Project Sheriff

Pain Ray, Sonic Blaster, Laser Dazzler - All in One

Ok now I know there has been several stories on this project last year, but now it looks like the weapon will go to Iraq and fight.

I just love the quote, 2nd paragraph below.

"quote"

For example, if a convoy led by a Project Sheriff vehicle was moving through an urban area, a crowd may form to divert the convoy into an “ambush zone,”

"If they try and deflect the beams then we will kill them, because we know what their intentions are"

For a while, now, I've been hearing about the Defense Department's plans to outfit a fighting vehicle with a pain ray, a sonic blaster, and a laser dazzler, too. I never figured they'd actually send the thing to Iraq, though.

Project Sheriff, I assumed, would just be the military equivalent of a concept car -- a chance to see if some whiz-bang gear really worked together.

www.defensetech.org...

I'm not suprised by this...Ths US military actualy has done a lot of "in the field" tests in Iraq. Theres no better place to test out your new gear then a place that you allready occupy, and have daily skirmishes.

That paragraph was funny though.

**ATTENTION ALL IRAQI TERRORIST**
If the US shoot a pain beam at you...Dont grab a big mirror and point it at them.

SIRR1,

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Pain Ray, Sonic Blaster, Laser Dazzler - All in One
>>

In reading a little bit of the background pages, I noticed immediately what psyops personnel call 'Juxtaposition of Contradiction'.

Namely:

1. These weapons 'are like bringing a knife to a gun fight'. When in point of truth, the imagery of that illustration is one of comparing that of not being able to engage an opponent as an equal when you cannot reach him before he kills you. Rather than being overrun by such an enemy because you 'can't scare him enough'. Such is a dangerous manipulation of perception to play with when in fact, commercially available dazzling lasers pose a permanent blindness threat to at least 3-5km and can 'dazzle' at 10, While ADS has a range on the order of at least 1.5 klicks and even the auditory blaster is _specifically_ stated to have a reach of at least 300 yards-

Ear Splitter
www.defensetech.org...

Because these are not weapons systems which replace the rifle in a close-in confrontation, they are _non discriminatory_ 'group modification' systems that EXCEED the range of any aimed ballistic fires. And so remove the choice between confrontationalism and yielded ground altogether.

2. 'I would rather shoot a man in the knee with a pistol than be weighed down with a non-lethal weapons system'.

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www.defensetech.org...
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Another range misnomer in that, if you shoot a man in the knee, you have to worry about multiple 'situational ethic' conditional modifiers as to how you got there as much as what the outcome will be.
a. How close can you be to make the shot happen without a miss?
b. Does a man crippled but not dead incite the crowd?
c. Does the bullet hit a major artery and leave him to bleed out, screaming, while you look like you did it for sport?
d. Does the bullet cripple a man whose only skills are manual and so can no longer work? Is this 'better a beggar than a corpse' a noble thing?
e. If the bullet DOES hit and goes through and/or 'skips' off the ground behind will it strike a child in the face? A man already on the ground?
f. Why are you carrying a 12-15 shot pistol in a situatation where your rifle is both a better club and a more-rounds-onboard killer if it 'comes to it'?
g. If 'taking prisoners' makes the problem go away, why have Iraqi attacks in both rate and intensity, not gone down? Are you just creating a jail-filler scenario or are you in fact handing these people over to Abu Ghraib conditions where 'bring on the pain ray' has a whole new meaning?

All of which has NOTHING to do with LTL (Less Than Lethal) DEW (Directed Energy Weapons System) technology or the choices by which it is good, bad or indifferent.

Which is why using psyops techniques on your own people is a highly dangerous distractory element in a society based on RAPID assimilation of data to find the truth.

Indeed, what these two examples truly illustrate is how a fundamentally human aversion to harming our own, instinctively present in all but the 'specially trained' leads to an often counterproductive "Fear itself" avoidance of the larger issues underneath any given dispute, solely to stave off the immediate consequences of a potentially lethal encounter.

Put another way-

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"...Learn more ways to preserve rather than destroy. Avoid rather than check. Check rather than hurt. Hurt rather than maim. Maim rather than kill. For all life is precious nor can any be replaced."
>>

As a /marketing tool/ is the noose by which you trap the ignorant into a 'system of systems' justified by an initially incomplete as much as faulty choice to (obviously) avoid lasting harm.

Without revealing how you have /confused the issue/ by not employing the real argument.

That of engagement.

Engagement has many definitions but in certain military circles and throughout the diplomatic community it means to support an act or a person with entitlements and priveleges by which interactive communication can be assured. It is commonly expressed as "So that when the phone rings /someone/ always picks up..."

Less Lethal Weapons Tech are designed to avoid the need for 'engagement' by taking away the specific 'was it worth it' relevance of the act as a lethal one.

It further serves to alleviate guilt by 'spreading it around' so that none suffer particular distress that their fellows are not already receiving ("They are guilty because they are standing next to the one getting it rather than _I_ am guilty because I am attacking an individual while they bear witness...." Ain't psychology wonderful?). Never questioning whether, the will of the many REINFORCES their right to deny the few who would control them. Something we live and die for here.

And the whole sorry excuse for this approach to incidental justification is wrapped up in a final pretty bow which comes down to 'if only'.

'If only' You wouldn't attack me.

Because here I am, on your land and you are instinctively territorial while I am deliberately in search of what you own.

Leading to- 'If only' You would let me move freely among you.

The only force with weapons able to instill order, in your disorganized land. While I continue to take what I need.

And ending with-

'If only' you will _accept my will_ as guidance to your /everyday presence/ as much as deliberate behavior.'

On what is no longer your land. But mine.

Again, _WITHOUT ENGAGEMENT_.

No blood to mark the event as a permanent historical declaration of intent through consequence (deniability).

No recognizeable face to haunt the user with memory of his own actions (detachability).

No reason to the act (justifiability) beyond a very inflexible self-determinative ROE of //immediate threat posed//. Why are they there rather than why are we.

Where deeper meanings derived from blatant consequences from sometimes confrontational acts are how we grow and adapt as a cognitively driven society. This is very shakey ground.

If the Brits had had LTL technology on Boston Commons, there might not have been a successful Revolution.

If the Nazi's had had such a 'humane' mechanism for crowd control they might not have had the 10% suicide rate and 50% daily excused duty no-show factor in the Einsatz Battalions. And so might have killed even more Jews without having to clog up the rails bringing them /out/ of the East. Leaving more trains for military supplies.

Let me add some basic 'other elements' to your understanding.

In addition to it's use as a pure weapon, we are working on a sound derived technology which uses the mastoid bones like a tuning fork or the combiner on a heads up display to 'project voices' inside a person's skull.

Voices which only s/he can hear.

These voices are utterly undetectable at a conscious level and quite 'pointably specific' in their targeting, simply because you are using select frequencies and wave patterns that recombine only in a narrow swath or even -within- a target object.

Stand outside the swath and they cancel each other out. So you feel not even a vibration.

Stand within it and God Speaks Just To You.

To get this system operational, you need only gain acceptance of it's precursor, The Sound Cannon, as a 'merciful' alternative to hardkill weaponry.

A 'moderator' which sees no faces.

Because it can fire to distances and cover area target zones beyond human ability to individually resolve them.

An 'inhibitor' which is currently for information purposes only (Of course why it is stationed outside the Republic Convention in New York instead of some bunker in Iraq. Like getting a horse used to a saddle by laying it over the stall.).

Yet a ultimate a system which uses 150 decible blasts (a jackhammer is only 120) to transmit it's 'information', 4 blocks downrange.

What happens when someone's ear drum explodes in a 'tragic misfire' as they blunder into the beam only 200ft away?

Do you promise a 'fix is already in the works and we've spent too much to stop now'?

As an excuse to replace the cannon with multiwave 'surround sound' sources that use a lot less total energy and provide a 'sonographic' 3D coverage overlay.

If you have, do you now have the /hardware/ baseline by which to deliver a whisper whose message is whatever you want, consciously or otherwise, on a software-change fait de accompl basis?

A bleak oppressive future prejustified RIGHT NOW because these sound systems 'are far too valuable as less than lethal weapons' to /save lives/ and guilt for our troops fighting in Iraq.

The lasting implication being not one of herding cattle along 'specific protest routes'. Or away from trained killers who signed on the dotted line.

But of suggesting that the protestors don't want to argue at all.

At which point there is no reason to be human because we can no longer electively if not objectively, choose our fates.

CONCLUSION:
****Do Not Trust**** what your officially elected mouthpiece tells you. Because you don't know what the military has failed to tell him. Nor take for granted what you read in little 'sound byte' snippets of incomplete technical reports that the military in turn profers up to say that these LTLs are 'safe'. Because the Intel or Industrial cooperative which paid for the development of the device in question may have had a different potential application in mind than that which the military patsy-X with a staff college degree in middle management skills signed on for.

Take a moment and decide for yourself whether-

A. It's better to 'know' your opponent so that in overcoming your fear of killing him or he you, you can DECIDE if the risk and the gore of full lethality systems is worth the sick-at-stomach feeling that prolonged war with them brings.

B. If a unilateral 'executive decision' which takes unacknowledge operations outside our division of powers safety net in bringing 'intel gathering' INSIDE the U.S. for use AGAINST IT'S PEOPLE. Is the hallmark of a government that deserves even more power to do things which you may not know about. Because you physically cannot detect it being done.

C. If the imagery of the Death Camps is sadder because it represents man's unrestrained impulse to slaughter his fellow man no matter how weak or innocent. Or because it shows how, 'with a little suggestion' we are able to fool ourselves into following along with the herd, right into the gas showers.

IMO, in the end, it is the last effector which is the most dangerous. Because in a society which has all the modcons and very little hard struggle for a subsistence style existence. Where worrying about larger issues we cannot change seems a waste of effort because 'we never know all the things going into the decision' (since our keepers do not tell us).

We have very little conservative activist reason to stand up and say "Whoa now, didn't they volunteer to risk death? Is their death not buying my freedom, by -their- choice? Do I REALLY know you well enough to grant you this power, even potentially, over me?"

This too has a physiologic basis in science as dulled (unexercised in the most literal sense) psychomotor brain function also lowers the resistance to improper 'reprint' of our cognitive neural functions and makes us far too trusting. Far too accepting. Far to willing to just go with the flow.

Yet not even the basest feral predator would prefer to be tortured unto safety rather than confronted with an imminent threat it /might/ overcome.

While 2,000lb cattle are run up abatoir chutes all the time on the basis of ingrained 'negative inducement' from a simple shock prod wielded by a 160lb man.

Less Than Lethal Directed Energy Weapons Systems could easily prove to be the same doom encouragers for us. At many levels not mentioned in these briefs.


KPl.

The Sheriff sounds cool, but do they actually need it now? You always hear about IEDs killing troops, and not protesters killing troops.

You always hear about IEDs killing troops, and not protesters killing troops.

We have to win the “hearts and minds”, its all BS I know, but it keeps certain groups happy. I rather think getting a sun tan is a lot better then getting a cap popped in your A

[edit on 2-2-2006 by WestPoint23]

The US cannot reach a satisfactory outcome in Iraq without winning hearts and minds, but unless they put a lot more effort into it, this initiative could be a real disaster in many ways.

Given that Sheriff can be used as an effective a mobile torture unit capable of inflicting pain on civilians at will, it had better be used extremely careful. Otherwise it's going to be a rather handy recruiting tool for the insurgents.