Revealed: police's new supergun will blast rioters off their feet

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Revealed: police's new supergun will blast rioters off their feet

Sat, 15 Oct 2005 13:13:33 +0100

 

 

 

 

Revealed: police's new supergun will blast rioters off their feet

New generation of microwave and laser weapons set to transform crowd

control techniques

 

Severin Carrell / London Independent | 9th Oct 2005

 

British defence scientists are working on a new generation of weapons

which includes microwaves, lasers and chemical guns that could be used

to quell riots, The Independent on Sunday has found.

 

One highly classified project is to develop a " vortex gun " , for use in

riots, which fires a powerful, doughnut-shaped pulse of air at

supersonic speed. Experts say the weapon could fire riot-control gas

or other chemicals to disperse mobs or disable enemy troops.

 

Scientific Applications & Research Associates, a US firm that has made

such a gun, said it could fire shock waves that hit people " with

enough force to knock them off balance. [it] feels like having a

bucket of cold water thrown on to your chest " . The research involves

putting high-powered lasers and micro- wave weapons on cruise missiles

and planes to " kill " an enemy's own weapons, although these new arms

could be banned under international treaties.

 

A major British defence firm, Qinetiq, formed when the Government

privatised its military testing agency, is understood to be

investigating weapons that use lasers to " dazzle " the enemy, a

technique the US military is now said to be using in Iraq.

 

British defence laboratories are also understood to have tested

crowd-control foams including a much thicker version of the foam used

to fight aircraft fires and another " sticky " foam that immobilises

people caught in it.

 

These weapons are part of a taxpayer-funded, fast-expanding, secret

programme of research by military laboratories and private defence

firms into so-called non-lethal weapons.

 

The drive to find such weaponry sprang from attempts to replace the

baton rounds, known as plastic bullets, which were heavily criticised

in Chris Patten's report into policing in Northern Ireland in the late

1990s. Police now have a far wider range of " non-lethal weapons " ,

including safer baton rounds, CS gas, Taser stun guns, pepper spray

and, in Northern Ireland, water cannon.

 

Modern technologies have also made it much easier to create new arms,

and Britain has a joint programme to develop military non-lethal

weapons with the US, which is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars

into research.

The high-powered microwave weapon is part of a British programme

code-named Virus, run by a little-known department of the Ministry of

Defence (MoD) called the Deep Target Attack directorate. The weapon

fires a powerful pulse of microwaves to completely or temporarily

knock out equipment such as computers, radar or guidance systems.

 

The lasers, which could be fitted on aircraft or unmanned aircraft

called drones, would be aimed at an enemy's electronic sensors and

disable radar-guided anti-aircraft batteries.

 

A report by Canada's defence research agency, released by the Sunshine

Project, a US-based group that investigates military research, says

the UK is " one of the main players " in the world in investigating

weapons using high-powered micro-waves, along with the US, France and

Russia.

 

This revelation surprised Neil Davison, head of a research programme

into non-lethal weapons at Bradford University. He said the MoD had a

track record of secrecy over its research programme.

 

" We know the British armed forces have an active programme to find new

non-lethal weapons and the UK is working closely with the United

States, but the details of that collaborative arrangement are not

openly available, " he said.

 

Many of these techniques could be highly controversial, particularly

the use of lasers to temporarily blind an opponent. Britain was forced

to abandon high-powered lasers to dazzle jet pilots, a technique

allegedly used during the Falklands War, because it contravened new

global rules outlawing devices designed to permanently disable

combatants or cause someone to crash a plane.

 

Mark Fulop, head of the bio-medical sciences department at the MoD's

main defence research agency, confirmed that there is an extensive

programme to find new non-lethal weapons. That included the vortex

gun, which tests showed could be effective fired up to 48m from a

target. " But it is a long way from being practical, " he said. " We're

watching to see what others are doing. "

 

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