FEATURE ARTICLE

February 2006

Lasers Seen as Solution To Checkpoint Safety

By Stew Magnuson

Not a week goes by when David Law, science and technology chief for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, doesn’t receive a call from Pentagon brass asking for devices to warn civilians to stop at vehicle checkpoints.

“The general leadership is wondering why we haven’t gotten this out,” Law said at an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement conference on directed energy weapons.

Soldiers currently manning checkpoints or riding in convoys have few options other than screaming and waving their arms at approaching cars. While this has been the method since the dawn of the automobile age, the Pentagon wants something more effective, a stop-gap measure between waving and shooting. The Marine Corps has issued an “urgent needs request” calling for the directorate to solve the problem. The other services are equally interested, Law said.

The need for such a weapon in the chaotic environment of Iraq is clear. Heartbreaking stories have been reported throughout the war of Iraqi families who did not slow down at military roadblocks, and found their cars riddled with bullets — resulting in injuries and sometimes deaths.

The most widely reported incident involved the death of Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari, who was killed at a U.S. military checkpoint last year after freeing journalist Giuliana Sgrena from kidnappers. Soldiers said the car approached at a high rate of speed. Sgrena said the soldiers fired without warning. While an investigation cleared the soldiers of wrongdoing, the shooting resulted in strained relations between the United States and Italy.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to face insurgents using bomb-laden vehicles in suicide missions.

At checkpoints, soldiers can only wave their arms and shout at approaching vehicles beyond 100 meters. If the car continues to approach, the soldiers must open fire, Law said. “We know we can do better,” he added.

Law believes the solution is a laser dazzler, a beam of light designed to flash in a driver’s eyes more than 100 meters away from a checkpoint or convoy without causing temporary or permanent blindness.

The laser dazzler’s purpose is to “get the driver to do something. Pull off his foot or veer away … so the driver realizes he’s being warned,” Law said.

The goal is not to take away the driver’s vision, because that may result in an out-of-control vehicle barreling down on the soldiers’ position, he added. “We’re not trying to kill, maim and certainly not to blind. We’re trying to warn.” The laser dazzlers being tested meet all safety levels, Law added. A sonic weapon the directorate tested cracked windshields, he noted, which could cause a safety hazard as well.

Despite the urgent request, the directorate has several hurdles to overcome. It is a mantra with all non-lethal weapons being introduced into the battlefield: Technology is easy. Legal, treaty and policy issues are hard, Law said.

It’s simply more difficult to field non-lethal weapons than lethal weapons because there’s a much greater burden of proof, Law said. “We have to show where they’re safe and where they’re not safe, and quantify the risk.”

Marine Corps Col. David Karcher, the non-lethal directorate commander, said the social, political and cultural implications of introducing non-lethal weapons also must be considered.

Many review boards, which have citizens as members, don’t have a good understanding of directed-energy weapons, he added. It’s the Pentagon’s burden to explain to the review boards, the general public and the media ahead of fielding these weapons, exactly what they do. A public outcry could torpedo a weapon’s chances of making it to the battlefield.

For example, an early brochure on laser dazzlers described them as “blinding lasers,” but their intent is not to cause temporary or permanent blindness. The wording was eliminated quickly, he added.

Law said the directorate has evaluated several laser dazzler systems to find the best one to push through the safety review boards. For now, the plan is to give the war-fighters a tool they can use as soon as possible, then follow that up with a more rigorous development program, with laser dazzlers featuring better controls, Law said.

The stop-gap laser dazzler currently being tested is thin, about 12 inches long and two inches wide. It runs on four AAA batteries, and can be attached under a rifle muzzle or on a stabilized mount for convoy protection, Law said.

After the laser dazzler passes all the necessary legal, treaty and safety evaluations, the directorate then will have to introduce the new weapon to battlefield commanders, so they can make decisions on how it should be used.

“You cannot take a lethal weapon from the war-fighter and give him a non-lethal weapon. That’s just a non-starter,” Law noted.

As for the possibility that the lasers, or something similar, might be deployed by the enemy, Law said other labs are investigating what U.S. soldiers might need in terms of eye protection to ward off enemy lasers.

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