U.S. Marines Request Airborne Death Ray; Seek ‘Psychological’ Edge by Roasting Foes with Laser
December 6th, 2007Via: Wired:
Exactly one year ago today, the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq signed off on an “urgent operational need” for an airborne tactical laser that could, in the words of the formal request, create “instantaneous burst-combustion of insurgent clothing, a rapid death through violent trauma, and more probably a morbid combination of both.”
Although the request is based on the technology of the Advanced Tactical Laser, a chemical laser integrated on an AC-130 gunship, the request suggests that a laser weapon could eventually be put on other aircraft, such as drones or, as the picture shows, the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor craft.
According to the Marines’ laser request, obtained by DANGER ROOM, this so-called Precision Airborne Standoff Directed Energy Weapon (PASDEW) wouldn’t just be an improved killed machine. It would also have particularly devastating psychological effects. Such weapons, when used against people, “can be compared to long range blow torches or precision flame throwers, with corresponding psychological advantages for [Coalition Forces] CF.”
In other words, the lasers don’t just kill people, but they kill people in really gruesome, frightening ways — particularly because the beam from such weapons, like the Advanced Tactical Laser, is invisible to the human eye. That means you could have three guys standing around, and one of them suddenly burst into flames.
The only thing missing from this article is the phrase “weapons of terror.”
This is a nice match with the part of the Tom Bearden article at the link to the death of Arie DeGeus that discusses how such an assassination, if it was one, could have been accomplished.
I’m sure that as soon as innocent civilians are roasted we’ll hear the usual “faulty intelligence”, or some other rot gut excuse to paint the victims as being in the wrong place at the wrong time… never mind that the damn weapon should never have been used in the first place.