DAVID BOYD: We're looking at a technology we already have a prototype of that's capable of launching an antipersonnel net that can be used to net a demented soul armed with a weapon other than a firearm to bring them under control long enough for law enforcement to prevent them from doing something they shouldn't.

THOMAS KARR: Many of these devices that have been proposed as non-lethal weapons could occasionally cause harm, cause injury, even cause death.

GEN EDWARD MEYER (USA, Ret.): When I made my first presentation on non-lethal warfare out at Lawrence Livermore Lab to their advisory panel made up of ex-Defense Department, State Department and generals, they all said, "What do you mean 'tickle them to death,' we want to kill them."

NARRATOR: Weapons that are supposed to incapacitate but don't kill: Slickums, stickums, super acids, goop guns, blinding lasers, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulses, high power microwaves, laser weapons, infrasound, computer viruses, and metal-eating microbes.

Somebody, somewhere is thinking about how to use them as weapons of war: To stun combatants or immobilize them. To wage war without spilling blood and guts. To create a world where wars are kinder, gentler, and more antiseptic.

Dr. SPOCK: "Obviously, taking them alive is going to be difficult."

CAPTAIN KIRK: "Set your phaser for one-quarter, I'll leave mine on stun."

NARRATOR: That's the world of the future, in the view of many advocates and enthusiasts, and the future is closer than you think. But is it a world we want? Today, "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," examines the world of non-lethal technologies.

ADM JOHN SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.): I'm Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, director of the Center for Defense Information.

Fifty years ago, we invented a weapon that could destroy whole cities and kill hundreds of thousands of people with one nuclear explosion. Today, we are developing a new family of weapons which are less than lethal, commonly referred to as non-lethal weapons. But are they? And to what end? The subject of today's "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

"Foster-Miller has developed the extraordinary capability to package, deliver, and open spiderman-like nets and film. Current applications for this technology include non-lethal vehicle defeat..."

NARRATOR: The idea of using non-lethal weapons to avoid death or permanent injury isn't new. A report commissioned by the National Science Foundation in 1971 on possible uses for law enforcement called for the development of non-lethal weapons like soft plastic ricochet rounds, tasers, and foam generators.

In fact, immobilizing foams have been used for many years to safeguard nuclear facilities.

"Sandia Research has produced some unusual materials that can quickly fill a storage site and severely hamper any intruder's efforts to steal or vandalize nuclear property."

NARRATOR: General Edward Meyer, Army Chief of Staff from 1979 to 1983 and a prominent long-time advocate of non-lethal weapons, noted a far older example.

GEN. MEYER (at CFR Briefing): Non-lethal technology is not necessarily new. If you'll recall the battle for Jericho, you'll recall they marched around for seven days, blew the horns, shouted and the walls came tumbling down.

NARRATOR: What is new, however, is the high-level attention non-lethality is receiving from the Pentagon. In the past few years, at a time when most of the debate on military issues has been about budgets, force structure and major weapons systems, the Pentagon has been experiencing what it calls a revolution in military affairs.

Advances in information technologies, communications and precision-guided weapons are causing the military to reexamine its assumptions about how war can and should be fought.

Thomas Karr is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and a program leader in low collateral damage devices, meaning weapons that inflict limited damage.

Dr. KARR: I think what people are talking about today is going to a new class of devices that is specifically designed to take on and defeat the weapons directly in a low collateral damage way.

NARRATOR: Military planners still assume that US forces will intervene overseas. But increasingly, they believe these interventions will be in civil and ethnic conflicts, peacekeeping operations such as have taken place in Somalia, Haiti, or Bosnia, or limited attacks, such as in Panama and Grenada, what the military calls "Operations Other Than War."

Dr. KARR: The post-Cold War military situation is different. For example, we're expecting to find ourselves in a lot more combat in built-up areas, in cities, where collateral damage is a much more serious issue and avoiding civilian casualties is a much more serious issue than it has been in the past.

NARRATOR: It's believed that the American public will no longer accept conflicts that result in high numbers of civilian casualties. And as public support is deemed crucial for any overseas deployment of US forces, non-lethal technologies are seen as vital to maintaining favorable public opinion.

Dr. Karr gives an example to explain why the military views such technologies as important.

Dr. KARR: I guess it's two years ago now that we made a cruise missile attack on Baghdad because we didn't like some of the things that Saddam was doing even long after Desert Storm. One of those cruise missiles fell on a hotel in Baghdad and caused a fire that killed one person in the hotel.

End of the use of cruise missiles by the US over Baghdad. We're not going to fly them over the city again. Because we hit one building, caused some collateral damage, and one civilian death, it changed our entire military approach to that regime. And I think we'll be seeing that over and over again.

NARRATOR: According to the Senate Armed Services Committee, non-lethal weapons are "especially valuable in non-traditional operations where high collateral damage can inflame the situation, put US lives at risk, and undermine the political objectives of the of the mission. The idea being that non-lethal weapons could disable or incapacitate soldiers and equipment while causing minimal damage to civilians and property.

The report goes on to claim that damage can be of a temporary nature and quickly repaired, such as attacks against infrastructure, roads or power grids.

A policy directive on non-lethality is currently being drafted at the Pentagon and this year, for the first time, the Pentagon's budget included a $37 million request for research into non-lethal technologies.

Yet, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of a bloodless war are greatly exaggerated. A study released by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board in 1994 found that "a usually non-lethal weapon may cause unintended lethality under certain conditions: A stun gun could kill someone with a weak heart. A 'rubber' bullet could hit a particularly vulnerable body part like the throat, and thus become lethal. And microwave devices could have unintended affects."

The study also noted that due to a lack of test results and bonafide cost data, as well as claims that may violate physical laws, it's well to treat some non-lethal technologies with healthy skepticism until convincing details become available.

Even advocates of this technology acknowledge that there isn't any such thing as a completely non-lethal weapon.

Mr. BOYD: Well, we prefer the term "less than lethal,' which also isn't perfect, but at least it suggests that the technologies we use, while not intended to be lethal, are not necessarily totally safe.

NARRATOR: David Boyd is director of the Science and Technology Office at the National Institute of Justice. His office is the leading civilian agency investigating non-lethal technologies for domestic law enforcement use. He notes the military also is concerned that "non-lethal" is a misleading term.

Mr. BOYD: The Advanced Research Projects Agency recently has begun to use the term "limited effects technologies," which I'm not real comfortable with either. But they do that because their concerned about the implications of "non-lethal," which suggest that it's totally safe, or "less than lethal," which is sometimes a little difficult to figure out.

Dr. KARR: The definition I would use is any device that is

designed, intended to cause very little damage to property and very few casualties to people. Not necessarily no casualties, but it's intended to be minimal. That covers a wide variety of things.

"The idea is to create less than lethal prototype weapons, then transfer the technology to industry. Sticky foam is an extremely tacky and tenacious substance that entangles and immobilizes a person."

NARRATOR: An unrecognized aspect of non-lethal technologies is that they are not viewed as a replacement for lethal weapons.

Dr. KARR: I think the concern among some military people is that if such weapons become developed and introduced in the force that somebody may take away their traditional lethal weapons, the guns, and grenades, and so on, and say, here, use this foam-squirting gun, use this net instead of your traditional weapons.

I don't want to do that and I don't know anybody that does want to do that. So, that's why people say it's not a substitute for, it's a complement to or an adjunct to.

GEN MEYER: It's intended that they're part of the kit that can be used in conjunction with lethal weapons even in a lethal war.

NARRATOR: General Meyer believes that in addition to minimizing casualties, non-lethal weapons might also have a greater deterrent effect than conventional weapons.

GEN. MEYER: The issue is whether or not you're deterred by knowing that there are non-lethal weapons which are readily usable and might be used more readily by nations in response to your action than the lethal weapons, which everybody should take a long time thinking about use of.

NARRATOR: This reasoning is similar to the draft Pentagon policy directive which states that non-lethal weapons enhance US military superiority "by making potential adversaries aware that the United States can thwart aggression and achieve humanitarian aims in ways that do not entail excessive costs, thus enabling us to act more freely and more decisively."

Although most discussions of non-lethal weapons are framed in a future context, the fact is that the United States has already started, although tentatively, to deploy these weapons.

During the 1991 war with Iraq, the US Navy used a new class of highly secret non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse warheads carried on Tomahawk cruise missiles to disrupt and destroy Iraqi electronic systems, including their air defense systems. US cruise missiles also dropped carbon filaments on Iraqi electrical power generation facilities, disrupting the national power grid. It's worth noting, however, that although this was touted as an example of non-lethal technology at work, some non-lethal advocates believe it was anything but.

Dr. KARR: Some people would classify it that way, but I would not. That caused a lot of collateral damage. I mean, it took out the whole power grid, including electrical power to hospitals, fire, police departments, and stores and houses. That's a lot of collateral damage and there's no way to know how many casualties were caused indirectly by that.

NARRATOR: In early 1995, US forces returned to Somalia to safeguard the withdrawal of remaining UN peacekeepers. The Marines who were deployed brought with them such weapons as guns that shoot rubber pellets and tiny beanbags to disperse crowds, stinger grenades that shoot rubber pellets, sticky foam that immobilizes people, and a foam system that creates a soapsuds-like barrier 200 feet long, 20 feet wide and 4 feet high, laced with tear gas.

Mr. BOYD: In February, I believe, of this year we were approached by the US Marine Corps -- maybe it was in January -- who asked if we could provide them every prototype sticky foam delivery system we had so they could take them to Somalia to use as part of a less than lethal suite of technologies to use to cover the withdrawal of UN forces from Somalia.

NARRATOR: Alton Frye is director of the Washington office of the Council on Foreign Relations. A council task force issued a report on non-lethal technologies.

ALTON FRYE: This morning's task force presentation addresses a set of issues which have been far less visible to the public eye. Non-lethal technologies have received little attention, but they're beginning to pose extremely difficult and important issues for defense and foreign policy.

MALCOM WEINER: In the recent withdrawal of UN forces from Somalia, sticky foam was reportedly used to create barriers. General Zinni, the Marine commander of the operation, has said that he believes that our adversary's knowledge that we possess these weapons had a deterrent effect which avoided US casualties. General Zinni has recommended that non-lethals be included in all future US force deployments and that we develop more and better non-lethals.

NARRATOR: Malcom Weiner, chairman of the task force, contrasts this with the United States' previous experience in Somalia.

Mr. WEINER: One might compare this recent experience with our earlier effort in Somalia, where between six- and 10,000 Somalis are said to have been killed, many through fire from helicopter gunships.

NARRATOR: There are, however, significant problems before non-lethal weapons become standard equipment for either military or police use. Some are operational.

Dr. KARR: I always worry about the situation where the adversary's shooting at you with real guns. Suppose you squirt him with sticky foam. That doesn't prevent him from squeezing the trigger and keeping on shooting. Suppose you -- even if you blind the guy, you flash -- you temporarily flash him with something and he can't see, he can still shoot his gun. He can still hear you, he can point his gun. You put some slick stuff on the ground so he falls down. He can still throw a grenade. What do you do to really stop the lethal force?

NARRATOR: Use of these weapons also raises legal and ethical questions and gives some military planners pause. General Meyer recalls the use of chemical defoliants during the Vietnam War as an example why people should proceed cautiously.

GEN MEYER: No one thought when they were using Agent Orange, which was making it easier for me as a young officer over in Vietnam to get around in the jungles, and see what the long term impacts of that could be. So, I mean those are the kinds of things that need to be done up front. And that's all the more reason why there has to be a national policy on it where everybody's involved and it's not just put off into a little corner by a bunch of people who are specializing in just Special Operations-type activities.

NARRATOR: One particular type of proposed non-lethal weapon, blinding lasers, designed to temporarily blind, is causing great concern.

In 1995, the Human Rights Watch Arms Project released a report on US blinding lasers. It found that the United States has pursued the development of at least 10 different tactical laser weapons, many of which have the potential to permanently blind individuals. The existence of most of these programs is not known to the American public or even to most of the US Congress which is funding them.

Subsequently, it was revealed that one of these weapons, the Sabre 203, was deployed to Somalia. Reportedly, Pentagon officials halted its use at the last minute for "humane reasons." Others believe that the Pentagon was afraid the lasers could harm the soldiers that operated them.

A study released in 1993 by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the introduction of tactical laser systems presents the prospect of producing sudden and irreversible blindness in large numbers of battlefield personnel.

Dr. Karr notes that there are concerns that such lasers could be the cause of future friendly fire incidents where we blind our own troops.

Dr. KARR: Things like laser blinders, there's serious concern that you're going to blind the wrong people. You're going to blind bystanders and civilians and even blind your own troops in the wrong -- in an accidental situation.

NARRATOR: The Department of Defense subsequently issued a statement in response to the Arms Project report, which said, "We do not possess, nor are we developing laser weapons designed or intended primarily to permanently blind enemy combatants." But studies have shown that it's virtually impossible to produce lasers that only temporarily blind.

The need for restrictions on lasers was graphically illustrated earlier this year when mainland China became the first government in the world to openly market a blinding laser for sale to other nations at an arms fair in the United Arab Emirates. The sales literature for a device called the ZM-87 portable laser disturber says, "One of its major applications is, by means of high-powered laser pulses, to injure or dizzy the eyes of an enemy combatant."

The prospect of injuries caused by blinding lasers has caused so much concern that the Swedish government has proposed that a ban on the use of blinding laser weapons be added to the United Nations Conventional Weapons Convention. Last Fall, a protocol banning blinding lasers was ratified. After the international ban on blinding lasers was adopted, the U.S. military halted its research and stated that blinding lasers would not be used in future deployments of U.S. forces.

Another potential problem with non-lethal technologies is that the conditions under which they may be used are more demanding in the area of law enforcement.

Mr. BOYD: In the military, the mission comes first. You're going to execute that mission whatever comes. And in the process of executing that mission, you try to minimize collateral damage to the civilian establishment. For law enforcement, it's that civilian establishment, those collateral folks who are the mission, it's their protection. So that that's the ultimate mission they have to aim at, and so no collateral damage is tolerated under most circumstances.

NARRATOR: Even proponents of non-lethal weapons acknowledge that some of the proposed technologies are irresponsible, such as the use of metal-eating microbes to destroy enemy weapons and equipment.

Dr. KARR: I find the prospect of such weapons frightening and abhorrent and I think many other people will also. I think there are other ways to achieve the objectives that aren't biological weapons and don't suffer from all of those moral objections.

NARRATOR: General Meyer points to a past proposal to consider a mini-nuclear weapon as a non-lethal device if it were used in an uninhabited area.

GEN. MEYER: I don't think you'd find anybody whose thinking in the non-lethal area would consider that non-lethal. The whole concept of using nuclear weapons as a element of non-lethal weaponry, to me, was an absurdity.

NARRATOR: For General Meyer, these and other concerns call for high level attention from President Clinton.

GEN. MEYER: I'd tell him that he needs to have under the National Security Council a special directive that puts out that says I want a report back on the role of non-lethal weapons as a part of the way in which we go about doing our national security business, and that's not been done. Right now it's being worked separately over in the low-intensity element of the Defense Department and it needs to be elevated to the point where everybody's looking at it.

NARRATOR: General Meyer also believes that non-lethal systems could suffer by failing to live up to their hype.

GEN. MEYER: If somehow it gets sold as a answer to all questions and that people believe that you wouldn't need lethal weapons at all, if you had the right kind of non-lethal, I think that's a danger.

NARRATOR: At first thought it seems difficult to argue with the idea of non-lethal technologies. After all, who could be against the alluring prospect of incapacitating or immobilizing enemy forces, or criminals and citizens in civil disturbances here at home?

Mr. BOYD: In the Rodney King incident, for example, in California cost the city of Los Angeles a riot, which cost at least a billion dollars and 42 lives. So, those are the kind of things we're looking to try to prevent, to find better ways to handle.

NARRATOR: But non-lethal technologies are seen as a complement to, not a substitute for the use of lethal force. Also, many of these technologies have yet to be proven effective and pose serious risk both to targets and users, such as blinding lasers.

And, as the introduction of the Chinese blinding laser demonstrates, other nations are also capable of developing these weapons. Thus, the prospect of a new arms race is a real possibility. It's also possible that the prospect of a relatively less bloody conflict may make the decision to intervene overseas more tempting to decision makers.

But the likelihood of non-lethal weapons making wars less brutal or destructive remains to be proven. We don't yet know what the costs and effects of such weapons will be.

Thus far, much of the research on non-lethal weapons has been carried out in highly classified programs with little oversight and supervision. It seems only proper that the issue receive some high level attention and scrutiny before we start trying to create new means to wage war. Perhaps we would be better off investing in trying to prevent wars rather than inventing new ways to fight them.

ADM SHANAHAN: We thank you for being with us today and I hope that you enjoyed our program on non-lethal weapons and that it contributed to your body of knowledge.

For "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I am Jack Shanahan.