SpyTalk

People with a heartbeat will remember how the Air Force gave new meaning to loose nukes in August 2007, when an AF crew in North Dakota mistakenly loaded a half dozen warheads on a B-52, which flew off to Louisiana blithely clueless about its hot cargo. Nobody missed them for hours.

The Air Force is still smarting from that incident, which may have prompted it to get a better handle on its death ray weapons.

It's published a new manual on the handling of Directed Energy Weapons, or DEWS in Air Force lingo.

Death rays by any other name, the DEWS "include, but are not limited to, high-energy lasers, weaponized microwave and millimeter wave beams, explosive-driven electromagnetic pulse devices, acoustic weapons, laser induced plasma channel systems, non-lethal directed energy devices, and atomic-scale and subatomic particle beam weapons," manual instructs.

 

They "create unique hazards that are different from conventional and nuclear weapons," says the manual,  whose publication was was first reported by Steve Aftergood, editor of Secrecy News.

Indeed, some DEWS use ionizing radiation, which can scramble a person's DNA, the manual advises. 

And watch where you point that that thing, it says. There way be "effects due to beam drifting and failure to achieve pointing accuracy and to maintain pointing stability."

Could DEWS be the new secret counterterrrorism weapon Bob Woodward hinted at? 

Of course, there may arise "situations of urgent military need where the operational necessity outweighs the operational risk," the Air Force says. Who has time for elaborate safety folderol when the enemy's coming over the wall?

In that case, "If EOC is requested by combatant commands, the PM will submit a certification waiver through the MAJCOM to HQ AFSC/SEW for AF/SE coordination and will be forwarded to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force for approval."

Everybody got that?

UPDATE: Danger Room's Sharon Weinberger discovers that the Pentagon's controversial "pain ray," a directed energy weapon that creates an intense burning sensation designed to repel a potential enemy, is far from safe in untrained hands.