Pentagon super-weapons C/D, S/D, etc. etc. etc.

The Bush administration is ramping up bioterrorism research that will press beyond traditional defenses against natural biowarfare germs to explore genetically engineered superbugs, as well as the means to mass-produce and disseminate them.

After spending almost $10 billion on biodefense research, defense scientists say broader studies of bioterror threats are needed to weigh the chances of certain attacks, tell U.S. intelligence what to look for and shore up defenses.

...

"If any other country set forth a program like this, U.S. intelligence undoubtedly would call it an offensive program," said Edward Hammond, head of the Sunshine Project, a group in Austin, Texas, that tracks bioweapons and biodefense issues.

"Our enemy now is not the Russians or Saddam. It's biotech itself. It's imagining what we can do to fight the technology," he said. "If you generate that mentality, it's sort of no-holds barred."

...

The critique was triggered by a February presentation to military officers about the Homeland Security Department's new National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center. Among research thrusts, it tasked scientists to study how to "acquire, grow, modify, store, stabilize, package (and) disperse" bioweapons and to run computer simulations of large-scale production.

It called for "red teaming" operations, in which scientists would figure out how to execute terrorist attacks.

Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.

At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances.

But human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use.

The weapons are designed to address the perceived shortcomings of the Taser, the electric-shock gun already used by 4000 police departments in the US and undergoing trials with some police forces in the UK.

It hits the victim with two darts that trail current-carrying wires, which limit its range to a maximum of seven metres (see graphic). As a single shot, short-range weapon, the Taser is of little use in crowd control. And Tasers have no effect on vehicles.

These limitations are beginning to be overcome. Engineers working for the US Department of Defense's research division, DARPA, and defence companies in Europe have been working out how to create an electrically conductive path between a gun and a target without using wires.

A weapon under development by Rheinmetall, based in Dorf, Germany, creates a conducting channel by using a small explosive charge to squirt a stream of tiny conductive fibres through the air at the victim (New Scientist print edition, 24 May 2003).

Meanwhile, Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon. Instead of using fibres, the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.

"We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep," claims XADS president Peter Bitar.

The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out in 2005. It is based on early, unwieldy technology and has a range of only three metres, but an operator can debilitate multiple targets by sweeping it across them for "as long as there is an input power source," says Bitar.

XADS is also planning a more advanced weapon which it hopes will have a range of 100 metres or more. Instead of firing ionised gas, it will probably use a powerful laser to ionise the air itself. The idea has been around for decades, says LaVerne Schlie, a laser expert at the US Air Force Research Lab in Kirtland, New Mexico. It has only become practical with advances in high-power solid-state lasers.

"Before, it took a laser about the size of two trucks," says Schlie. "Now we can do it with something that fits on a tabletop."

The laser pulse must be very intense, but can be brief. So the makers of the weapons plan to use a UV laser to fire a 5-joule pulse lasting just 0.4 picoseconds - equating to a momentary power of more than 10 million megawatts.

This intense pulse - which is said not to harm the eyes - ionises the air, producing long, thread-like filaments of glowing plasma that can be sustained by repeating the pulse every few milliseconds. This plasma channel is then used to deliver a shock to the victims similar to a Taser's 50,000-volt, 26-watt shock.

HSV Technologies of San Diego, California is also working on stun and vehicle-stopping shock weapons with ranges of over 100 metres. And another company, Ionatron of Tuscon, Arizona, is due to supply a prototype wireless vehicle-mounted weapon to the US Department of Defense by the end of 2004.

Bring on the white plague! (Frank Herbert's shade is probably glad he died way back in the eighties.)

this one is my favorite: BIOSTEEL

Montreal, Québec, Canada, and Natick, Massachusetts, January 17, 2002 - Nexia Biotechnologies Inc. (TSE:NXB) and the U.S. Army Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM) have reported in this week’s journal of Science that they have made the world’s first spider silk fibers from man-made materials with properties similar to natural spider silk. Spider silk has long been admired by material scientists for its unique combination of high-performance properties including toughness, strength, light-ness and biodegradability. Nexia is developing recombinant spider silk, trade named BioSteel®, for applications in the medical, military and industrial performance fiber markets.

"Mimicking spider silk properties has been the holy grail of material science for a long time and now we’ve been able to make useful fibers," said Jeffrey Turner, PhD, President and CEO of Nexia. "Having achieved this proof of principle, Nexia has now moved toward commercial development for multiple applications such as medical sutures, biodegradable fishing lines, soft body armor and unique material composites. Our strategy is two-fold: to produce large quantities of BioSteel® through our proprietary transgenic goat technology and to optimize spinning processes to create a diversity of spider silks with specific properties."

Hurrah!

I've thought about that book and Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" quite a bit in the past few years.