Scripps News, republishing a CNN report, says a Pentagon memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lets the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which runs border enforcement, borrow one Active Denial System and work out tactics for possible use at the US-Mexico border. The system is a nonlethal directed-energy weapon that fires an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves at people from up to half a mile away, and it has never been deployed. The loan runs seven months from September and bars Pentagon personnel from operating the weapon, leaving DHS responsible for its use. Earlier proposals to use it on migrants were stopped by questions over legality, use of force, sovereignty and, above all, whether people could be harmed, the question running through the
directed-energy arms race.
"The heat ray, officially known as the Active Denial System, is a nonlethal weapon that shoots an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves that can reach a little more than half a mile away, according to the US military."
— CNN
"Chief among those concerns, however, was whether people could be harmed, either directly or indirectly, by the weapon."
— CNN
