How, When, and Whether to Employ Non-Lethal Weapons in Diverse Contexts

Scott Savitz, Krista Romita Grocholski, Monika Cooper, Nancy Huerta, Keytin Palmer & Isabelle Winston

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Introduction

Non-lethal weapons (NLWs) can be used to influence individuals’ behavior or to temporarily incapacitate either people or equipment, and NLWs employ a wide variety of effects to achieve these aims. For example, an acoustic hailing device (AHD) can be used to communicate or generate irritating sounds, an eye-safe ocular interrupter (OI) laser dazzler creates distracting glare, an Active Denial System (ADS) emits millimeter-wave energy to create a temporary heating sensation, and various electronic and mechanical systems can halt vehicles

or vessels. NLWs are a subset of intermediate force capabilities (IFCs), which include other capabilities that might not have lethal effects, such as information operations, electronic warfare, and cyberwarfare.

Prior RAND reports have characterized how employment of NLWs contributes to the strategic goals of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).1 Those reports also describe ways to measure the impact of NLWs, as well as how they can be effectively incorporated into wargames. Those reports also reveal a number of reasons why DoD rarely employs NLWs. One of these is widespread unfamiliarity with these systems, which contributes to a reluctance to bring them to forward positions or to use them, continuing that unfamiliarity in a vicious cycle. The result is that there are relatively few well-documented instances of NLWs being employed in real-world contexts beyond the scope of military policing.