Against a background of additional video demonstrations, he continued, ”We can break [people] out [from a group]. We can keep them away from the others. And now, if you want to, you can kill that individual if it’s warranted. Or in some instances, you want to incapacitate. You don’t want them dead. You want another option. You want to be able to pull them back to figure out what networks they have, what those networks are doing, who is part of that network, and what their next targets might be.”
Tafolla identified Tasers as another technology under exploration, offering, “That’s certainly one technology that’s available to us right now. We are looking at how we could extend the range capability of those types of devices. We’ve got efforts going along that way. And we are seeking other ways to figure out how we incapacitate. Those are all efforts that we’re working on in the joint program, and we are going to continue to fund those and work on those.
U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Tory Martin, a rifleman with 3rd Platoon, India Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, and 20-year-old native of Twentynine Palms, Calif., replaces the safety pin of a Stingball grenade after using it during a non-lethal weapons training scenario in a simulated urban village on Marine Corps Training Area Bellows, Hawaii, Aug. 15, 2012. The training was part of a two-week test readiness review fielded by the Quantico, Va.-based Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate and the Marine Corps Forces, Pacific Experimentation Center. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Reece Lodder
“What I’m trying to relay here is that we are applying force,” he summarized. “This is force application. We want to be able to make sure that we are complementary to lethal systems. Not everybody has got to carry a non-lethal. It doesn’t have to be used if it’s not warranted. Certainly there are times when our forces need to go right to lethal systems. Sometimes we want to send a message and make sure we use high-order detonation munitions or lethal direct fire munitions.
“When I talk about force application and getting into fires, I’m talking about not just shoulder-fired systems,” he added. “They could be airborne. They could be fired as tube-launched munitions. They could be delivered by missile systems. You name it. I think the possibilities are vast and we need to be thinking about them now if we are going to continue our dominance.”
Shifting to the budgetary implications of developing non-lethal technologies, he said, “You hear the term ‘constrained budgets.’ I hate that term because if we weren’t constrained, we wouldn’t have a budget. We’ve always had budgets out there. We’ve always had caps on how much money we have had. We just may have less here in the future.
“Since we were talking about money a little bit, let’s look at reconstruction costs,” he continued. “It costs us a lot in people. It costs us a lot in national treasure. It takes a lot of time and effort away from what maybe our focus should be.”
In one example, he pointed to a bridge that was dropped into the Danube River during Kosovo operations in 1999.
“The vast majority of commerce flowed on that river system,” he said. “And we disrupted it all the way until 2005 when we reconstructed that bridge. And it cost us millions and millions of dollars to go in and rebuild the bridge.”
Another example involved the Baghdad Tower at Ma’moun, which was destroyed during the final days of the initial Operation Iraqi Freedom combat in 2003 and later reconstructed during 2004-2009.
Acknowledging that the tower had been a key communications node and a valid target, he speculated that the United States could have exploited that same resource just a few days later if there had been a way to neutralize it without destroying it.
The Active Denial System (ADS) is an advanced, long-range, non-lethal, directed-energy, counter-personnel capability that projects a man-sized beam of millimeter waves at a range up to 1,000 meters. The ADS induces a temporary and reversible heating sensation to the skin to repel individuals with minimal risk of injury. The ADS is prepositioned at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., readily available upon a military commander’s request. DoD photo
“There are times when we are very good about precision targeting,” he acknowledged. “We are the best in the world. We’ve got the most accurate weapon systems. We can get into these key nodes. But we normally go after them with high-order munitions. So we’re blowing something up and may be taking away a component that we might not be able to get our hands on, because that component is 30 or 40 years old and we just took out the entire grid system.
“So the same people who are helping you pull down the statue of a dictator one day are probably protesting you three days later and mad as hell because it’s hot, they can’t cook their food, and they are not getting any information,” he added.
“But there are ways and there are means that we can use to take control of things,” he continued. “For example, do we want to destroy that bridge or do we want to stop a vehicle? We may not want to drop that bridge. The commander who owns that battlespace may want to keep that bridge for his own forces. He may not want to spend a lot of time and effort with people reconstructing that bridge. So we may be able to take control of some of these facilities without actually destroying them.”
A subsequent set of video examples showed demonstrations of turning off both car and boat engines at tactically significant distances from U.S. forces.
“We know we can do it,” he said. “We kind of know how to do it. But there are some significant challenges that we’re facing right now on getting the technology squeezed down to an operationally suitable and effective system. And, of course, we want it to be cost effective. So those are some things that you, as industry, should be looking at. How do we shut these vehicles off? How do we get to them?”