New riot weapons designed to be 'non-lethal'

LONDON - British scientists are working on a new generation of microwave, laser and chemical guns that could be used to quell riots.

One highly classified project is to develop a "vortex gun", for use in riots, which fires a powerful, doughnut-shaped pulse of air at supersonic speed.

Scientific Applications & Research Associates, a United States company that has made such a weapon, said it could fire waves that knock crowds of people off-balance.

The research could also put lasers and microwave weapons on missiles and planes to "kill" an enemy's own weapons, although these could be banned under international law.

British defence company Qinetiq is understood to be investigating lasers that "dazzle" the enemy, a technique the US military is said to be using against insurgents in Iraq.

British defence laboratories are also understood to have tested crowd-control foams that immobilise.

These weapons are part of a taxpayer-funded secret programme of research into "non-lethal weapons".

Many of these techniques could be controversial, particularly the lasers.

Britain was forced to abandon weapons that dazzle pilots, a technique allegedly used during the Falklands War, because it contravened rules outlawing devices which permanently disable combatants or cause someone to crash a plane.

- INDEPENDENT