Free Republic

Hours before federal police officers cleared a crowded park near the White House with smoke and tear gas on June 1, the lead military police officer in the Department of Defense for the D.C. region asked if the D.C. National Guard had a kind of military heat ray that might be deployed against demonstrators in the nation's capital, according to one of the most senior National Guard officers on the scene. In written responses to the House Committee on Natural Resources obtained by NPR, Major Adam DeMarco of the D.C. National Guard said he was copied on an email from...

The Active Denial System (ADS) is a non-lethal weapon designed to disperse violent crowds and repel enemies. It uses a focused invisible beam that causes an "intolerable heating sensation", but only penetrates the skin to the equivalent of three sheets of paper. The discomfort causes whoever it's pointed at to immediately start moving away. They often scream but the US military says the chance of injury from the system is 0.1%. It's already been tested more than 11,000 times on around 700 volunteers. Even reporters have faced the heat-ray. Limit deaths Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a US military spokesperson, says...

The gun uses a large dish mounted on a Humvee vehicle The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds. The gun - called Silent Guardian - projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling, but is actually harmless. The beam can be fired as far as 500m (550 yards), much further than existing non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets. The gun should be in use by the US military within three years. The prototype weapon uses a large rectangular...