Surrender or We'll Slime You Some say John Alexander is on the trail of the greatest advance in warfare since the invention of gunpowder - nonlethal weapons.

Others believe he shouldn't be spending taxpayer money without adult supervision.

By Mark Nollinger

The Los Alamos National Laboratory, a sprawling complex of beige buildings, stretches across a series of mesas above the stark beauty of the New Mexico highlands. Nearby street names like Oppenheimer and Trinity remind visitors of the facility's reason for being: revolutionary research and development of America's first atomic bombs. Devising weapons of hideous death and massive destruction in the service of national security has long been the name of the high-technology game around here.

If John Alexander's vision of the future is realized, that kind of Cold War thinking might one day become as obsolete as a cavalry charge. A retired Army colonel-turned-technocrat and a member of the lab's Special Technologies group, Alexander is a leader of a growing movement that could change the way the US military thinks about conducting the business of war. How? By providing strategists with a new class of weapons designed not to kill.

The efforts at Los Alamos are just part of an innovative new trend in national defense: nonlethality. At facilities ranging from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, government-funded scientists and engineers are developing an array of high-tech devices that are supposed to incapacitate, not decapitate, their targets.

"The entire concept of national security has changed," Alexander declares. "Therefore, you need other sorts of force options." If the ideas circulating around the nation's top-secret weapons labs pan out, the nonlethal arsenal of the millennium could include such exotic "force options" as electromagnetic pulse generators and high-powered microwaves, which would short out communication systems and fry electronics. Computer viruses would infiltrate and paralyze banking networks and command-and-control operations. Aircraft-targeting sensors could fall prey to "demons," directed-energy munitions that emit flashes of light brighter than the sun. Clouds of combustion-inhibiting chemicals would choke engines, stopping tanks and troop carriers in their tracks, while metal-eating microbes and super-caustic chemicals would eat away at their armor. Enemy soldiers might be confused by holographic projections, dazzled by laser rifles, or disoriented by low-frequency acoustic beams that provoke vomiting and diarrhea. And if being blinded and humiliated isn't enough to sap their will, they could find themselves trapped in stinging nets or glued in place by ultrasticky foams.

These weapons may seem like they've sprung from the pages of Marvel Comics, but haphazard research into these and other nonlethal technologies has been underway for decades. As far back as 1972, a National Science Foundation report on the subject listed over 30 nonlethal concepts. Details on most of the current projects are hard to come by, as many of the ideas are being developed in highly classified, or "black" fashion. But the Pentagon is pushing to get the technology out of the labs and into the field. The 1995 defense budget includes US$41 million in seed money for some of the more promising devices. Once some of those are selected, insiders say, Secretary of Defense William Perry is expected to authorize a Nonlethal Weapons Steering Committee to introduce the new capabilities into the US arsenal.

While $41 million is pocket change in terms of the Pentagon's $262 billion budget for defense, it marks the first step in the development of a coordinated nonlethal weaponry program. And it's not just international bad guys who could be dazzled, disabled, and immobilized. The Justice Department is also getting into the nonlethal act. Spurred by the 1993 disaster with the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, Attorney General Janet Reno and Deputy Secretary of Defense John Deutch last April signed a "memo of understanding" under which the Pentagon will share "dual-use" nonlethal technology with domestic law enforcement agencies.

At first glance, sending an American soldier into battle with a nonlethal weapon makes about as much sense as handing a Buddhist monk a bazooka. But according to a growing number of military officers and national-security experts, the new technologies will allow commanders the opportunity to accomplish the same goals as conventional weapons while minimizing casualties as well as the destruction of hardware and the environment. "Anything you can conceive of using lethal force against you could use nonlethals instead, potentially with a faster effect and less political baggage," says Colonel John Warden, Commandant of the Air Command and staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

This sort of claim is driving Washington's interest in the new technologies. Traditional US military doctrine - using overwhelming force to "break things and kill people" - has its limits in the New World Order, where a monolithic opponent like the Red Army has been replaced by a scattered mishmash of Middle Eastern dictators, African warlords, and Caribbean /lites. With public tolerance of the costs of intervention at an all-time low, decision makers are hoping that nonlethal alternatives might ease the task of playing Globocop. "It's coming from the president's desire to have wars that are bloodless," says Harvey Sapolsky, who is a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We don't want Americans killed, we don't want civilians killed, and we don't even want some of the enemies killed. That's a big constraint."

Fans of nonlethal weaponry assert that the technologies will apply across the strategic spectrum, from special operations against terrorists and international drug cartels to full-scale battles with rogue states. Believers like General Edward "Shy" Meyer, a retired Army Chief of staff, suggest that advanced nonlethal capabilities could even help avoid some wars altogether by allowing the US to impose "techno-sanctions" against its enemies. A dose of combustion-inhibiting chemicals, for example, could have neutralized the threat that arose last fall when Iraq moved a division close to the Kuwait border. "If you had the ability to make all the motor-driven vehicles unable to move without killing any Iraqis," Meyer explains, "that would be a relatively peaceful and nonlethal solution to a very difficult international problem."

At least initially, however, the Pentagon seems to be setting its sights a bit lower. One senior strategist at the Department of Defense says nonlethal weapons have the most potential in "low-intensity conflicts" like those in Somalia and Haiti, where it is difficult to tell enemies from civilians. "When we defeated the Iraqi army in the desert, if we didn't know exactly where an Iraqi artillery piece was, we just covered a whole area with lethal fire," says the Pentagon official, who asked to remain anonymous as the new policy for nonlethals has not been announced publicly. "We can't do that in downtown Mogadishu. If I can neutralize a group of people in a nonlethal way, then go in and sort out who the bad guys are, that's an interesting kind of capability."

That's also a kind of capability that appeals to domestic law enforcement types, who are desperate to update their crime-fighting abilities while avoiding the lawsuits and bad press that stem from excessive force. "State and local police are still equipped much as Wyatt Earp was in the late 19th century, and they still have the same basic options when confronting a subject," writes David Boyd, science and technology chief at the National Institute For Justice. "They can talk him into cooperating, beat him into submission, or shoot him. Law enforcement clearly needs more alternatives."

Boyd argues that the 1992 Los Angeles riots might have been avoided if police confronting Rodney King had had more than primitive nonlethals (batons and Tasers) at their disposal. Like a gun that shoots "sticky foam," for example. Originally developed by Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to protect nuclear facilities from terrorism, the coffee-colored liquid expands up to 50 times its original volume when mixed with air, turning into a harmless, taffylike goo that immobilizes its target on contact. Also being researched at Sandia: a "smart gun" with an electronic chip that prevents anyone except its owner from firing it, and an aqueous foam that can fill a room with soap-like bubbles, temporarily preventing occupants from seeing and hearing while still allowing them to move and breathe.

Still, problems remain. Before cops can start yelling "Stop, or I'll slime you!" to fleeing suspects, researchers have to figure out how to get sticky foam unstuck. Baby oil works best, but it takes about a minute to clean up each square inch of the stuff.

More importantly, some weapons being touted as nonlethal can have some pretty brutal side effects. The International Red Cross opposes laser weapons because it fears the devices might permanently blind combatants. Looking for law-enforcement applications of high-powered microwave technology, a researcher at Los Alamos claims to have figured out a way to stop a car engine by disrupting the electronics with a burst of energy. Unfortunately, it could bake the vehicle's occupants. Other observers fear that the various nonlethal gasses, liquids, and microbes under consideration could violate UN-sponsored treaties on chemical weapons and biological warfare.

Steve Aftergood, an analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, cites an incident in the Persian Gulf War - when the Air Force launched a missile carrying a warhead filled with carbon fibers that shorted out Baghdad's electrical plant - as an example of how supposedly nonlethal technology can inflict serious harm. "The loss of that electrical power led to immense suffering, at least comparable to a bomb strike," he says. "Hospitals and a whole range of civilian activities were shut down." Aftergood accuses advocates of deliberately obscuring such worries to sell the nonlethal program. "What concerns me is the marketing of nonlethal weapons as a kind of violence-free means of conflict," he says. "The concept of nonlethal is admirable, but it is unlikely to lead to a fundamental change in the character of warfare. War by definition means killing people, and it will continue to mean killing people."

Some experts are concerned US soldiers could be the ones who end up in body bags. MIT's Sapolsky wonders how useful the weapons will be against adversaries who are armed to the teeth, a question also on the minds of skeptics in the military. "When it comes to dealing with really bad people," he says, "it's going to be hard to stop them with nonlethal technologies and have none of our soldiers get killed in the process. This is going to be impossible to do. So I think there's another answer besides nonlethal, and that's staying home."

Advocates like John Alexander caution that nonlethal technologies are intended to augment, not replace, conventional weapons. "If they shoot real bullets, we'll shoot real bullets," he insists, adding that nobody is suggesting that American troops be placed at undue risk. And while he concedes that "nonlethal" can conjure up unrealistic visions of bloodless war, Alexander argues that critics are missing the point. "There is nothing that is totally nonlethal," he says, pointing out that any device, under the right circumstances, could kill somebody. "What you are talking about is objectives. How do you minimize the number of casualties?" The fact that the rubric is proving a bit controversial, he continues, only points up its usefulness. "There is a need to capture imaginations," Alexander says. "There is equally a need to think rationally. We keep saying this is not a panacea."

Alexander, 57, is very good at capturing imaginations with the idea of nonlethality. A white-haired technology manager sporting a shirt pocket full of pens, he can't claim to have invented any of the technology. But for the last six years, Alexander has been giving speeches, writing papers, organizing conferences, and pestering the defense establishment about nonlethal weapons. "If this thing ever turns into a pearl," says General Meyer, "he's been the sand in the oyster."

Asked why he has devoted so much time and energy to promoting nonlethals, Alexander explains that the US will always project force to defend its interests and values. "I think it is in our best interests to do that as humanely as possible. Killing folks just doesn't get you a lot." In recognition of his efforts, the respected journal Aviation Week & Space Technology honored Alexander in January 1994 as an "Aerospace Laureate." He is "the intellectual leader in the field," according to Robert Kupperman, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC, think tank.

Despite the accolades, another side of Alexander has fueled skepticism of the nonlethal idea. And it's easy to see why - parts of his r/sum/ seem lifted from The X Files. A former Special Forces commander who led Cambodian mercenaries behind the lines in Vietnam, he holds a doctorate in education from Walden University in Florida for his work in "thanatology" - the study of death and dying - with psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. In 1980, Alexander published an article in Military Review called "The New Mental Battlefield," in which he advocated investigating military applications of telepathy, out-of-body experiences, and other paranormal phenomena. He has been a president of The International Association For Near Death Studies, has written papers and organized conferences on alien abductions and other "anomalous phenomena," and has advised PSI-TECH, a company founded by former intelligence officers that reportedly claims to use "remote viewing" - a kind of telepathy - to gather information for corporations and government agencies.

Alexander's adventures in the twilight zone have proven to be easy fodder for critics like Aftergood. "John Alexander is by all accounts a resourceful and imaginative individual," Aftergood concluded last year in an article for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. "He would make a splendid character in a science-fiction novel. But he probably shouldn't be spending taxpayer money without adult supervision."

Alexander insists that his interest in things paranormal is an intellectual avocation completely unrelated to his work at Los Alamos. "My position has been that there's really a fruitful area for science to get involved in. It ought to be done rigorously, with the same kind of standards that apply in any other field. But you don't reject the evidence just because it doesn't fit your hypothesis." He complains that critics like Aftergood adhere to a double standard by attacking him for his beliefs but not going after scientists whose religious faiths incorporate a belief in the mystical and the miraculous.

Linking Alexander's explorations of the nether world with nonlethal technologies does seem like a cheap shot - after all, the weaponry will stand or fall after being tested by scientists and soldiers. But there is an indirect connection. Alexander, who had begun working on antimateriel technologies in the latter part of his military career, retired from the army in 1988 and joined Los Alamos. Shortly after, he hooked up with writer Janet Morris on a book project. The result of their collaboration was The Warrior's Edge, a self-help manual that shows executives how to use the mind-training techniques Alexander studied in the military - "remote viewing" among them - to achieve victory on the business battlefield.

Morris, a research director of a DC think tank called the US Global Strategy Council, and her husband, Chris, a fellow writer and national security expert, were also intrigued by the nonlethal possibilities of some of the futuristic technologies being researched at the government labs. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the time seemed especially ripe for new ideas. Janet Morris enlisted the support of her boss at the time, Ray Cline, a former deputy director of the CIA whose connections opened doors in Washington. Cline put together the Nonlethality Policy Review Group, which was made up of various ex-government officials and military chiefs of staff. The group spent a year studying the issue and forming recommendations. Janet Morris then published a widely circulated white paper outlining the nonlethal idea and listing the various available technologies. In Nonlethality: A Global Strategy, she trumpeted the concept as a "revolutionary strategic doctrine" that would allow the US to seize the moral high ground in coping with the demands of a new world order marked by threats ranging from ethnic violence to narco-trafficking.

Intrigued, Dick Cheney, secretary of defense under George Bush, appointed his own nonlethal task force after the gulf war. Though the task force enthusiastically endorsed the concept, the efforts of Cline, Alexander, and the Morrises to lobby for a comprehensive policy of nonlethality limped along at the Pentagon during the Bush years. "We spent three years supporting the Cheney defense department's nonlethal task force but couldn't get anywhere," Morris complains, "because there was such a great desire to resuscitate the Cold War."

Then came the Clinton administration, which inherited the foreign policy headache in Somalia. With US forces stymied by stone-throwing mobs and teenage snipers on the streets of Mogadishu, Alexander and members of the Council of Foreign Relations, an independent advisory group, met with then-Defense Undersecretary John Deutch on the pacifying potential of nonlethals. Deutch was impressed enough to appoint a task force that is now assessing the technologies and forging a policy for their use.

While the Pentagon is keeping mum about exactly which technologies are up for initial funding, insiders suggest that dual-use devices, potentially effective on the streets of both Philadelphia and Port-au-Prince, are likely to receive top priority. Sticky foam is one candidate, as are acoustic weapons being developed at Picatinny Arsenal. Also attracting attention is "Lifeguard," an antisniper apparatus under development at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The device, which can be mounted on military vehicles or buildings in high-crime areas, uses a computer-linked sensor that can identify the exact location of gunfire in less than a second. The military application, however, is not necessarily nonlethal; the developers suggest that Lifeguard could be attached to a gun that would fire back instantly and kill any would-be snipers.

Still, it will probably be years - in some cases decades - before any of these technologies show up on city streets or overseas battlefields. Some nonlethal advocates say acoustic beam weapons may be the first. But according to Cline, who is a project manager at the Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny Arsenal, a field prototype is three to five years away, "if we get consistent funding."

That's a big if. One highly placed defense official doubts nonlethals will receive major financial backing in the near future: "We live in a zero-sum environment," says the Pentagon official. "Anyone who proposes spending money on new things has to find money to take from old things first. And that's always a contentious process." Nonlethal funding promises to be even more so, as many of the defenders of "old things" remain skeptical of weapons that neutralize a target rather than destroy it. "If I hit these guys between the eyes and say, Hey, your bomb is obsolete, or your rifle is obsolete," says Colonel Warden of the Air Force, "then they get real mad and make it a heck of a lot more difficult to get any movement in the nonlethal area."

Even if the money is allocated and the weapons perform as advertised - another big if, as few of the devices have progressed beyond the lab model stage - the extreme secrecy of some of the weapons' development could be another stumbling block. Both skeptics and advocates have criticized the government for keeping much of the research under such ultratight wraps. "A large fraction of this work is highly classified and unaccountable to anyone," says Aftergood. "We know from the human radiation experiments that the government will sometimes violate ethical standards in conducting experiments." On a different tack, Janet Morris worries that the projects may be buried in the "black" world by opponents of nonlethality within the defense establishment. And Alexander acknowledges that progress on some of the highly classified technologies may be slowed by the resulting lack of peer review that normally accompanies scientific research.

Other observers fear that certain nonlethal weapons may have dangerous consequences. Experts point out that technologies like computer viruses and information warfare - which Alexander calls "as serious as weapons of mass destruction" - would be more effective against a high-tech society like the US than most of its likely opponents. "If we could destroy a banking system, I bet that would really screw up, say, the Japanese," says Harvey Sapolsky of MIT. "But it would probably screw us up, too."

And some nonlethal advocates worry that putting a potentially low-risk military capability into the hands of politicians could be like giving a child a loaded gun. "There's a subset of Congress and consenting intelligent Americans that doesn't want to hand a US administration a ticket to adventure that's totally unconstrained," Morris says. Indeed, last spring, The American Assembly, an august congress of academics and national policy experts that meets twice yearly, recommended that the National Security Council conduct an urgent review of nonlethality. But it also warned that "effective nonlethal technology might increase the chance that we would intervene simply because we could, rather than because we should."

John Alexander acknowledges that such potential pitfalls are reason for concern. But as the nonlethal program moves forward, he says, the various issues will be debated and resolved, one way or another. He just hopes that it will be done quickly, as he believes the technology is going to be developed - if not by the US, then by someone else. "This is a classic area in which the technology is outstripping ethics and philosophy, " Alexander says. "What we need are mechanisms to come to grips with these sorts of problems faster. We no longer have the time to have decades of debate." And while the debate over nonlethal technology rages, Alexander adds, it is important not to forget the bottom line.

"I had a guy who wrote me saying, This is terrible, this is awful, look where you're going with this," Alexander recalls. "I said, Compared to what - being dead? You know? What are the alternatives? You've got to think about it in terms of alternatives."

Mark Nollinger (mark noll@aol.com) is a Southern California-based freelance writer. He wrote "Rage" for Wired 2.06.

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