Black Crawling Systems Archive Release 1.0/Black Crawling Systems Archive Release 1.0 (L0pht Heavy Industries, Inc.)(1997).ISO/tezcat/Guns/Future_Firearms.txt

Text File | 1996-07-08 | 6KB | 123 lines

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I found the following article in OMNI magazine, February 1995 issue, page 31.
 It is in the section called CONTINUUM.  I didn't see the story on Day One,
or whatever the "news" broadcast was, but thought this article made some
"interesting" statements.  It talks about more than just the "smart guns",
but it was easier just to include the entire article rather than just parts
of it.  Authors name is at the bottom.


OMNI Magazine  February 1995, page 31.

CONTINUUM
Future Firearms:  New weapons take law enforcement into the
twenty-first century.  Plus, a push for smaller people, and the
invasion of the fire ants.

"Police officers are still equipped much as Wyatt Earp was in the
nineteenth century," says David Boyd, director of the Science and
Technology Division of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
As head of NIJ's Less-Than-Lethal (LTL) technology program, Boyd
is equipping police officers for the twenty-first century by
designing Robocop-like tools and weapons with an eye to both
safety and effectiveness.

Though it sounds a bit like a Hollywood comic device for chase
scenes, sticky foam may prove to be a valuable  addition to the
arsenals of real world crimefighters.  "Sticky foam stops a
suspect because everything it touches becomes stuck to it,
immobilizing the subject's legs and arms like contact cement,"
says Tom Goolsby, senior member of the technical staff of the
Access Delay Technology Department at Sandia National
Laboratories.  The foam is stored as a pressurized liquid
containing Freon, rubbers, resins, oils, and stabilizers which,
when exposed to atmospheric pressure, turns into foam.  The
process expands the 1 1/2 liters of sticky, rubbery materials
into more than 10 gallons of foam with a density of cotton balls.

Goolsby says one potential use of the device might be in dealing
with difficult prisoners.  Presently, prison guards use body
armor and riot shields to protect themselves from violent and
reluctant prisoners during transport from cell to cell or prison
to prison.  With sticky foam, the foam can be shot through the
food slot with no injury to the guards.  Other possible uses
might include riot control and added protection for high-security
areas.  Sticky foam might help to capture intruders by blocking
exits with large bags filled with the substance through which an
intruder would have to pass in order to escape.  In so doing, the
suspect would have to break the bag.  The sticky foam inside
would do the rest.  So far, the two major challenges to this
technology seem to be environmental and medical.  Researchers
must find a way to effectively clean up the mess that sticky foam
makes and determine if the compound poses any serious health
risks to both users and targets.

Another promising idea for law enforcement is the development of
smart guns which would employ user-recognizing devices to
eliminate the possibility of an unauthorized user getting control
of a police officer's firearm.  "In the next two years, we will
develop a list of as many technologies as possible to choose
from, prioritize them with a ranking scheme, and build working
models of at least two," says Douglas R. Weiss, project manager
at Sandia, under contract for the NIJ.

One model, for instance, uses a capacitive proximity sensor
embedded in the gun.  As the hand is wrapped around it, an
electric field discriminates between a large and a small hand.
Other biometric (the study of unique attributes of the body)
devices, like voice recognition, retinal scans, and finger and
palm prints, may also be developed.  The advantage of such
devices is obvious:  Sensors ensure that the person who fires the
weapon is the person authorized to use it.

Smart gun technologies are based on the simple premise that the
more the gun can "know", the more effective it is as a weapon.
Electronic tags similar to bar codes on library books or the
ubiquitous plastic tags in clothing stores, for example, could be
worn by undercover police who would be otherwise unrecognizable.
"If an officer wears a tag on the body in a ring, watch, uniform
button, or belt buckle, a reader in the firearm can scan the tag
for the identity either using magnetics, electronics, or radio
frequency," says Weiss.  It might just be enough to save
undercover agents from the dangers of friendly fire.

Weiss stresses that close attention is being paid to
surety--reliability, safety, security, and use control of the
smart gun.  It must work when officers want it to, and not work
when they don't want it to.  He likens the seriousness of this
task to the nearly identical design problems inherent in nuclear
weapons:  They have to be reliable, but must also be absolutely
safe until ready for use.

After safety, cost is a big concern.  Because this technology is
so expensive to develop, Boyd is planning to expand into the
civilian market.  But there are better reasons for targeting
civilian firearms owners.  Smart guns might, for example, greatly
reduce the number of in-home firearm thefts.  More importantly,
many domestic homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings could
be prevented with a smart gun.  Whatever the technologies are,
Weiss plans to design retrofitable devices and to make them
easily affordable by all firearm owners.  New technologies may
not be the solution to increased violence and crime, but safer
weapons is a good place to start. - CAROL SILVERMAN SAUNDERS

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