Pentagon Cancels Controversial Laser

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, 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.

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 has already spent $23 million on the effort, and was slated to spend $17 million more.

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

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

Only two months ago, the Army awarded a $12-million contract to a New Hampshire firm to build 20 of the backpack units. The service had planned to buy 30 more units as well as 25 additional sets for use in training.

Industry scientists have made major advances in the development of laser weapons in recent years, making possible weapons that once were the stuff only of science fiction books.

Laser weapons now are used to lead precision-guided munitions to their targets. But Human Rights Watch, an independent watchdog group, recently warned that lasers were opening “a grotesque new chapter in warfare” and a United Nations conference on conventional weapons, meeting in Vienna, is considering approving a protocol similar to the Pentagon policy.

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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 permanently. The move was designed partly to head off broader international restrictions, which military officials had feared might have impeded the use of lasers even for targeting and could have subjected U.S. troops to charges of engaging in war crimes.