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Flashlight Weapon Makes Targets Throw Up |
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Thursday, 09 August 2007 |
It looks like a big flashlight — but it's really a nonlethal
weapon designed to make you sick.
Its inventors call it the LED Incapacitator (L-E-D, as in
light-emitting diode). Weapons buffs call it a nonlethal weapon.
But test subjects who have buckled and reeled from its nauseating
strobe call it other names—none printable.
A flashlight designed to make you nauseatingly ill? What fiendish
minds would invent such a tool? The minds of Bob Lieberman and
Vladimir Rubtsov, president and senior scientist of Intelligent
Optical Systems, Inc., a small R&D company in Torrance, CA.
Under a multiphase contract from the S&T Directorate’s
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Office, with technical
direction from S&T program manager Gerald Kirwin, the two
physicists are refining an ultra-bright, multicolored, pulsing
“lightsaber” that’s more disorienting, dazzling,
and dizzying—though a tad less dangerous—than disco.
It’s enough to make you sick. And that, Lieberman says, is
not always a bad thing.
How does the LED Incapacitator incapacitate? By simultaneously
overwhelming the subject both physiologically (temporarily blinding
him) and psychophysically (disorienting him). A built-in
rangefinder measures the distance to the
nearest pair of eyeballs. Then, a “governor” sets the
output and pulse train (a series of pulses and rests) to a level,
frequency, and duration that are effective, but safe. The colors
and pulses continuously change, leaving no time for the brain or
eyes to adapt. After a few minutes, the effects wear off. The light
could be used to make a bad guy turn away or shut his eyes, giving
authorities enough time to tackle the suspect and apply the cuffs
… all while sparing the lives of passersby, hostages, or
airline passengers. An animated cross section shows how red, green,
and blue LEDs are focused through an optical plate. “There
are often confrontations at border crossings with suspected illegal
aliens or drug runners,” Lieberman says. “You
don’t want to hurt or kill them, just take them into custody.
With this,” he smiles, “they don’t need to know
English to comply.”
 Output and size can
easily be scaled up to fit the need; immobilizing a mob, for
instance, might call for a wide-angle “bazooka”
version. Scaling down is more difficult. At 15 inches long by 4
inches wide, the current prototype is more transportable than
portable. The next-generation weapon must be as short and svelte as
a D-cell Maglite, designed to fit on a duty belt. “Phase 3
will be our shrink phase,” Lieberman says. This fall, in
Phase 2, researchers at Pennsylvania State University will test the
LED Incapacitator on volunteers at the school’s Institute of
Nonlethal Defense Technology. Intelligent Optical Systems will use
the test results to evaluate design features and tweak the
strobe’s pattern and colors. “There’s one
wavelength that gets everybody,” says Lieberman. “Vlad
calls it the evil color.” Further tests are scheduled for the
fall, and production could begin by December. By 2010, the LED
Incapacitator could be in the hands of thousands of policemen,
border agents, and National Guardsmen.
From:
homelandsecurity.org
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