Government Report: Non-Lethal Weapons Program A Waste Of Money

April 27th, 2009 (10) Posted By Pat Dollard.

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The Dazzler

Fox News:

The Pentagon’s pain ray? Pointless. The laser dazzler? Lousy. The anti-vehicle slippery foam? Washed out.

That’s the upshot of a highly critical report released last week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and expounded upon by Wired News.

The report found that the Department of Defense’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) has spent $386 million since it was formed in 1996, and created exactly zero useful non-lethal weapons.

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For example, the Active Denial System (ADS) or “pain ray,” which focuses microwaves on a target’s skin to create intense pain without any lasting effect, does work, as several journalists found out when it zapped them during demonstrations a couple of years ago.

But it takes 16 hours for it to warm up, according to the GAO report. It weighs 9 tons. It’s so complicated it can’t be fixed in the field. After spending $55 million, the DoD decided not to deploy it overseas.

But at least the ADS is still being worked on. Two other projects were terminated after a total of $12 million had been spent.

The Mobility Denial System, military-speak for slippery foam that rendered roads impassable, just used too much water while operating. It took 8 years to discover that.

The FN303 Less-Lethal Launching System, a souped-up paintball gun, was heavy and fell apart easily. Nevertheless, it was deployed for a while even though the DoD never figured out how to properly supply the compressed-air canisters the guns needed.

As for laser dazzlers, meant to temporarily blind unruly mobs, the GAO pointed out that those revealed a more systemic problem — some of these “non-lethal” weapons turned out to be pretty damaging overall.

Several GIs had their vision impaired, at least one permanently, when they were accidentally hit by a truck-mounted dazzler.

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  • GregGS

    Non-lethal and weapon in the same sentence is retarded

    • TechnicalDeath

      That’s like having obama and President together.

  • PDizzle

    I’ve used the FN 303 numerous times and was always pleased with it’s performance. I wasn’t supply, but I never heard of any problems finding air canisters for it.

  • Ash

    fuck all this futuristic NERF bullshit. flashbangs, tear gas, tazers, rubber bullets and waterhoses. we’ve had them awhile and the still work better than anything else.

  • Giorgi

    i don’t know, our police loves the FN303, saves the soul from committing a sin

  • ken

    Non lethal is a well disiplined, accurate, shot. End of story.

    • Birdddog

      :beer: :beer:

  • YERMOM

    non lethal weapons are for pussies. Please see the training film posted else where (yesterday) on the effectiveness of our weapons.

  • johnF

    The Marines I talked to who used the green laser dazzlers loved them. And marines aren’t shy about killing when it needs to be done. But pointing a weapon at a moving vehicle doesn’t always get them to stop, sometimes they just don’t notice. It’s better to get the attention by using a laser dazzler than by shooting up a car full of kids. The lasers work much better than the flares.

  • Ty520

    These are the same people (the new Obama administration) who called for the need for non-lethal weapons – this is just another excuse to strip money from the military and move it around to some social program(s).