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March 2010 · Previous · Next   PDF

The soft-kill solution:

New frontiers in pain compliance

By Ando Arike

Not long ago, viewers of CBS’s 60 Minutes were treated to an intriguing bit of political theater when, in a story called “The Pentagon’s Ray Gun,” a crowd of what seemed to be angry protesters confronted a Humvee with a sinister-looking dish antenna on its roof. Waving placards that read world peace, love for all, peace not war, and, oddly, hug me, the crowd, in reality, was made up of U.S. soldiers playacting for the camera at a military base in Georgia. Shouting “Go home!” they threw what looked like tennis balls at uniformed comrades, “creating a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq,” explained correspondent David Martin: “angry protesters advancing on American troops, who have to choose between backing down or opening fire.” Fortunately—and this was the point of the story—there is now another option, demonstrated when the camera cut to the Humvee, where the “ray gun” operator was lining up the “protesters” in his crosshairs. Martin narrated: “He squeezes off a blast. The first shot hits them like an invisible punch. The protesters regroup, and he fires again, and again. Finally they’ve had enough. The ray gun drives them away with no harm done.” World peace would have to wait.

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SEE ALSO: Anti-globalization movement; Civil rights movements; Government policy; History, Military; Los Angeles; Los Angeles (Calif.); Nonlethal weapons; Operation Restore Hope, 1992-1993; Physiological effect; Protest movements; Riot control; Riots; Seattle; Social control; Television and politics; Tiananmen Square Incident, 1989; Urban warfare; Waco Branch Davidian Disaster, Tex., 1993; Washington (State)

Response: May 2010, page 8

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