The U.S. military has developed a new non-lethal, directed-energy weapon that makes people feel like they are burning when struck by the beam it emits, the DailyTech portal reported on Monday.
The weapon, dubbed the Active Denial System (ADS), uses a millimeter wave beam and has a range of 1,000 meters. It was demonstrated to senior U.S. military staff at a base in Quantico, Virginia, last week.
The beam only penetrates 1/64 of an inch into the skin and is considered to be completely safe, despite the fact that its power is 100 times higher than that of a regular microwave.
“The military says they've done over 11,000 exposures on people with only two injuries,” the DailyTech reported.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, “it could be used across the military spectrum of operations, perimeter security, crowd control, entry control points.”
The ADS has been in development for 15 years, and it was briefly deployed to Afghanistan but never used in combat, the DailyTech said.
