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发帖数: 2220 | 1 Secret weapons
Nature 489, 177–178 (13 September 2012) doi:10.1038/489177b
Published online 12 September 2012
US military furtiveness is hindering progress and the development of
technology.
Subject terms:
Government Applied physics Engineering Policy
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In the 1940s, with the Second World War in full swing, Japanese scientists
sketched out a plan to build a microwave weapon to shoot down enemy bombers.
That idea, perhaps the earliest description of an electromagnetic bomb,
encapsulates much of what military officials still hope to achieve with such
weapons: disabling electronics (or, in some cases, people) using a powerful
energy beam, without causing any collateral physical damage. The US
military's attempts to make a practical weapon based on this idea have so
far resulted in only one system — at least as far as it has revealed
publicly. The Air Force has built the Active Denial System, a non-lethal
high-power microwave weapon supposedly able to deter an angry mob by
creating the sensation of being burned.
For decades, the US military has conducted much of its research on such
weapons in secret. It has often hinted that it is on the verge of a
breakthrough, yet high-power microwave weapons are noticeably absent from
modern battlefields and scenes of civil unrest. The military, for the most
part, won't discuss its progress — or lack thereof — citing secrecy in the
name of national security.
There is nothing unique about the classification of this research: nuclear
weapons, stealth aircraft and satellite reconnaissance systems were all
developed in secret. Although such furtiveness can legitimately protect US
weapons and capabilities, it can also prevent much-needed dissemination of
scientific research. And it has all too often concealed a lack of progress.
As we discuss on page 198, this has been the problem with the programme to
develop high-power microwave weapons: the little information that has been
released points to obvious scientific and technological problems. Crucially,
power sources for such devices are often too unwieldy to use. More than ten
years after the Active Denial System was first revealed to the public, its
size and complexity mean that it is still nearly impossible to deploy. The
military rejected the system for use at checkpoints in Iraq because it would
have taken 16 hours to cool down the weapon's pulse generator to
superconducting temperatures to fire it.
Many records related to the Active Denial System remain classified and
inaccessible to the public and the scientific community. The US Air Force's
unwillingness to reveal the full scope of its research into the biological
effects of high-power microwaves in the 1990s, which included work on their
auditory and lethal effects, flies in the face of the defence department's
claims that it is interested in classifying only weapons technology, and not
science. If, as the Air Force says, the biological research never led to
weapons, then there is no reason not to release it.
Work on high-power microwaves designed to take out electronics has not fared
much better. Advocates can always claim that classified programmes are
yielding great progress, but information in the public sphere does not paint
a rosy picture. Military officials and academics acknowledge that
developing compact power sources remains the biggest hurdle. The Air Force
and a contractor have touted efforts to develop a high-power microwave
cruise missile, but neither will release details that might allow
independent experts to judge the programme's potential. The Pentagon is
staying quiet on a system developed to take out improvised explosive devices
, but what little information is available indicates that — like the Active
Denial System — it has proved too cumbersome to use effectively.
“The government must be willing to share data and findings between military
labs and academia.”
This is not to say that all government spending on high-power microwaves is
a waste. Academic funding under Multidisciplinary University Research
Initiatives is contributing to a host of peer-reviewed publications and
collaborative research. But for the government to take full advantage of
that research, it must be willing to share data and findings between
military labs and academia. The defence department's own science board has
found that reluctance to share is a barrier to progress.
Getting to the truth about high-power microwaves requires transparency.
Independent experts must be able to scrutinize technology to enable
scientific–military cooperation and to provide a reality check for those
who make fantastic claims about a weapon's potential.
By the time it cancelled the Airborne Laser programme earlier this year, the
US defence department had poured billions of dollars into the weapon: a
chemical laser in the nose of an aircraft, designed to shoot down ballistic
missiles. In the end, the question was not whether the laser would work, but
whether it would be usable, given the scientific and technological
practicalities of integrating such a complex system. “There's nobody in
uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept,”
concluded former US defence secretary Robert Gates, when he finally moved to
kill the project. The same concerns would probably be expressed about high-
power microwaves — if more information about them were available. |
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