Back in January we wrote about a new toy the Pentagon was trying to perfect, allegedly for overseas usage. The item is back in the news again, due to a minor mishap.

An airman received second-degree burns April 4 during a test of the Defense Department’s nonlethal millimeter-wave heat beam at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., according to Marine Corps Maj. Sarah Fullwood, spokeswoman for the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator program, Quantico, Va.

The airman was burned as the Air Force’s 820th Security Forces Group was testing a demonstrator version of the Active Denial System, a Humvee-mounted system that produces an intense heat beam.

He was being treated at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, Ga., and is expected to make a full recovery, Fullwood said.

Fullwood said more than 600 people have been exposed a total of more than 10,000 times to the beam, and there has only been one other injury that required medical attention: a case of second-degree burns that occurred during lab testing in 1999.

We said it back in January, and we repeat it now:

A weapon like this would need a whomping power supply. Something like that is unrealistic for ground combat. The article references rubber bullets. The US Army doesn't use rubber bullets overseas because crowd control in foreign countries is not part of their mission.

A cynical man would immediately realize that this weapon stemmed not from a land combat proposal, but rather from a perceived need for domestic crowd control.