The US Marines聽are developing a new laser weapon that can transmit voice messages at long range, or be turned up to deafen, dazzle or cause painful burns.
The Scalable Compact Ultra-short Pulse Laser System (SCUPLS) will be a non-lethal weapon for crowd control, according to US Navy documents.
The weapon builds on previous prototypes developed by the Pentagon. An igniter laser fires an intense pulse lasting just a few million-billionths of a second powerful enough to create a ball of plasma, which can be created mid-air or right on the surface of a target. A stronger detonator laser then explodes the plasma ball, resulting in a brilliant flash and a loud bang.
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SCUPLS can produce increasing effects at different power levels. At the lowest setting, the rapid series of flash-bangs will be modulated to carry intelligible but robotic speech, conveying up to 100 metres away.
At higher levels, it will produce flashbangs as loud as the inside of a jet engine and dazzlingly bright. When aimed directly at a person, SCUPLS will painfully vaporise the outer layer of skin 鈥� rather than burning it will be turned into gas.
Previous weapons have been limited by the strength of available lasers. 鈥淭hey cannot, to-date, provide the full laser performance necessary to deliver all three of the desired non-lethal effects,鈥� the Pentagon told New 杏吧原创 by email聽聽. The SCUPLS project will work to increase both power per pulse and the number of pulses per second.
Unlike existing crowd-control weapons, SCUPLS can provide escalation of force. For example, an individual can be ordered, to stop or put down a weapon; if they fail to comply, SCUPLS can apply increasing effects by turning up the power until the individual complies.
It is not clear how safety will be ensured. 鈥淒osage will be decisive for avoiding permanent injury,鈥� says J眉rgen Altmann at Dortmund University of Technology.
The plan is for SCUPLS to be mounted on a small vehicle. The design phase should be completed in 2019, after which a prototype will be built and tested.
