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The US Army is testing handheld ray guns

May 7, 2015

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The U.S Army is currently testing electricity guns for possible use against electronics on the battlefield. They don’t look like props from the popular cartoon show. Rather, they seem like regular standard-issue M4 rifles with a pair of antennas that shoot out from the barrel and then spread. Their front ends resemble a musket-like shape.

According to defenseone.com, James E. Burke, an electronics engineer with the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, or ARDEC, developed an apparatus, which he has named the “Burke Pulser”. It consists of two wide antennas, a piezoelectric generator and a few other small bits and pieces. It has a blast shield to protect the user from electricity levels that the inventor describes as “hazardous.”

The Pulser takes the explosive energy released when the gun fires and converts it into pulses of electrical energy. This is done via the piezoelectric effect, which derives an electric charge when pressure is exerted on crystalline materials such as quartz, changing the balance of positive and negative ions.

The Pulser isn’t the first electricity gun ever invented. One of the more interesting prototypes that have emerged over the last several years came from, Seattle-based hacker Rob Flickenger, who cast a Nerf gun in aluminum and rigged it to shoot 20,000 volts of electricity a short distance.

The gun is intended for use against electronics, potentially giving dismounted soldiers an edge against the ever-wider range electronic and cyber threats that they might face on patrol: Bluetooth-enabled improvised explosive devices, consumer drones modified to be more deadly, and the like.

The Army is currently testing the Pulser against an assortment of devices combined into a single target. “All these things pretty much generalize all the common electronics you’ll find in a circuit board,” Burke said. “What we’re going to do is fire at it. If the LED light stops blinking, it was defeated and if smoke comes up, it was destroyed.” As for the range, “we’re still investigating,” said Burke. The capabilities measured so far “turn classified very quickly.”