Techniques for reducing casualties, torture devices, tools for conflict resolution, or the technology of political control? Ostensibly the major impetus for the development of 'non-lethal' weapons has been to apply force without causing permanent injury or death, thereby reducing the need for lethal force. This book sheds light on a more complex story, with varied drivers, contradictory policy, premeditated and unanticipated results, and challenges to social, ethical and legal norms. With particular attention to the ongoing development of drugs, lasers, microwaves, and acoustics as incapacitating weapons, it provides an up-to-date analysis of the key technologies and weapons programmes, and highlights the major policy issues and concerns. There has been much conjecture about new and emerging 'non-lethal' weapons. This book separates what is known from the speculation about developments at this intersection of technology and weapons development.

'Set to be the standard text on 'non-lethal' weapons, this book also highlights the threat to controls on weapons of mass destruction posed by weapons development at the other end of the spectrum.' - Dr Hans Blix, Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission

'This book, by one of the foremost experts in the field, provides a tremendous contribution. It is richly detailed, exhaustively researched, and beautifully written. It analyzes non-lethal weapons comprehensively, providing historical and contemporary exploration of the full range of applicable systems, in the U.S., U.K., and around the world. It deserves careful attention by scholars, policy-makers, and the informed public.' - Professor David A. Koplow, Director of the Center for Applied Legal Studies, Georgetown University, USA

'This scholarly and readable book offers an absorbing account of an area of weapons development where technology might advance rapidly. It deserves wide readership and should bring these disquieting developments to greater attention.' - Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society; and Master of Trinity College, University of Cambridge

'Davison has been studying this area for many years and depth of scholarship is one of the book's great strengths...This is an important book. It will not go down well with the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, or atTaser International. But it should be compulsory reading to those involved in "non-lethal" weapons-buying, before being exposed to salesmen touting the latest less-lethal wonder-weapon. And it should also be compulsory reading for any journalist writing about those same wonder-weapons without looking at what they mean in practice.' - David Hambling, Wired Magazine

'This is the definitive history and analysis of so-called non-lethal weapons. Neil Davison effectively demolishes the benign mask of these weapons as alternatives to deadly force, and points to the corrosive role of vested interest lobby groups, which have made these weapons popular...Davison provides a powerful moral warning about the dangers of new incapacitation weapons...' New Scientist

'This exhaustively researched book integrates complex and diffuse information into an accessible, coherent and chronological narrative of non-lethal weapons development.' Times Higher Education

'...thoroughly researched...a comprehensive record.' - The Lancet

'Davison is enormously authoritative' - Policing

Foreword by Paul Rogers
Introduction
The Early History of 'Non-Lethal' Weapons
'Non-Lethal' Weapons in the 1990s
The Contemporary Development of 'Non-Lethal' Weapons
Chemical and Biochemical Weapons
Directed Energy Weapons
Acoustic Weapons
Conclusion
Notes
Index

NEIL DAVISON is Senior Policy Adviser in the Science Policy Centre at the Royal Society. For four years he was lead researcher on 'non-lethal' weapons at the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK.