China has a non-lethal “pain gun”

The US may never have used its microwave pain gun in combat, but that isn’t stopping China from exploring the concept of non-lethal force. Local manufacturer Poly has unveiled the WB-1, a millimeter-wave weapon that heats the water under your skin to deliver intense agony without injury. It currently works at a relatively short range of about 262 feet, but extra power can bump that up to 0.6 miles, if you know where to shoot, you could cause misery from afar.

A Chinese defense company recently unveiled a long-range weapon that can cause people overwhelming pain without killing them. IHS Janes reports that the system, known as the Poly WB-1, uses millimeter-wave beams to scald targets from up to a kilometer away. When the beam strikes a person, it excites water molecules just under his or her skin, heating them up enough to cause extraordinary pain. Your microwave oven does the same thing to your leftovers. The plan, it seems, is to mount the WB-1 on ships—likely those patrolling disputed waters. The US deployed its own nonlethal microwave beam as a crowd control weapon in Afghanistan. But the device, called the Raytheon Active Denial System (ADS) was recalled in 2010 without ever seeing it used. Critics at home and abroad raised serious questions about the ethics of using a pain beam to break up riots.