“Set PHaSRs On Blind!”

PhasrYessirree, you’re lookin’ at an honest-to-God PHaSR, right here!

A Personnel Halting and Simulation Response system, that is.

It was recently unviled by the Air Force as a form of non-lethal crowd control and, like the phasers on Star Trek, is a laser-related weapon. (It also looks suspiciously like certain 24th century type III marine combat phaser rifles.)

It shoots a pulsed beam of green laser light that is intended to temporarily blind ("dazzle") the targets it is trained on, making it useful for crowd control and dazzling potentially dangerous motorists who are approaching military checkpoints too fast (i.e., as if to ram through them or suicide bomb or something).

Similar white-light-based systems are already being used in Iraq to stop potential terrorists careening toward military checkpoints, but the new system may be more effective.

An important aspect of the PHaSR system is that it does not (or is not supposed to) cause permanent blindness. Permanently blinding laser weapons do exist, but they are banned under a 1995 U.N. protocol and so are not used.

The PHaSR system seeks to avoid permanent blindness by automatically sensing the distance to the target and (apparently) adjusting the strength of the laser beam it emits (though the military is presently a bit cagey on exactly how this works).

It also uses two different frequencies of light in case the target is wearing goggles to block one frequency.

SWEET!

Now if they’d just develop zatnikitels. You just can’t beat that "one shot stuns, two shots kill, three shots disintegrates" functionality.

GET THE STORY.

P.S. Y’know, this only raises the question of why they never used a sub-stun setting to dazzle people on Star Trek.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

9 thoughts on ““Set PHaSRs On Blind!””

  2. I bet half the development time on that thing was spent trying to figure out a name that would work out to “PHaSR”. 😉

  3. Blinding drivers of speeding vehicles is -sooo- safe.
    I’d be surprised if drivers behind glass windows weren’t permanently, painfully snow-blinded.
    I think that the phase rifles on ST are supposed to be plasma weapons, if not as nice as PPGs (which are or were also under development, if I recall correctly)

  4. If you pulsed it right, you could induce a seizure. Maybe that is our (retro-invented) stun setting.

  5. But the question is, if I use the PHaSR to butt-stroke a rioter who got too close, will it still fire?
    (I just had a talk with a riot cop- they worry about things like that.)

  6. Is it just me, or does the thing look a little unwieldy? Kind of bulky, y’know? But hey, if it works, it works.

  7. I’m sure Mark Shea and many of his readers will soon call this “torture” and call anyone who thinks it’s cool an “allegedlyfaithfulcatholic fogspreadingtortureapologist”

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