-Caveat Lector-
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993749
Electric shock weapons could go wireless
19:00 21 May 03
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
A weapon that delivers a debilitating electric shock to its victim
without the need for wires is being developed in Germany.
New Scientist has seen video stills of a prototype of the
"Plasma-Taser" in action during firing-range tests. The pictures were shown
at the European Symposium on Non-Lethal Weapons in Karlsruhe, Germany, two
weeks ago.
In the first image, a spray of dark gas is seen approaching a
human-sized target. In the next, taken a fraction of a second later, there
is a lightning-like flash of electrical discharge intended to incapacitate
the targeted person.
The Plasma-Taser, developed by defence company Rheinmetall W&M in
Ratingen, is similar to the Taser weapon used by US police forces. In an
ordinary Taser, a pair of darts are fired at a target from a distance of
about seven metres, and a high-voltage electrical pulse is delivered through
lightweight metal cables to the darts. The 50,000-volt electric shock stuns
the intruder by temporarily shutting down their nervous system.
"Pain and spasms"
The Plasma-Taser will not need any wires because it fires an aerosol
spray towards the target, which creates a conductive channel for a shock
current, claims Rheinmetall. The company refused to comment on exactly how
the weapon works, but it says the aerosol material is non-toxic.
Like Taser manufacturers, Rheinmetall describes the effects of its
weapon as "pain and spasms". The advantage? A Taser is a single-shot weapon
of limited range: the Plasma-Taser can fire repeated shots over greater
range.
"It certainly looks shocking and intimidating," says Brian Rappert of
the University of Nottingham, UK. "But there is a big difference between a
lab demonstration and a working weapon. The history of non-lethals is
littered with novel, widely praised but ill-conceived ideas."
Steve Wright of the Manchester-based Omega Foundation, which monitors
non-lethal weapon technology, is concerned about the potential misuse of
electric shock weapons. "Such new technologies enable systematic human
rights abuses to be more automated, so that one operator can induce pain and
paralysis on a mass scale," he says.
David Hambling
www.ctrl.org
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