Raytheon is kicking off a U.S. Army program to mount Joint Silent Guardian non-lethal, directed energy weapons -- with a range of more than 250 meters -- on Ford 550 commercial trucks for crowd control.
The high power microwave (HPM) device heats water in a person's outer layers of skin to the point of pain. Tests have shown that the effects can reach through cracks in and around concrete walls and even through the glass of automobiles, company officials say.
A lot is still undecided about how the small fleet of vehicle/weapon combinations will be used. Among the decisions still to be made are which Army organization they will be assigned to, the maintenance scheme, the size of units they will be assigned to and whether they will go to urban areas of Iraq, officials say.
It is known that the effort is partially funded by $25 million in the fiscal 2008 defense supplemental budget as part of a July procurement for the global war on …
