Growing Threat of Non Lethal Weapons including Laser Dazzlers and Tasers employed by Military and Security to disorient, temporary blind or set to fire the adversaries

Recently the Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), especially laser DEWs are being developed as non lethal weapons. DEW is a system  that uses Directed Energy primarily as a means to incapacitate, damage, disable or destroy enemy equipment, facilities and/or personnel. Directed energy has the potential to yield cost effective weapons that can deliver precise, scalable effects – and at long ranges – with a large magazine capacity. Several DEW technologies that have shown promise include high power micro and millimeter wave, and lasers of various kinds (solid-state, chemical, fiber), both airborne and ground.

 

The US Department of Defense (DoD) defines non-lethal weapons (NLWs) as weapons, devices, and munitions that are explicitly designed—and primarily employed—to immediately incapacitate targeted personnel or materiel, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property in the target area or environment.

 

Dazzle gun is a type of laser weapon which uses green light to disorient and temporary blind the pirates. The concentrated blast of green light can be used during both day and night. Dazzlers emit infrared or invisible light against various electronic sensors, and visible light against humans, when they are intended to cause no long-term damage to eyes. The emitters are usually lasers, making what is termed a laser dazzler. Most of the contemporary systems are man-portable, and operate in either the red (a laser diode) or green (a diode-pumped solid-state laser, DPSS) areas of the electromagnetic spectrum. The green laser is chosen for its unique ability to react with the human eye. The green laser is less harmful to human eyes.

 

The security forces fighting urban warfare desire scalable effect weapons for personal incapitation, that subdue and/or incapacitate ( not kill) single or multiple targets in closed or open environments. Weapons are also required for vehicle interdiction that could stop/disable moving vehicle, up to high rates of speed, without harming vehicle occupants. Such weapons are also called Non lethal Weapons.

 

Non-lethal weapons fill gaps between verbal warnings and lethal force. Security forces use these non-lethal weapons to deter hostile crowds. They have been urgently needed and used by U.S. forces in Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti. They have been found useful in disaster management like in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where non-lethal weapons were used when riots occurred at food distribution sites. The need for non-lethal weapons is also increasing for the maritime environment where terrorists used small boats as the asymmetric weapon of choice, indistinguishable in heavily trafficked littorals.

 

In 2018 there have been at least four incidents in which US service members have been targeted with military-grade or non military-grade lasers originating near a Chinese military installation in Djibouti, according to The Wall Street Journal. There have also been additional incidents occurring within US Pacific Command. In one of the most recent incidents, two C-130 pilots became dizzy and saw “rings,” but are recovering, The Journal reported.

 

Since 2015, China has had at least four different kinds of blinding laser weapons: the BBQ-905 Laser Dazzler Weapon, the WJG-2002 Laser Gun, the PY132A Blinding Laser Weapon and the PY131A Blinding Laser Weapon. The four weapons “look like oversized assault rifles or shoulder-fired grenade launchers,” according to The War Zone, which possibly violate the United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons that Beijing signed in 1998, according to the Free Beacon.

 

U.S. Marine Corps is developing a crowd control device which can neutralise huge crowds from thousands of feet away and send them into a daze and even vaporise skin, as Sean Martin reports in The Express.

 

Weapons designed to cause permanent blindness are banned by the 1995 United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. The dazzler is a non-lethal weapon intended to cause temporary blindness or disorientation and therefore falls outside this protocol.