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INCREASING the distance between yourself and a potentially dangerous assailant is always a good idea - even if your ultimate aim is to render them insensible. That appears to be the thinking behind a Pentagon project, now in its final stages, to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher.The projectile, being developed by Taser International under a $2.5 million contract, is known as a Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation or HEMI device. Taser will deliver the first prototypes for testing and evaluation early next year.
Wes Burgei, a project engineer at the US Department of Defense's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), says the self-contained cartridges should be able to hit targets 60 metres away - more than three times the range of the existing XREP shotgun cartridge.
However, the impact force of the projectile remains a worry. "There is a known risk of severe injury from impact projectiles, either from blunt force at short ranges or from hitting a sensitive part of the body," says security researcher Neil Davison, who has recently written a book on non-lethal weapons.
Burgei, however, insists the devices are designed to deliver minimal force upon impact. "A major focus of this project is reducing the projectile's mass and mitigating the impact forces on the target through innovative projectile-nose design," he says. Various nose designs, which disperse the projectile's impact force, are now being tested.
The duration of the shock which the HEMI will deliver to its target has also raised concerns. Marksmen will need time to reach the incapacitated target, and because the weapon is designed for long-range use this could be considerable.
A JNLWD reference book from 2008 suggests incapacitation times could be as long as 3 minutes, although the projectile's range was initially planned to be much higher.
"We should be worried about undesirable effects if people are going to be subjected to bouts of prolonged incapacitation," says Steve Wright, a specialist in non-lethal weapons at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.
We should be worried if people are going to be subjected to bouts of prolonged incapacitation
Burgei says the duration of the shocks emitted by the projectiles has yet to be determined. "When requirements become solidified, the incapacitation time can be adjusted to meet them," he says.