A couple years ago the microwave tanks called ‘active denial systems’ were all over the media. They all said the tanks made the skin feel like ‘burning’ and were used on protesters, for example, and were not lethal.
But I recently talked with an army insider who told me he saw these guns in action melting people and killing them outright. After searching a bit I found this story on an electromagnetic tank that can melt entire school busses into slag: Horrifying US Secret Weapon Unleashed In Baghdad
It begs the questions,
A) what are the governmet and media obviously hiding
B) how long have they had them and what are they using right now without us knowing?
You failed to address my eyewitness account or the undwrlying technology behind these weapons that clearly implies they can melt things. Ever stuck your hand in a microwave?
Would be eager to hear from more military men and women who can tell us about how these things work in the field.
Simple sanity check would suggest it is implausible (to be kind).
People don’t melt. They are already almost entirely liquid. So it isn’t clear what is meant.
The energy needed to cause this level of damage is very large, and there is zero chance there is the capability of generating enough energy let alone being able to deliver it.
Take a bus, say a typical school bus. 25,000 lbs. call it 10,000kg. Maybe half of this is the steel body. The enthalpy of fusion of steel is a slippery number, but it it seems is just a bit short of 300kJ/kg. The specific heat of steel is about 0.5 kJ/kgK, and the melting point is about 1500C.
In order to melt 5,000kg of steel you would need (750 + 300) * 5000 kJ. That is about 5x10[sup]9[/sup]J. If you took an hour to melt the bus, you need to deliver power of 1.5MW into the bus. An hour is stupid, a weapon of any value would need to do it a lot quicker, so you would reasonably be looking at power delivery of more like 10MW. Even then it will take ten minutes. And you are assuming perfect power delivery. We haven’t even begun to look at inefficiencies in the generation of the microwave energy.
You are going to need a generator that can create a good 10MW. And you are going to have to power it. Here is a nice diesel based generator system. OK, it weighs 170 tons. A bit big for a tank. Rather than a hulking great diesel engine, lets assume a gas turbine - here’s one that would suit. Still need the generator. We probably got it down to maybe under 100 tons.
Still haven’t addressed how you turn this electrical power into microwaves without melting pretty much the entire system. And with any useful efficiency. Or indeed how you create a directed beam system that doesn’t instantly melt when you try to use it.
Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable…and what you have is a second-hand assertion of an eyewitness account, written in a sensationalist style that is frequently associated with exaggeration and even outright fiction.
It’s reasonable to inquire about the plausibility of the piece you linked to, but you’re not making any kind of persuasive case by asserting it’s some kind of proof.
I’ve seen one of these things used in Iraq. It was completely worthless. I don’t have any hard data or facts about these things. I don’t know if they are usually effective, or what. But I know that the single time I saw this thing in action, it didn’t do anything. It had zero effect on the guy. That’s my one anecdote.
There is no way in hell this thing is going to melt anything; certainly not a bus! If it could actually make someone feel mildly uncomfortable, I would be impressed. My personal opinion is that these things were sold to the military at a time when it had more money than sense, and less-lethal was the hot button buzz word. It was a time when the Army would buy anything, including bomb detectors that were nothing more than hollow boxes!
I would not be surprised if the rumors in that article were actually started by the manufacturer who was just trying to convince people his machine was not a complete piece of shit.
A brief look at the mess of the home page there just screams out that anything on that site is sensationalist, new-age, alarmist BS.
Even high power cutting lasers aren’t feasible as mobile weapons due to the energy and support systems required to run them; not to mention that they are fairly useless over a distance.
If directed energy weapons worked as well as the OP suggests, they wouldn’t be a secret. If you’ve got a vehicle-mounted gun that can melt a bus to slag, you’re not going to use it on a bus, you’re going to start melting ISIL technicals and stuff like that.
Back in mid-90’s, I was in Army at Ft Sill and my MOS('s) were support/repair of radars, mostly the AN-TPQ-37 and its relatives. I worked elbow-to-elbow with the software engineers who made the things work. I realize this is radar emission, not microwave, of course - different level of energy output, etc.
Occasionally, the units that were in parking lot for sims we had were taken out for field testing while gun batteries firedd downrange. One time in particular, the software had a glitch, supposedly, and the ‘beam’ was stationary at a point about 75 yards straight out in front of the transmitter. A small grassfire was started from the energy input into the very-dry prarie-grass where the supposed-to-be-sweeping’ beam was aimed. Only took maybe a few minutes before several Chinooks were dumping water upon the fire. End of exercise, of course, and engineers were rather embarassed/confused, etc. I overheard a lot of blame-games between the offices of the associated members over the nex few days about the ‘upgraded’ software
I’d say it is possible, but improbable, since if radar can do such a thing nearby the emitter (albeit over a longish peiod of time-v-explosive device like missile/bomb) that microwave ~could. Maybe possible, but more likely improbable due to power needed and time on target, etc. It would take a looong time, I bet, to see any real effect, if any, especially if at a ‘safe enough distance’ to keep enemy from just hopping on it and disabling it somehow.
Of course one of the more clear arguments against such a weapon (apart from technical infeasibility) is just what the heck you you want with one. Enemy vehicles don’t tend to hang around waiting for you to try to melt them. Nor do you want to try to dispatch them with some insanely weird microwave weapon when a simple impactor will do a better job in a few seconds. That is after all what tanks are good at.
A tank sitting somewhere radiating microwaves at some idiotic power will be a sitting duck for the most simple self guided missile or bomb. If it were possible for it to really radiate of the order of megawatts of power you could just about launch the missile from a nearby country and have it lock on.
All you have a a very very heavy tank that can maybe melt something nearby given enough time that is a sitting duck for simple countermeasures. Why would you want one of these in exchange for a simple conventional tank?
According to Wikipedia (and other stuff I read years ago), the idea is that this microwave weapon emits a specific wavelength and energy microwave that heats only the very top layer of skin very fast- like the top 0.4 mm. So it hurts like a MF’er, but doesn’t actually hurt you if you get your ass away.
It’s not really “harmless”, but it’s a lot better than the alternative of using machine guns or baton rounds, or things of that nature.
Throw this on the pile of other nonsense, like how the US used neutron bombs in Iraq and how Humvees have force fields. More gibberish disinformation.
The real question is why anyone would read this article and immediately conclude that the government is “obviously” hiding something. I find it very telling that the “government’s” motives are easy to attack, but he never questions the motives of the author.
These things aren’t weapons; they’re torture devices. The only reason they’re called weapons is to make them easier to sell, and the only reason they’re mounted on tanks is to make it easier to call them weapons.
