoung the first group to stand in Sadr city and quality test his companies heat gun on an angry crowd of hop heads. Then lets see if he feels his company spent R&D monies wisely on this product. OK for police control in America perhaps. But the police in downtown LA are not going to typically be carrying military weapons as is required in Iraq.

What the hell is going on with the DOD?

Then this article quote: "This is where the future is going,'' Raytheon Chief Executive William Swanson, 55, said at a conference in Tucson, Ariz., where he introduced the weapon to investors Wednesday. "This is the ability to protect our troops, and we're talking about the speed of light."

What is wrong with people are they that frigen STUPID!
I can't take this shit much longer! Really.
THINK what is being said.
A heat beam which must be well aimed at an explosed part and held for a given duration shoots out a beam of energy. The beam must be held at the point of exposer or the pain goes away almost immediately. So in effect unless a soldier will be able to continue to hold the beam on target, the person will of course just stand still and let their toe stay hot,
this weapon will nothing to break up a wild group of rag heads. It will take them perhaps two or three minutes to realize it is a joke, it stings a bit, so I move my foot then charge the soldier with a knife or pull out a nine millimeter pistol and shoot him in the face. What is the American soldier going to do......duck as I shoot at him with my pistol...........hee hee he only has this useless
heat gun to fire back at me.
I don't know folks......................things are getting very very weird.

As for the future yea..........just like when in the sixties we stopped equiping our main line jets fighters with gun plateforms............remember folks........the defense contractors and idiots like McNamara said the future is in AA missile plateforms the days of dogfigting is over, you stand back and fire a radar guided missile at your enemy. Then NAM came along. MiGs 17,19,21 keep shooting down our F4's, A4's, F105 etc.. Then the Navy almost to late woke up and started Top Gun. The next generation fleet air superiority fleet aircraft contained once again a gun plateform.

It is a never ending battle between idiots gaining control of commen sense issues that so dearly effect how safe and well equiped military personel are. Glad I don't have to be one of those poor soldiers or Marines that will have to replace their M4 with this stupid heat gun! Well maybe it will replace the need for a Zipo lighter to light their cigars and cigs with.

I don't think that is what it is intended for, a replacement for lethal force. This isn't a weapon used in combat, in this configuration. It is a weapon for crowd control. As such I think it would be a valuable addition.
For example, on the news you see the mullah whipping up a crowd. This unarmed crowd then stomps around with the portrait of whoever or the signs with Yankee go home. To disperse this crowd a conventional soldier has...what? Al Jazeera/CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN all have cameras waiting to show us for the jackboots we are. They live for that Michael Moore- Kent State moment.
War is fought with more than weapons. It is also fought with politics. We militarily won the Vietnam war and lost it at the same time to the leftist press. We beat ourselves. If we have another tool to enforce the peace, great. I am all for it. You don't use this thing in Fallujah, you use it at the street protest in Baghdad. Or the world trade summit in Seattle. The basic rules of engagement are always engage lethal force with lethal force of a greater degree. I don't see anything in this argument to counter that principal. What I see is a better way to control a non lethal force encounter.

Where does one aim the weapon at? An exposed hand, face, head, perhaps a foot that is in an open sandal. How does one focus on an exposed part within a crowd of "hopped up wildmen". Are they going to stand still, so that you can warm their big toe? If so, what do you do when they quickly step aside from the beams mommentary heating action, pull an AK47 from their overdress and nail you?

The beam is much broader than your musings imply. They can't just step out of the beam. They have get far away from the source. Still they could probalby manage to run towards you and set off their bomb belt. Although the closer they got, the hotter they would feel. They could not even manage spray and pray with an AK.