Posted on 08/10/2011 10:33:04 PM PDT by 11th_VA
Raytheon microwave 'ray gun' directs unbearable heat on the skin from a 2km distance and is specifically designed for crowd dispersal
What has Raytheon, the USA company that made radar equipment for yachts, got in common with sci-fi riot control?
Two years ago the UK Ministry of Defence's Strategic Trends depicted an alarming futuristic scenario in which middle-class radicals could engage in revolutionary activity with violent 'flashmobs', threatening the authorities with lawless disorder.
There are growing signs that these predictions may turn true. Remember the Greek riots following the police shooting of a teenager? Recently, police confronted demonstrators protesting deteriorating economic conditions and political corruption in Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria. There have been smaller demonstrations in Spain, Turkey, Denmark and Italy.
'These disturbances are another consequence of the bursting of the speculative capitalist bubble and the illusion of unlimited prosperity that once sustained it,' says journalist Matthew Carr.
The US military sees the modern city as the battleground of the 21st century. Now it's reported that the Pentagon is experimenting with an array of weapons, including the Active Denial System (ADS), a microwave 'ray gun' designed by Raytheon, which directs unbearable heat on the skin from a 2km distance and is specifically designed for crowd dispersal.
Other ongoing projects include acoustic devices and Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs) which hurl plasma at crowds, causing 'pain and temporary paralysis'. These weapons were originally intended for the urban battlegrounds of the Third World. 'But if Barack Obama fails to reactivate the ailing US economy, they may well find themselves deployed in the United States,' writes Carr.
'The news from Wall Street that US financiers awarded themselves a staggering $18.4bn in bonuses in 2008 hardly helps the new president's cause.'
Next time your switch on your Raytheon radar, watch out!
Good one and like some governments; etc didn’t give them a nudge.
Who needs a ray gun for crowd control when you’ve got Brown Note in your arsenal?
I read an article on the history of the cooking microwave. Seems after WWII they had all sorts of radars laying around, and tried to figure out a way to sell them. Modified them to use to heat food. The first microwave ovens were large and bulky. But could cook an entire roast in something like 20 seconds!
bflr
Raytheon trademarked the name “Radarange” in 1948. They were originally called induction ovens, and were mostly used in large industrial kitchens. Raytheon purchased Amana in 1967 to introduce microwave ovens to homes. The original home microwaves were still heavy and large and cost about $700 in 1969. People critized Raytheon when competitors overtook them in sales, but as Tom Phillips said at the time, Raytheon took all the money there was to be made in microwave ovens. Nowadays, they are low margin commidity items.
The “story” is that when Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer (who grew up in the back woods of Maine and had an eighth grade education) noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket melted near a microwave test set up, the idea of the microwave oven occured to him. The first test followed the same day when he tried successfully to pop corn with a microwave.
While Spencer is remembered for the microwave oven, he made another, perhaps even more significant innovation. When the Tizard Scientific commission arrived from England with Britians inventions, seeking American help to manufacture them, the first place they landed was in Boston, where they were greeted by President Roosevelt’s science advisor, and Raytheon founding director, Vannevar Bush (no relation to other Bushs). An English engineer had a magnetron in a brief case chained to his arm. Spencer was allowed to take it home and examine it. He returned the next day, and proposed that instead of machining it out of a single piece of metal, they stamp copper sheets, stack them and machine the remaining cavity smooth. The idea worked beautifully, and Raytheon wound up producing over half of all magnetrons produced during World War II. The multicavity magnetron was a decisive weapon in World War II, allowing the Allies to make higher frequency, wider bandwidth and smaller sets than the Germans or Japanese. (The Germans and Japanese eventually reverse engineered captured sets, but never in enough quantity to have any bearing on the War.) The U.S. spent more money on radar and radar development than on the Manhattan Project, although the Germans spent more money on V-Waffen than the Americans spent on the Manhattan Project.
The original R6σ project!
Eventually to be deployed against people in the US.......
zombie ray gun for the zombie riots.
“Death ray? Fiddlesticks! It doesn’t even slow them down.”
No way. There were no view graphs and the product would have been rolling off the production line about the same time that Japanese were setting up an administrative government in Honolulu.
Thanks for the story - Raytheon has been around for awhile!
I recall another story on how the Brits would use various ways of not letting the Germans know they had radar so early on in the war - and helped them win the Battle of Britian. I forget what they were though, but perhaps things like having a single “scout” plane that would just happen to cross paths with the incoming Germans, perhaps letting some through, etc.
The British breakthrough was the multicavity magnetron, an improvement on the single cavity magnetron developed by General Electric prior to the War. This was the device that Spencer improved the manufacturability of. The Germans had examples of the magnetron as early as 1942 and knew they were being used in airborne radar sets to hunt submarines. They countered by applying radar absorbing materials to the hulls of submarines, in other words, they invented stealth. By 1942, the Germans were up to their eyebrows in the war with Russia and did not have the time or resources to implement a program to utilize microwave radar. The German search radars operating at UHF, the Freya and Riese Freya, are still counted as the best search radars of the War. After the War, a Riese Freya was adapted as a radio telescope at the University of Manchester's Jorell Banks observatory, being the first serious radio telescope in the world.
“This was the device that Spencer improved the manufacturability of.”
Thanks. In reading your earlier post I thought of this one guy and his one idea - and how critical it was. Stuff like that always makes me wonder. How one relatively unknown man, or one fairly simple idea can change history.
A long time ago a guy at our church passed away. It wasn’t until his memorial service that I found out about how interesting he was. He had worked at Bell Labs and developed the touch tone key pad. And in (or before) WWII he had developed radar-ranging gear for the ships. His name was Lorentz (or something like that).
His son is a doctor and told how he was giving a talk, and afterwards some old doctor came up and asked him if he was related to the “Lorentz(?) radar” - and he said yes - that is my dad. The old guy asked if he was still alive (he was). “You give him a big thanks for me and thousands of other sailors - that radar saved so many lives in WWII”. I guess using the radar we could get the first hit with one shot, while the japs would need a couple shots to narrow in on the range.
The power of one man - sort of like the movie “Its a Wonderful Life”.
Kind of a strange article for “Yachting Monthly” don’t ya think?
Them there big yachts have some nice radar, so it might be of interest to the younger folks to read some history.
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