Laser-Gun That Blinds Ruled Out Pentagon Cancels Program After Army Spent $23 Million

Bowing to protests from human rights groups, the Pentagon has canceled a multimillion-dollar program aimed at developing a backpack laser-weapon designed to blind enemy troops rather than kill them, defense officials said Thursday.

The weapon, known formally as the Laser Counter-Measures System, would have enabled a soldier to aim an intense beam of light at enemy troops to counter night-vision goggles, binoculars and other equipment worn by enemy troops.

The laser-gun had been designed to be clipped onto an M-16 rifle, the standard weapon carried by U.S. infantry troops. The Army already has spent $23 million on the effort, and was slated to spend $17 million more.

The action came barely a month after Defense Secretary William J. Perry issued a new policy prohibiting the military services from developing lasers designed to blind enemy soldiers permanently.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said the department’s civilian leadership had concluded that the weapon actually was of little real value and the backpack it required was so heavy that the soldier carrying it would not have been able to carry anything else.

Human-rights groups have complained that the weapons are inhumane.

Human Rights Watch, an independent watchdog group, recently warned that lasers were opening “a grotesque new chapter in warfare” and a U.N. conference on conventional weapons, meeting in Vienna, Austria, is considering approving a new protocol similar to the new Pentagon policy.

Perry’s new policy permits U.S. troops to use lasers for range-finding and targeting but it bans the use of lasers that would burn the corneas of an enemy’s eyes and thus blind him.