Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
CBS
March 2, 2008
60 Minutes (CBS), 6:30 PM
STEVE KROFT: Tonight CBS News correspondent David Martin on assignment for 60 Minutes.
DAVID MARTIN: What if we told you the Pentagon has a ray gun? And what if we told you it can stop a person in his tracks without killing or even injuring him? Well, it’s true. You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, but I can tell you firsthand you feel it. And we’re going to show you how it works tonight.
Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq, but it’s still not there. That’s because in the middle of a war, the military just can’t bring itself to trust a weapon that doesn’t kill.
It’s a gun that doesn’t look anything like a gun. It’s that flat dish antenna which shoots out a 100,0000-watt beam at the speed of light, hitting anything in its path with an intense blast of heat.
TESTER: Roger, I’m ready for a 100 percent shot, three seconds on the CLT.
MARTIN: Watch what happens when the electromagnetic beam made up of very high frequency radio waves takes on that black board. The operator uses a joystick to zero in on his target. The effect is instant, but visible only with an infrared camera and seen on this laptop.
TESTER: Engage.
MARTIN: The ray gun fires, and there it is, that flash of white hot energy.
COL. KIRK HYMES: We are now stepping into the Buck Rogers scenario.
MARTIN: Buck Rogers. This is a ray gun.
HYMES: This is, for all intents and purposes, a ray gun.
MARTIN: Colonel Kirk Hymes is in charge of the ray gun which is being tested at Moody Air Force base in South Georgia. The targets here are people. Military volunteers creating a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq. Angry protestors advancing on American troops who have to choose between backing down or opening fire. Off in the distance a half mile away, the operator of the ray gun has the crowd in his sights.
OPERATOR: (From tape.) (Individuals ?), this is your final warning. Leave the area now.
MARTIN: Unlike the soldiers on the ground, he has no qualms about firing away because his weapon won’t injure anyone. He squeezes off a blast. The first shot hits like an invisible punch. The protestors regroup and he fires again, and again. Finally, they’ve had enough. The ray gun drives them away with no harm done.
Officially called the Active Denial System, it does penetrate the body, but just barely.
So what happens when that beam hits me?
HYMES: It’s absorbed in that top layer, 1/64th of an inch, which is about three sheets of paper that you’d find in your printer.
MARTIN: And it’s hitting what inside that 1/64th of an inch?
HYMES: Right within that 64th of an inch is where the nerve endings are.
MARTIN: You have to feel the ray gun to believe it, and there’s only one way to do that. To me, it felt like scalding water. What makes this a weapon like no other is that it makes you instantly stop whatever you’re doing, but the second you get out of the beam the pain vanishes, and as long as it’s being used properly there’s no harm to your body.
SUE PAYTON [Asst Sec. Air Force]: Huge breakthrough. Huge game-changer.
MARTIN: Sue Payton is an assistant secretary of the Air Force and the Pentagon official in charge of buying the ray gun.
PAYTON: We have war fighters that are in harm’s way, and you know they don’t want to kill innocent people. You pick between a bullet or a bullhorn – not a good choice.
MARTIN: Payton’s close encounter with the tray gun was two years ago. She was a big shot from the Pentagon so they dialed down the power of the beam. Payton was having none of that.
PAYTON: Bring it on.
MARTIN: She wanted a full blast, and she got it.
MARTIN: What did you think of the system?
PAYTON: I loved it. I started giggling.
MARTIN: Giggle is not the usual response to pain.
PAYTON: Well, I giggled after I got zapped. And you giggle because you realize that you’re okay, and you realize that it had the effect that we want it to have.
MARTIN: The impulse to run the other way is so strong, anyone who keeps coming has to be considered a threat.
PAYTON: It could be used to read someone’s mind, in effect, because you immediately know what someone’s intention is. If they continue to come at you, then you’re fairly sure they’re not a tourist. They’re probably a terrorist or an adversary who wants to do you harm.
MARTIN: So far the ray gun’s been tested only again make-believe adversaries – protestors whose rage is about as real as the placards they’re carrying. You have to wonder if a more determined enemy could beat the beam.
I’ve got several layers on but the beam is still coming through my clothes, so I’m going to try some shields here. This is a piece of plywood. See how far this gets me.
OPERATOR: Engage.
MARTIN: Oh. It leaves too much of your body exposed. It got me down in my feet. So I’m going to try this mattress here. It’ll cover up more of my body. Okay, let’s see.
OPERATOR: Engage.
MARTIN: No.
OPERATOR: Engage.
MARTIN: It hurts but I – you can keep going.
OPERATOR: Engage, engage.
MARTIN: That’s enough. So that did protect me somewhat, but that’s a half-mile to get to where I’m trying to go, and you kind of give yourself away if you’re walking around with a mattress.
No one gave any thought to using the ray gun when the U.S. first invaded Iraq, but as the invasion turned to occupation American troops started going eyeball-to-eyeball with Iraqis and couldn’t tell who was the enemy and who was just angry. Twenty civilians were killed in April, 2003, when soldiers from the 82nd Airborne fired on threatening crowds in Fallujah. That prompted this email to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from a senior military scientist who know what the ray gun could do. “I am convinced that the tragedy of Fallujah would not have occurred if an Active Denial System had been there.” Days later a three-star general wrote, “Having ADS” – the Active Denial System – “in the field today would impact operations in a very critical way.”
Would this saves lives in Iraq?
PAYTON: It would save huge numbers of lives.
MARTIN: Do you ever look at what’s happening in Iraq and say, we’ve got to get this thing there faster?
PAYTON: Absolutely.
MARTIN: But sending the ray gun to Iraq was, in the words of one Pentagon report, “...not politically tenable...”
Not politically tenable, what does that mean?
PAYTON: Well, unfortunately we have had something called Abu Ghraib.
MARTIN: Abu Ghraib – American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. After these pictures surfaced there was no stomach for even the momentary pain of the ray gun.
PAYTON: You don’t ever, ever, ever want a system like this to be thought of as a torture weapon.
MARTIN: But Sid Heel (ph), a former Marine who has followed the ray gun’s progress for nearly a decade, says the potential for abuse is not what’s holding it up; it’s something else.
SID HEEL: Cowardice.
MARTIN: Cowardice.
HEEL: Yeah. No other way of saying it. You can try to save people’s life with a non-lethal option and fail and it’ll still be noble, but failing to try is cowardly. That is completely unacceptable.
MARTIN: Heel one was one the Marine Corps’ point man for non-lethal weapons. He took them to Somalia in 1995 after America’s ill-fated attempt to relieve the famine there had degenerated into a shooting war.
HEEL: It’s very difficult to make a case for a humanitarian operation if the only way you have of imposing your will is by killing the people you’re sent to protect.
MARTIN: Heel tried to teach Marines to use everything from sticky foam to lasers.
HEEL: I was a bugle in the orchestra. I was playing the same music but it wasn’t sounding the same.
MARTIN: Were they listening to you?
HEEL: A major came up to me and said that the Marine Corps wasn’t overly thrilled with the whole non-lethal concept. And his idea was is that the Marine Corps’ idea of forced escalation went from M-16 to F-16. How many people could we kill and how fast we could do it.
MARTIN: The non-lethal weapons Heel works with at the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department today are no more advanced than what he had in Somalia 13 years ago.
What’s your best stopper here?
HEEL: Sponge grenade.
MARTIN: Sponge grenade.
HEEL: It’s accurate out to ranges that exceed any of our other stuff. You could easily go to 50 yards with this one.
MARTIN: Is that your longest range?
HEEL: Yeah. And matter of fact, that’s the longest range right now anywhere in the world.
MARTIN: Fifty yards?
HEEL: Fifty yards. The stuff that we’re using the field right now is very close range. That’s one of our biggest complaints.
March 2, 2008
60 Minutes (CBS), 6:30 PM
STEVE KROFT: Tonight CBS News correspondent David Martin on assignment for 60 Minutes.
DAVID MARTIN: What if we told you the Pentagon has a ray gun? And what if we told you it can stop a person in his tracks without killing or even injuring him? Well, it’s true. You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, but I can tell you firsthand you feel it. And we’re going to show you how it works tonight.
Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq, but it’s still not there. That’s because in the middle of a war, the military just can’t bring itself to trust a weapon that doesn’t kill.
It’s a gun that doesn’t look anything like a gun. It’s that flat dish antenna which shoots out a 100,0000-watt beam at the speed of light, hitting anything in its path with an intense blast of heat.
TESTER: Roger, I’m ready for a 100 percent shot, three seconds on the CLT.
MARTIN: Watch what happens when the electromagnetic beam made up of very high frequency radio waves takes on that black board. The operator uses a joystick to zero in on his target. The effect is instant, but visible only with an infrared camera and seen on this laptop.
TESTER: Engage.
MARTIN: The ray gun fires, and there it is, that flash of white hot energy.
COL. KIRK HYMES: We are now stepping into the Buck Rogers scenario.
MARTIN: Buck Rogers. This is a ray gun.
HYMES: This is, for all intents and purposes, a ray gun.
MARTIN: Colonel Kirk Hymes is in charge of the ray gun which is being tested at Moody Air Force base in South Georgia. The targets here are people. Military volunteers creating a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq. Angry protestors advancing on American troops who have to choose between backing down or opening fire. Off in the distance a half mile away, the operator of the ray gun has the crowd in his sights.
OPERATOR: (From tape.) (Individuals ?), this is your final warning. Leave the area now.
MARTIN: Unlike the soldiers on the ground, he has no qualms about firing away because his weapon won’t injure anyone. He squeezes off a blast. The first shot hits like an invisible punch. The protestors regroup and he fires again, and again. Finally, they’ve had enough. The ray gun drives them away with no harm done.
Officially called the Active Denial System, it does penetrate the body, but just barely.
So what happens when that beam hits me?
HYMES: It’s absorbed in that top layer, 1/64th of an inch, which is about three sheets of paper that you’d find in your printer.
MARTIN: And it’s hitting what inside that 1/64th of an inch?
HYMES: Right within that 64th of an inch is where the nerve endings are.
MARTIN: You have to feel the ray gun to believe it, and there’s only one way to do that. To me, it felt like scalding water. What makes this a weapon like no other is that it makes you instantly stop whatever you’re doing, but the second you get out of the beam the pain vanishes, and as long as it’s being used properly there’s no harm to your body.
SUE PAYTON [Asst Sec. Air Force]: Huge breakthrough. Huge game-changer.
MARTIN: Sue Payton is an assistant secretary of the Air Force and the Pentagon official in charge of buying the ray gun.
PAYTON: We have war fighters that are in harm’s way, and you know they don’t want to kill innocent people. You pick between a bullet or a bullhorn – not a good choice.
MARTIN: Payton’s close encounter with the tray gun was two years ago. She was a big shot from the Pentagon so they dialed down the power of the beam. Payton was having none of that.
PAYTON: Bring it on.
MARTIN: She wanted a full blast, and she got it.
MARTIN: What did you think of the system?
PAYTON: I loved it. I started giggling.
MARTIN: Giggle is not the usual response to pain.
PAYTON: Well, I giggled after I got zapped. And you giggle because you realize that you’re okay, and you realize that it had the effect that we want it to have.
MARTIN: The impulse to run the other way is so strong, anyone who keeps coming has to be considered a threat.
PAYTON: It could be used to read someone’s mind, in effect, because you immediately know what someone’s intention is. If they continue to come at you, then you’re fairly sure they’re not a tourist. They’re probably a terrorist or an adversary who wants to do you harm.
MARTIN: So far the ray gun’s been tested only again make-believe adversaries – protestors whose rage is about as real as the placards they’re carrying. You have to wonder if a more determined enemy could beat the beam.
I’ve got several layers on but the beam is still coming through my clothes, so I’m going to try some shields here. This is a piece of plywood. See how far this gets me.
OPERATOR: Engage.
MARTIN: Oh. It leaves too much of your body exposed. It got me down in my feet. So I’m going to try this mattress here. It’ll cover up more of my body. Okay, let’s see.
OPERATOR: Engage.
MARTIN: No.
OPERATOR: Engage.
MARTIN: It hurts but I – you can keep going.
OPERATOR: Engage, engage.
MARTIN: That’s enough. So that did protect me somewhat, but that’s a half-mile to get to where I’m trying to go, and you kind of give yourself away if you’re walking around with a mattress.
No one gave any thought to using the ray gun when the U.S. first invaded Iraq, but as the invasion turned to occupation American troops started going eyeball-to-eyeball with Iraqis and couldn’t tell who was the enemy and who was just angry. Twenty civilians were killed in April, 2003, when soldiers from the 82nd Airborne fired on threatening crowds in Fallujah. That prompted this email to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from a senior military scientist who know what the ray gun could do. “I am convinced that the tragedy of Fallujah would not have occurred if an Active Denial System had been there.” Days later a three-star general wrote, “Having ADS” – the Active Denial System – “in the field today would impact operations in a very critical way.”
Would this saves lives in Iraq?
PAYTON: It would save huge numbers of lives.
MARTIN: Do you ever look at what’s happening in Iraq and say, we’ve got to get this thing there faster?
PAYTON: Absolutely.
MARTIN: But sending the ray gun to Iraq was, in the words of one Pentagon report, “...not politically tenable...”
Not politically tenable, what does that mean?
PAYTON: Well, unfortunately we have had something called Abu Ghraib.
MARTIN: Abu Ghraib – American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. After these pictures surfaced there was no stomach for even the momentary pain of the ray gun.
PAYTON: You don’t ever, ever, ever want a system like this to be thought of as a torture weapon.
MARTIN: But Sid Heel (ph), a former Marine who has followed the ray gun’s progress for nearly a decade, says the potential for abuse is not what’s holding it up; it’s something else.
SID HEEL: Cowardice.
MARTIN: Cowardice.
HEEL: Yeah. No other way of saying it. You can try to save people’s life with a non-lethal option and fail and it’ll still be noble, but failing to try is cowardly. That is completely unacceptable.
MARTIN: Heel one was one the Marine Corps’ point man for non-lethal weapons. He took them to Somalia in 1995 after America’s ill-fated attempt to relieve the famine there had degenerated into a shooting war.
HEEL: It’s very difficult to make a case for a humanitarian operation if the only way you have of imposing your will is by killing the people you’re sent to protect.
MARTIN: Heel tried to teach Marines to use everything from sticky foam to lasers.
HEEL: I was a bugle in the orchestra. I was playing the same music but it wasn’t sounding the same.
MARTIN: Were they listening to you?
HEEL: A major came up to me and said that the Marine Corps wasn’t overly thrilled with the whole non-lethal concept. And his idea was is that the Marine Corps’ idea of forced escalation went from M-16 to F-16. How many people could we kill and how fast we could do it.
MARTIN: The non-lethal weapons Heel works with at the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department today are no more advanced than what he had in Somalia 13 years ago.
What’s your best stopper here?
HEEL: Sponge grenade.
MARTIN: Sponge grenade.
HEEL: It’s accurate out to ranges that exceed any of our other stuff. You could easily go to 50 yards with this one.
MARTIN: Is that your longest range?
HEEL: Yeah. And matter of fact, that’s the longest range right now anywhere in the world.
MARTIN: Fifty yards?
HEEL: Fifty yards. The stuff that we’re using the field right now is very close range. That’s one of our biggest complaints.
