Could a Military ‘Heat Ray’ Be Used on the Border? Pentagon Clears DHS to Test One

The Pentagon has cleared the Department of Homeland Security to test a military “heat ray” and develop tactics for possibly using it along the southern border, CNN reported.

The approval came in a memo signed last month by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and obtained by CNN. It authorizes a “temporary loan” of one Active Denial System for seven months, starting in September.

The Active Denial System is a nonlethal, truck-mounted weapon. It fires an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves that can reach a little more than half a mile, according to the U.S. military.

The beam produces an intense burning sensation on the skin. Pentagon officials have compared it to the blast of heat from opening a hot oven, and the military says it creates “an instinctive and irresistible urge to run,” CNN reported.

The approval is not a deployment order. Axios noted it remains unclear whether DHS will ever use the system, and CNN said the DHS request did not specify where or how it would be tested.

The memo states the system “shall not be operated by DoW (Department of War) personnel” and makes DHS solely responsible for its use and tactics. DHS can ask to extend the loan when it expires.

Customs and Border Protection confirmed it is evaluating the technology. “CBP is continually evaluating new technology, especially technology that can save lives while simultaneously enhancing national security effectiveness,” the agency told Stars and Stripes.

Patrick Weaver, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, cheered the move on X. “The border is now a military installation and a battle lab for testing new systems, to include directed energy weapons,” he wrote, according to Axios.

The idea has surfaced before. CBP officials weighed using the system against migrants in 2018, ahead of that year’s midterms, but then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen rejected it, CNN reported, citing a former DHS official.

The El Centro sector in California evaluated the system several years ago, when current CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott led that sector, a CBP official told CNN. Officials then discussed using it to discourage river crossings.

Concerns have centered on legality, use of force, sovereignty and safety. “Even if they’re chasing people back to the river, you don’t want them to go in and drown,” a former CBP official told CNN.

The military has tested the system extensively. In 2007, the Marines said only eight of more than 700 people exposed to the beam in tests and demonstrations suffered burns, and only two needed medical attention, Stars and Stripes reported.

The military briefly deployed it to Afghanistan nearly two decades ago but declined to use it, and officials also considered it for domestic unrest during the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s death, CNN reported.

Some Border Patrol agents have questioned whether they need the tool at all, given low border crossings and more personnel on the line, another former CBP official told CNN.

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