Enhancing Less Lethal capabilities within the Army?

[Uboat509]

Ah, the old if some of something is good then a lot of it must be better. Some LL would certainly be a good thing, especially where crowd control is an issue. But the idea that we can wholesale replace our lethal capability with LL is frightening to me. Never mind the issue of bringing a Taser to a gun fight, it foments the wrong sort of mindset for military. Circumstances have forced our military to perform policing tasks and we have done our best but we are not, nor should we be, a police force. If you don't have a hammer then you can use a big rock to hammer a nail in and it will work to some extent but that does not mean you should be trying to fashion an ergonomic handle for you rock or grind it down to make it more efficient. You just use the rock as well as you can for as long as you have to until you can get a proper hammer.

[Chris jM]

Ah, the old if some of something is good then a lot of it must be better. Some LL would certainly be a good thing, especially where crowd control is an issue. But the idea that we can wholesale replace our lethal capability with LL is frightening to me. Never mind the issue of bringing a Taser to a gun fight, it foments the wrong sort of mindset for military. Circumstances have forced our military to perform policing tasks and we have done our best but we are not, nor should we be, a police force. If you don't have a hammer then you can use a big rock to hammer a nail in and it will work to some extent but that does not mean you should be trying to fashion an ergonomic handle for you rock or grind it down to make it more efficient. You just use the rock as well as you can for as long as you have to until you can get a proper hammer.

I agree with you, but the real world isn't ideal and a lot of irregular conflicts require a military to maintain stability and security in the absence of police. Thus, like it or not, soldiers of developed nations will find themselves facing riots, demonstrators and other threats that jeopardize one's mission. If it can't be ignored it has to be dealt with - I think this is a common trend faced by most soldiers in defence of empire, from Roman days through to modernity.

Is lethal force suffice, or do we need to integrate LL capabilities and TTPs? I think we do, but fail to see how it can be integrated without doing harm to a force's warfighting abilities.

For the sake of argument, one option could be to create a specialist 'Less Lethal' platoon within a Combat Team when involved in a stability op. Set them up like para-military police, and use them as the centre of excellence for countering riots, deploying dogs/tasers/CS/etc etc. They would be well suited to a number of tasks tying down conventional infantry platoons who would be better off actively patrolling - tasks such as VCPs, base security, key point protection, etc. I'm not completely comfortable with this option but it does seem preferable to the master-of-all-trades model.

[Kiwigrunt]

17 min TED talk

Pepper spray and tasers are in increasing use by both police and military, and more exotic non-lethal weapons such as heat rays are in the works. At TEDxCanberra, ethicist Stephen Coleman explores the unexpected consequences of their introduction and asks some challenging questions.