http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/20062113053.asp
Using Vomit as a Weapon
by James Dunnigan
February 1, 2006
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
Over the past few years, products began to
appear, that were capable of detecting divers
approaching ships or waterside facilities. Now
there are underwater weapons that can disable the swimmers.Â
One of the more recent of the detection systems
is the Cerberus360 swimmer detection system. This
is a (large) refrigerator size device that is
lowered to the ocean floor in the middle of the
area you want to guard. Cerberus360 uses sonar to
detect anything, large enough to be a threat, up
to 800 meters out. Actually, during tests, it was
able to detect an approaching underwater scuba
swimmer at 900 meters. Cerberus360 works well in
shallow water, and can be tweaked by the
operator, once emplaced, to be even more accurate.Â
Al Qaeda groups are know to have bought scuba
gear and trained for attacks like this, but none
have been attempted yet. But last year, Raytheon
Corporation got a patent for a sonar type device
that can disable divers as well. The Raytheon
"swimmer denial" uses sound waves that are
tuned to cause severe gastric distress in
humans. Makes you heave into your scuba mask.
This makes further underwater operations
difficult, if not impossible. However, Raytheon
has not announced any timetable for the delivery
of these systems. There may not be a large enough
market to justify it. For all the talk about
scuba equipped terrorists, there have been very
few cases of this sort of thing actually
happening. Most have been off Israel, where the
Israelis have been able to deal with the problem
without using an acoustic swimmer denial system.
