Microwave guns, charming.

The army is set to start testing microwave weapons early next year in Iraq. These painfull but apparently harmless weapons are to be used for crowd control. That's like the best news I have heard. I wonder if it can shoot through walls. The army claims the weapons cause pain and people get out of the way, but as with all new toys how long will it be before some ingenious sadist experiments with people who can't get out of the way? My bet? Two weeks, max. A tip of the Hat to my buddy Rorschach at No Capital (because the Invisible Hand is giving you the finger).

Microwave weapons that cause pain without lasting injury are to be issued to American troops in Iraq for the first time as concern mounts over the growing number of civilians killed in fighting.

The non-lethal weapons, which use high-powered electromagnetic beams, will be fitted to vehicles already in Iraq, which will allow the system to be introduced as early as next year.

Using technology similar to that found in a conventional microwave oven, the beam rapidly heats water molecules in the skin to cause intolerable pain and a burning sensation. The invisible beam penetrates the skin to a depth of less than a millimetre. As soon as the target moves out of the beam's path, the pain disappears.

Because there are no after-effects, the United States Department of Defence believes that the weapons will be particularly useful in urban conflict. The beam could be used to scatter large crowds in which insurgents operate at close quarters to both troops and civilians.

"The skin gets extremely hot, and people can't stand the pain, so they have to move - and move in the way we want them to," said Col Wade Hall of the Office of Force Transformation, a body formed in November 2001 to promote rapid improvement across all of the American armed services.

I wonder what other sinister beam weapons are presently being developed. It also occurs to me that now that they have cracked the human genome, what genetic weapons are being developed. Let's just be happy that we have a nice sandbox of subhumans to test this stuff on. Let us also hope that the Non Gay Zombie forces will be ready soon.