The Pentagon’s Wall-of-Light Laser Shield

The Plasma Acoustic Shield System (PASS) is a crackling, flashing wall of light hanging in the air up to 100 meters away. And while it’s the stuff of sci-fi, the laser-powered PASS already exists in prototype form, built by Stellar Photonics of Redmond, Wash., with funding from the Pentagon’s Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD). 

Initially intended to shield soldiers by creating a high-intensity distraction and provide a highly visible warning signal, PASS may develop into a weapon in its own right, producing a barrage of explosions with the power of flash–bang stun grenades. It may also evolve into a shield capable of absorbing laser and microwave blasts from directed energy weapons. 

The technology is based on short pulses from a high-power laser. If you focus a laser beam down to a point, the intensity can become so great that the molecules of air itself break down. As electrons separate from their atoms to produce ions, the gas becomes plasma, an effect seen at the core of a lightning bolt. This ionization produces a miniature explosion with a flash of light and a sharp pop. 

W. Alexander Long, vice president and co-founder of Stellar Photonics, says the company developed a technique called dynamic pulse detonation, designed to enhance this blast. The initial laser pulse produces a small cloud of plasma; another pulse strikes the plasma a fraction of a second later. The plasma cloud absorbs the laser energy and expands rapidly in a supersonic shock wave, creating a bigger bang than the first pulse’s. The laser can scan and rapid-fire a series of pulses to build up a wall of plasma bursts, in much the same way that an old cathode-ray television builds up a picture by scanning across the screen. 

The PASS demonstrator is mounted in a turret attached to a Hummer. It is a nonlethal option that might be used, for example, if a vehicle approaches a checkpoint without slowing down. If the driver ignores verbal and other warnings (such as a flash of ultrabright light) to slow down, soldiers could use PASS to produce a barrage of flash–bangs right in front of the car. Anyone who proceeded might be assumed to be hostile. In addition, the bright laser bursts are likely to interfere with attempts to aim a weapon, though PASS cannot inflict damage at its current power levels. 

"At the current state of the art, the Plasma Shield System can only be used for warnings," Long says. "More work is needed on the next generation of eye-safe, high-energy pulse lasers." 

The demonstration system produces 10 flash–bangs per second. Long says other currently available lasers could raise this rate to 40 per second, but they are not eye-safe. Stellar Photonics plans a next-generation system capable of 200 flash–bangs per second, and this rate will increase as more powerful solid-state lasers become available. Ensuring that the lasers cannot cause eye damage or blindness has been one of the major challenges. 

Higher scan rates would allow the plasma shield to take more advanced shapes—for example, to put a horizontal barrier across a road. Long says that once the scan rate reaches kilohertz, thousands of flash–bangs per second, it would be possible generate letters or graphics and literally paint in the air. 

 

Stellar Photonics has been working on the PASS since 2005 with partners Orca Photonic Systems and Laser Guidance. Previously, the Pentagon’s JNLWD funded the Pulsed Energy Projectile, a chemical laser that produced a flash–bang effect at the surface of the target. The intent was to provide a precise, long-range alternative to rubber bullets. But, as with the giant antimissile Airborne Laser, the chemical laser for PEP was very big, weighing about 500 pounds, and carried a limited supply of fuel for laser shots. After years of development, the PEP program disappeared around 2008. 

Another Navy program, Plasma Point Defense, begun in 2004, looked at generating a plasma shield as a way to deflect incoming missiles. This was not feasible with existing technology, and the military dropped the idea. 

PASS, modest as it looks now, has the potential to keep growing and succeed where Plasma Point Defense and the Pulsed Energy Projectile did not. Solid-state lasers mean that PASS is compact and rugged and can keep firing for as long as there is a power supply. The Navy is already exploring how they can get more bang out of laser technology with contracts to two new developers whose systems will rival the one built by Stellar Photonics. 

RadiaBeam Technologies of Santa Monica, Calif., specializes in components for particle accelerators. They are working on MILI-Flash, for Mid-Infrared Laser Induced Flashbang system. This also uses a double-pulse scheme, with an ultrashort ignition pulse to ionize the air, followed by longer pulse to heat and expand the plasma and create the desired flash–bang. Meanwhile Physical Optics Corporation of Torrance, Calif., is offering RESLIFE (Ranged Eye-Safe Laser-Induced Flashbang Enabling System). This uses two lasers operating at different wavelengths for the two pulses, a picosecond Erbium-doped laser for the initial pulse, and a nanosecond Thulium-doped laser for the followup. Both companies are on a nine-month development contract; the successful one will then produce a prototype with a range in excess of a hundred meters. 

It’s easy to see the immediate military applications of PASS technology for warning, signalling, and shielding. Networked together, a number of PASS systems would produce quite an impressive spectacle. The plasma wall is a barrier to both visible and infrared viewing. Because plasma can absorb microwaves and radar, PASS may also prove a viable technology for screening from radar, as well as blocking directed microwave pulses that can damage electronics. 

While the flash–bangs will always be less effective than kinetic weapons, they could serve as a nonlethal option for crowd control or for hitting small, fast-moving targets such as miniature drones at the speed of light and with laser accuracy. 

Similar technology may be used in the civilian world for 3D displays. Japanese company Burton Inc. has demonstrated a laboratory system that can sketch crude moving images of a stick man and a bouncing ball floating in the air. Something the size of PASS should enable stadium-scale plasma displays. 

However, according to the Department of Defense, it’s too early to say what applications the technology will find, or what the timeline is for possible deployment. "The technology is still in its infancy to appropriately respond to its applicability," said Kelley Hughes, spokesperson for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. 

Via: "Popular Mechanics"

Psychotronic and Electromagnetic Weapons

Image via: Economist.com

Remote Control Of The Human Nervous System

By Mojmir Babacek
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

In March 2012 the Russian defense minister Anatoli Serdjukov said:

“The development of weaponry based on new physics principles; direct-energy weapons, geophysical weapons, wave-energy weapons, genetic weapons, psychotronic weapons, etc., is part of the state arms procurement program for 2011-2020,”Voice of Russia

The world media reacted to this hint on the open use of psychotronic weapons by the publication of scientific experiments from the 1960‘s where electromagnetic waves were used to transmit simple sounds into the human brain. However, most of them avoided saying that since then extensive scientific research has been carried out in this area throughout the world. Only a Colombian newspaper, El Spectador, published an article covering the whole scale of the achievements of this (computerized English translation).

Britain’s Daily Mail, as another exception, wrote that research in electromagnetic weapons has been secretly carried out in the USA and Russia since the 1950’s and that „previous research has shown that low-frequency waves or beams can affect brain cells, alter psychological states and make it possible to transmit suggestions and commands directly into someone’s thought processes. High doses of microwaves can damage the functioning of internal organs, control behaviour or even drive victims to suicide.”

In 1975, a neuropsychologist Don R. Justesen, the director of  Laboratories of Experimental Neuropsychology at Veterans Administration Hospital in Kansas City, unwittingly leaked National Security Information. He published an article in “American Psychologist” on the influence of microwaves on living creatures’ behavior.

In the article he quoted the results of an experiment described to him by his colleague, Joseph C. Sharp, who was working on Pandora, a secret project of the American Navy.

Don R. Justesen wrote in his article:

“By radiating themselves with these ‘voice modulated’ microwaves, Sharp and Grove were readily able to hear, identify, and distinguish among the 9 words. The sounds heard were not unlike those emitted by persons with artificial larynxes”  (pg. 396).

That this system was later brought to perfection is proved by the document which appeared on the website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1997, where its Office of Research and Development presented the Department of Defense’s project:“Communicating Via the Microwave Auditory Effect”.In the description it said:

“An innovative and revolutionary technology is described that offers a low-probability-of-intercept radiofrequency (RF) communications. The feasibility of the concept has been established using both a low intensity laboratory system and a high power RF transmitter. Numerous military applications exist in areas of search and rescue, security and special operations” (See web.iol.cz)

In January 2007 the Washington Post wrote on the same subject:

“In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a technology: using microwaves to send words into someone’s head… Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the research laboratory’s directed energy directorate, declined to discuss that patent or current or related research in the field, citing the lab’s policy not to comment on its microwave work. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed for this article, the Air Force released unclassified documents surrounding that 2002 patent — records that note that the patent was based on human experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility. Research appeared to continue at least through 2002. Where this work has gone since is unclear — the research laboratory, citing classification, refused to discuss it or release other materials“

We can only stress again that the world media avoid publishing the full scale of the progress in the research of the remote control of human nervous system. Dr. Robert Becker, who was twice nominated for Nobel Prize for his share in the discovery of the effects of pulsed fields at the healing of broken bones, wrote in his book “Body Electric” about the experiment from 1974 by J. F. Schapitz, released due to the Freedom of Information Act request.

J.F. Schapitz stated:

“In this investigation it will be shown that the spoken word of hypnotist may also be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into the subconscious parts of the human brain – i. e. without employing any technical devices for receiving or transcoding the messages and without the person exposed to such influence having a chance to control the information input consciously.”

In one of the four experiments subjects were given a test of hundred questions, ranging from easy to technical ones. Later, not knowing they were being irradiated, they would be subjected to information beams suggesting the answers to the questions they had left blank, amnesia for some of their correct answers, and memory falsification for other correct answers. After 2 weeks they had to pass the test again (Dr. Robert Becker: Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, William Morrow and comp., New York, 1985,. The results of the second test were never published. It is rather evident that in those experiments the messages were sent into human brain in ultrasound frequencies which the human brain perceives, but of which the subject is unaware. Dr. Robert Becker, due to those publications and his refusal to support the building of the antennae for the communication with submarines in brain frequencies, lost financial support for his research which meant an end to his scientific career.

Transmitting human speech into the human brain by means of electromagnetic waves is apparently, for the researchers, one of the most difficult tasks. It must be much easier to control human emotions which motivate human thinking, decision making and actions. People who claim to be victims of experiments with those devices complain, aside of hearing voices, of false feelings (including orgasms) as well of aches of internal organs which the physicians are unable to diagnose.

In November 2000 the Committee on Security of the Russian State Duma stated that capabilities enabling remote control of the human nervous system or the remote infliction of health impairment are available to many modern governments .See web.iol.cz

It is rather evident that those technologies are used, in conflict with the Nuremberg code, for experiments on unwitting human subjects. In 2001 the newspaper of the U.S. army, Defense News, wrote that Israel was experimenting with those weapons on Palestinians. Ibid 

As well ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, while under siege in Brazilian embassy in Honduras, complained that he had been subjected to an “electron bombardment with microwaves” which produces “headache and organic destabilization” The Guardian, October 2008

When asked by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now: „

As president, do you know about this in the Honduran arsenal?” He replied: „Yes, of course“

The use of those weapons is time and again reemerging in times of political crisis. According to Russian daily newspapers, during the failed putsch against Mikhail Gorbachov in 1991, general Kobets warned the defenders of the Russian White House that mind control technology could be used against them (Komsomolskaya Pravda, September 7,1991, O. Volkov, „Sluchi o tom chto nam davili na psychiku nepotverzdalis. Poka“).

After the putsch, the vice president of the League of Independent Scientists of the USSR, Victor Sedlecki, published a declaration in the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda where he stated:

As an expert and a legal entity I declare that mass production … of psychotronic biogenerators was launched in Kiev (this is indeed a very serious issue). I cannot assert for sure that that were exactly Kiev generators that were used during the putsch… However, the fact that they were used is obvious to me. What are psychotronic generators? It is an electronic equipment producing the effect of guided control in human organism. It especially affects the left and right hemisphere of the cortex. This is also the technology of the U.S. Project Zombie 5“. He further stated that due to the inexperience of the personnel who operated them the attempt to use the generators failed

(Komsomolskaya Pravda, August 27,1991, “Avtory programy Zombi obnaruzheny v Kieve”,

See also http://web.iol.cz/mhzzrz/img/Authors_of_project_zombie.gif).

In the USA, at present several hundred people complaining of the remote manipulation of their nervous system are preparing a class action lawsuit against the FBI, Department of Defense and other agencies, requesting them to release files pertaining to their persons, detect the harmful radiations aimed at their bodies and sources of those radiations. As well perhaps over 2000 people are complaining in Russia, over 200 in Europe, over 300 in Japan and tens of people in China and India. Russian politician, Vladimir Lopatin, who was working on Committee on Security of the Russian State Duma and introduced there a bill banning the use of those technologies, admitted in his book „Psychotronic Weapon and Security of Russia“ (publishing house Sinteg, Moscow, 1999) that in Russia experiments on unwitting citizens are carried out, when he wrote: „

Compensation of damages and losses connected with social rehabilitation of persons suffering from destructive informational influence must be realized in legal trial“ (excerpts from the book in English

(http://mojmir.webuda.com/Psychotronic_Weapon_and_the_Security_of_Russia, pg. 113).

It should be understood that most of those people pass through mental hospitals. Vladimir Lopatin visited the USA in 1999 as a chairman of the Military Reform Subcommittee of the USSR Supreme Soviet Committee for Issues of Defense and State Security and met with Richard Cheney. At that time he was described as the “leader of a new breed of Soviet dissidents”. Then he disappeared from top ranks of Russian politicians.

Why has this research remained classified until present time? There are two explanations for this: First there is a secret arms race in progress in the world where the superpowers compete to gain decisive supremacy in this area and in this way master the control of the whole world. Second the governments keep those technologies in store for the case that they would not be able to control, by democratic means, the crisis that may arise as a result of their poor decisions. In both cases the era of democracy and human freedom in history will come to an end. According to the declaration of the former Russian Defense minister Serdjukov, there are maximally eight years left within which those weapons will officially become a part of the Russian military arsenal. For democracy this would mean a beginning of the end.

Anyway, in the past Russians were not resolved to put those means to work. When the construction of the American system HAARP was launched, with the system supposedly being able to target large regions of the planet by vibrating the ionosphere in brain frequencies (in this experiment the brain frequencies were not used, but the HAARP system can transmit in brain frequencies as well), Russia declared its willingness to ban mind control technologies. The Russian State Duma and consequently , the Interparliamentary Assembly of the Union of Independent States addressed the United Nations, OBSE and the European Council with a proposal for an international convention banning the development and use of informational weapons. According to the Russian newspaper Segodnya in March 1998, the matter was discussed with U.N. secretary general Kofi Anan, and included on the agenda of the General Assembly of the U.N. web.iol,cz, op cit

It is most likely the USA refused to negotiate this convention and in consequence the ban of informational weapons was not discussed by the United Nations General Assembly. Even in the U.S. congress appeared a bill proposing the ban of mind control technologies http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?c107:chemtrails.

But this was only for a very short period of time. The bill was then changed and in the new bill the ban of those technologies was left out of the Space Preservation Bill. Neither the U.S. congress nor the U.S. president made ever an effort to ban mind control weapons. The European Parliament reacted as well to the launch of the HAARP system construction, when it called in 1999 for the ban of manipulation of human beings.

The resolution was passed after the testimony of the American author of the book “Angels Don’t Play this HAARP”, Nick Begich, which apparently convinced the European Parliament of the possible use of this system to manipulate minds of whole populations. In the report by the European Parliament’s STOA (Science and Technological Options Assessment) panel “Crowd Control Technologies” the originally proposed text of the European Parliament’s resolution is quoted. There the European Parliament calls “for an international convention and global ban on all research and development , whether civilian or military , which seeks to apply knowledge of the chemical, electrical, sound vibration or other functioning of the human brain to the development of weapons which might enable any form of manipulation of human beings, including a ban on any actual or possible deployment(stressed by the author of the article) of such systems“. (40, pg CII, ref. 369). But apparently at the same time the European countries resigned on this intention when accepting the NATO politics of non-lethal weapons.

The same STOA report claims that the USA is a major promoter of the use of those arms and that:

“In October 1999 NATO announced a new policy on non-lethal weapons and their place in allied arsenals” (pg. xlv) and it goes on:

“In 1996 non-lethal tools identified by the U.S. Army included… directed energy systems” and “radio frequency weapons”European Parliament

(at the bottom of the page, second reference pg. Xlvi).

Directed energy system is further defined by the STOA document: „

Directed energy weapon system designed to match radio frequency source to interfere with human brain activity at synapse level“  (at the bottom of the page, first reference, Appendix 6-67). Since 1999 those weapons have been upgraded for another 13 years. European Parliament

In 1976 the future National Security advisor to president Carter, Zbygniew Brzezinski, wrote a book “Between Two Ages, America’s Role in the Technetronic Era” (Penguin Books, 1976, Massachusets). In the book he predicted “more controlled and directed society” based on the development of technology, where an elite group will play a leading role, which will take advantage of persisting social crises to use “the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control”.

The use of mind control technologies was predicted as well in the publication of Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, published in 1994

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=241.

The scenario for the year 2000 expected the growth of terrorism, drug trafficking and criminality and drew a conclusion:

“The president was thus amenable to the use of the sort of psychotechnology which formed the core of the RMA (revolution in military affairs)… it was necessary to rethink our ethical prohibitions on manipulating the minds of enemies (and potential enemies) both international and domestic… Through persistent efforts and very sophisticated domestic ”consciousness raising”, old-fashioned notions of personal privacy and national sovereignty changed. As technology changed the way force was applied, things such as personal courage, face-to-face leadership, and the ‘warfighter’ mentality became irrelevant.”…

“Potential or possible supporters of the insurgency around the world were identified using the comprehensive Interagency Integrated Database. These were categorized as ‘potential’ or ‘active’, with sophisticated personality simulations used to develop, tailor and focus psychological campaigns for each“. So the Institute of Strategic Studies supposed that in the year 2000 those technologies would be that advanced that it will be possible to deprive human being of his freedom and adjust his personality to the needs of ruling elite. Most probably those technologies were at this level already in 1994.

The attempts to make the general public acquainted with the existence of those weapons are, with respect to the fact that it is evident that democratic public would require immediate ban of those technologies, systematically suppressed. Vladimir Lopatin wrote:

„The arms race is speeding up as a consequence of classification. Secrecy – this is in the first place the way to secure cruel control over the people… the way how to curtail their creativity, turn them into biorobots…”, and that psychotronic war “is already taking place without declaration of war, secretly… Only if the work on mind control problem is no more covered by the screen of secrecy, extraordinariness, mysteriousness, if complex, open scientific research with international participation, is carried out, the psychotronic war including the use of psychotronic weapon can be prevented”.

The article “Informacni zbrane ohrozuji demokracii a lidstvo” was deleted from the website of the Czech internet newspaper Britske Listy (www.blisty.cz). The sharing of the original web address of the English version of the same article – Means of Information War Threaten Democracy and Mankind – is blocked on Facebook and a similar article was deleted from the webpage of the Australian magazine “New Dawn”.

There exist no legislations punishing the use of those technologies by governments. Only in Russia and some of the states in the USA there are legislations punishing the ownership or trading with those technologies by non governmental entities. For example in the state of Michigan the sentence for this crime is equal to the sentence for ownership or trading with weapons of mass destruction.

The readers who will be reached by this article and prefer democratic political system would help its preservation if they forwarded the article to their friends.

Tractor Beams

Stand aside, Wesley Crusher: there's a new tractor beam on deck that pulls objects using nothing more than laser light. The device has already grabbed NASA's attention as it could one day prove useful on space missions.

It is well known that light can push on objects – this is the basis for using solar sails to propel a spacecraft. But getting light to pull on something is a bit trickier.

Previous laser-based tractor beams could act like tweezers to move particles, picking up the sample and putting it down a short distance away. A more recent version actually pulls on particles, but relies on temperature variationsin the beam, which means it cannot function in space.

In 2011, researchers in China calculated that a type of laser called a Bessel beam, which puts out light in concentric rings, could be designed to make a particle inside the beam emit photons on the side facing away from the beam source. These photons should allow the particle to recoil towards the source. But nobody has so far managed to put the idea into practice.

David Ruffner and David Grier of New York University instead projected two Bessel beams side by side and used a lens to angle them so that they overlapped, creating a pattern of alternating bright and dark regions. Fine-tuning the beam caused photons in the bright regions to scatter toward the beam source, pushing a particle in the beam to the next bright region. The beam thus acts like a conveyer belt, constantly drawing the particle toward the source.

Micrometre Moves

Ruffner and Grier used this set-up to move microscopic silica spheres suspended in water over distances of around 30 micrometres. This suggests that such beams could be used to move cells around in lab-on-a-chip devices that perform medical tests. The set-up can also work in air or in the vacuum of space.

This tractor beam set-up has stronger interactions with a wider range of microscopic objects than other versions, adds David McGloin of the University of Dundee, UK, who was not part of the team. "A lot of other tractor-beam technologies are often quite particle-specific," he says.

The new tractor beam might be useful for collecting small dust or atmosphere samples from other worlds and delivering the particles to a robot for analysis.

"NASA contacted us," says Ruffner. "They were wondering, can we put this on a space probe and get dust from a comet?" It is possible, he says, but not any time soon. "This is still very much in its infancy."

Journal reference: Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.1

Via: "The New Scientist"

Military Working To Unleash Laser Weapons

By Mark Abramson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Courtesy Of The Stars & Stripes

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — The military is inching closer to using laser weapons on the battlefield after recent tests in which lasers were used to shoot down a drone aircraft and were fired from an airplane to damage a vehicle on the ground.

The Air Force recently test-fired its Advanced Tactical Laser from a C-130 Hercules, scorching a truck’s hood. And last month the Army and Air Force teamed with Boeing Co. for a demonstration in which lasers on the ground shot down drones at China Lake, Calif., company officials said.

Laser weapon projects in the works include the Navy’s powerful Free Electron Laser; the Advanced Tactical Laser; the Laser Avenger, which was used to shoot down the drones at China Lake; and the Army’s High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator, or HEL TD.

“The technology is there,” said Scott McPheeters, senior research engineer at the Army’s Program Executive Office Missiles and Space in Huntsville, Ala. “What we need to do is get the systems put into more rugged configurations [to handle different environments].”

One of the reasons the Army is interested in lasers is because lasers travel at the speed of light, which means such systems have a quick reaction time, McPheeters said.

Some laser weapons the Army is working on could be ready in as little as six months, but fielding those weapons would take longer due to procurement and production processes, McPheeters said. The HEL TD could take two or three years to put together, he said.

Lee Gutheinz, Boeing’s program director for High Energy Laser/Electro Optical Systems for Directed Energy Systems, described HEL TD as a “wheeled mobile laser cannon” with a range of eight to 10 kilometers.

Northrop Grumman Corp. and Textron Systems also are developing the lasers for the HEL TD, McPheeters said.

The Navy’s pursuit of lasers includes a special center at its Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif., opened this month, to test a Free Electron Laser on loan from Stanford University, said Bill Colson, a professor and FEL expert at the Navy school. The Air Force has shown an interest as well, he said.

Air Force officials declined to be interviewed for this story.

The Navy has spent $120 million on FEL research since 1997, and hopes to develop such a weapon to knock anti-ship missiles out of the sky and defeat other threats to its fleet by 2025, a release said. Other uses mentioned include taking out smaller ships, including pirate skiffs.

“It doesn’t destroy as much as a lot of other offensive weapons would, which is one of its advantages and disadvantages,” Colson said.

Laser systems do have drawbacks, officials said. Dirty, gusty, cloudy or rainy conditions could hamper lasers’ ranges and cause other problems.

To see the laser in action, visit the Boeing Web site at: http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/ic/des/videos/index.html