The American military has developed a new heat wave gun. This is part of their ongoing push towards developing a generation of non-lethal weapons. So why aren't we using it? It's not for tactical reasons:
Washington fears a barrage of adverse publicity in the suspicious Muslim world and is concerned that critics will claim the invisible beam weapons were being used for torture.
Now the US military directorate charged with developing non-lethal weapons, which has invested more than a decade developing the Active Denial System (ADS), has launched a concerted effort to convince both the public and its own bosses at the defence department of the device's merits.
"With brand new technology like this, perception is everything," said Col Kirk Hymes, a former Marine artillery officer who heads the directorate.
Can't you just imagine Truman refusing to use the A-bomb out of fears of Japanese conspiracy theories? (Now don't get me wrong, the Muslim world is, unfortunately, filled with such conspiracy theories. Just read this article by Daniel Pipes for an example.)
That being said, what kind of twilight zone are we in? Will our military really eschew the use of weapons that will both protect our military while making sure that they don't have to cause unnecessary deaths to do so because we're afraid of a conspiracy theory?
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