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Comment by dmoy | Hacker News Reader

So the clarification (easily determined from the subtitle, as well as the article body), is that this is a dazzler meant to temporarily blind or distract.

It's not a sci fi laser rifle that cuts things. This is very different from star wars (the missile defense program), or star wars (the movie).

The US Navy does have things closer to that:

But they're huge, and still don't really do much.

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It sounds like it is more of a warning "you are in our way" device? "For long-distance hail and warning, especially during maritime security, the GLARE® LA-9/P combines a powerful green beam with Eye Safe® technology. The laser rapidly determines if an unintended observer is within the nominal ocular hazard distance (NOHD) and immediately shuts off the glaring output to prevent accidental eye injury. Once the bystander has moved out of the NOHD, the laser output instantly resumes."

That, and an "if you were intending to shoot at us, good luck aiming now" one.

And TASERs aren't meant to be killing weapons.

How does it do that? I mean, I know of no technology that could do what this tech claims to be able to do.

EDIT: my guess is that it's actually unable of distinguishing the target and WILL blind you but the quip about being non-blinding is because of the Geneva convention, since, apparently, blinding weapons are illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_Wea...

I imagine that it has rangefinding capability, and throttles the output based on distance to the target.

It probably doesn't know and doesn't need to know whether the target is human.

That sounds reasonable, but the quite from OP says something completely different, it says "The laser rapidly determines if an unintended observer is within the nominal ocular hazard distance (NOHD) and immediately shuts off the glaring output to prevent accidental eye injury" - that doesn't sound like the mechanism you describe.

Sure it does once you run the original through a PR committee or two.

It sounds like the marketing speak a defense contractor would use to describe something that simple.

Indeed. The problem with such supposed 'non-lethal' weapons as Dazzlers, Tasers, rubber bullets, etc is that they can absolutely cause permanent injury. In the case of Tasers and rubber bullets, they've both killed lots of people - they just aren't 'designed to kill' so they can arguably remain legal to use. Tasers are also convenient torture/punishment devices.

The militarization of law enforcement means that such devices end up being deployed domestically under much looser (or no) terms of engagement versus a 'lethal' weapon like a gun.

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