Airman burned in Ga. ray-gun test
MOODY AIR FORCE BASE - An airman suffered second-degree burns during an evaluation of a non-lethal heat-ray gun this week in south Georgia, officials said.
The injured airman was taken to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta after the incident Wednesday. He was not identified.
Second-degree burns can cause pain and superficial blisters. Burn Center spokeswoman Beth Frits said the airman was in good condition and expected to be released Friday.
He is a member of the 820th Security Forces Group, based at Moody Air Force Base, near Valdosta, which is evaluating the space-age weapon, known as the Active Denial System.
It fires an electromagnetic beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.
Apart from creating a terrifying sensation, the technology is supposed to be a harmless, non-lethal way to disrupt riots or persuade enemies to drop their weapons.
The 820th, which has had numerous missions to Afghanistan and Iraq, will evaluate the system for about a year, but the weapon is not expected to go into production until at least 2010.
During the first media demonstration in January at the base, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios that U.S. troops might encounter in war zones.
The device's two-man crew located their targets through telephoto lenses and fired beams from more than 500 yards away - nearly 17 times the range of existing non-lethal weapons, such as rubber bullets.
The weapon uses millimeter wave technology, which is supposed to penetrate no deeper than 1-64th of an inch of skin, causing discomfort but no injuries.
During its 12 years of development, the Active Denial System has been tested on more than 600 volunteers with more than 10,400 exposures and only one other injury - a second-degree burn - requiring medical attention, officials said.
Sarah Fullwood, spokeswoman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at Quantico, Va., said the incident at Moody is being investigated and the evaluation has been put on hold until that is completed.
http://tinyurl.com/2dhezk
The injured airman was taken to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta after the incident Wednesday. He was not identified.
Second-degree burns can cause pain and superficial blisters. Burn Center spokeswoman Beth Frits said the airman was in good condition and expected to be released Friday.
He is a member of the 820th Security Forces Group, based at Moody Air Force Base, near Valdosta, which is evaluating the space-age weapon, known as the Active Denial System.
It fires an electromagnetic beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.
Apart from creating a terrifying sensation, the technology is supposed to be a harmless, non-lethal way to disrupt riots or persuade enemies to drop their weapons.
The 820th, which has had numerous missions to Afghanistan and Iraq, will evaluate the system for about a year, but the weapon is not expected to go into production until at least 2010.
During the first media demonstration in January at the base, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios that U.S. troops might encounter in war zones.
The device's two-man crew located their targets through telephoto lenses and fired beams from more than 500 yards away - nearly 17 times the range of existing non-lethal weapons, such as rubber bullets.
The weapon uses millimeter wave technology, which is supposed to penetrate no deeper than 1-64th of an inch of skin, causing discomfort but no injuries.
During its 12 years of development, the Active Denial System has been tested on more than 600 volunteers with more than 10,400 exposures and only one other injury - a second-degree burn - requiring medical attention, officials said.
Sarah Fullwood, spokeswoman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at Quantico, Va., said the incident at Moody is being investigated and the evaluation has been put on hold until that is completed.
http://tinyurl.com/2dhezk
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Moody AFB has got to be cursed. The last time I heard about them in the news, it was when two Blue Angels pilots crashed and were killed while practicing for a show down there in 97. The sad thing for me is I met those guys only a few weeks earlier at a show up here in Ft. Wayne. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by buschmaster
if you lob some kind of paint onto its reflector dish to make it nonreflective to MW, it couldn't reflect and focus the beam, so it would be rendered useless.
So a paintball gun with some special "paint" would work here.0 -
if you could coat enough of the dish with the paint, yeah 0
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