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What I want to talk to you about today

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is some of the problems that the military
of the Western world --

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Australia, United States,
the UK and so on --

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face in some of the deployments
that they're dealing with

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in the modern world at this time.

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If you think about the sorts of things

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we've sent Australian military
personnel to in recent years,

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we've got obvious things
like Iraq and Afghanistan,

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but you've also got things like
East Timor and the Solomon Islands,

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and so on.

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And a lot of these deployments

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that we're sending
military personnel to these days

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aren't traditional wars.

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In fact, a lot of the jobs
we're asking military personnel to do

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in those situations

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are ones that, in their own countries --
Australia, the US and so on --

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would actually be done by police officers.

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So there's a bunch
of problems that come up

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for military personnel
in these situations,

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because they're doing things
they haven't really been trained for.

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And they're doing things that those
who do them in their own countries

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are trained very differently for
and equipped very differently for.

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Now, there's a bunch of reasons
why we send military personnel,

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rather than police, to do these jobs.

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If Australia had to send
1,000 people tomorrow

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to West Papua, for example,

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we don't have 1,000 police officers
hanging around that could go tomorrow,

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and we do have
1,000 soldiers that could go.

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So when we have to send someone,
we send the military --

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they're there, they're available,

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and heck, they're used to going off
and doing these things

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and living by themselves

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and not having all this extra support.

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So they are able to do it in that sense.

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But they aren't trained
the same way police officers are,

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and they're certainly not equipped
the way police officers are,

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so this has raised
a bunch of problems for them

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when dealing with these issues.

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One particular thing that's come up
that I am especially interested in,

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is the question of whether,

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when we're sending military personnel
to do these sorts of jobs,

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we ought to be equipping them differently;

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and in particular, whether we ought
to be giving them access

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to some of the nonlethal weapons
that police have.

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Since they're doing some of the same jobs,

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maybe they should have
some of those things.

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And there's a range of places you'd think
those things would be really useful.

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For example, when you've got
military checkpoints.

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If people are approaching
these checkpoints

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and the military personnel are unsure
if this person's hostile or not,

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say this person approaching
here, and they say,

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"Is this a suicide bomber or not?

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Is something hidden under their clothes?

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What's going to happen?"

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They don't know if the person
is hostile or not.

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If the person doesn't follow directions,
they may end up shooting them,

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and then find out afterwards
either, yes, we shot the right person,

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or, no, this was just an innocent person

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who didn't understand what was going on.

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So if they had nonlethal weapons,
then they would say,

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"We can use them
in that sort of situation.

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If we shoot someone who wasn't hostile,

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at least we haven't killed them."

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Another situation: this photo
is from one of the missions

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in the Balkans in the late 1990s.

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This situation is a little bit different,

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where maybe they know someone is hostile;

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they've got someone shooting at them

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or doing something else
that's clearly hostile,

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throwing rocks, whatever.

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But if they respond,

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there's a range of other people around
who are innocent people,

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who might also get hurt.

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It'd be collateral damage

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that the military
often doesn't want to talk about.

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So again, they'd say, "With access
to nonlethal weapons,

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if we've got someone we know is hostile,

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we can do something to deal with them,

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and know that if we hit anyone else,

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at least we're not going to kill them."

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Another suggestion has been,

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since we're putting so many
robots in the field,

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we can see the time coming

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where they're actually going
to send robots out in the field

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that are autonomous.

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They'll make their own decisions
about who to shoot and who not to shoot,

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without a human in the loop.

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So the suggestion is,

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if we're going to send robots out
and allow them to do this,

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maybe it would be a good idea
if they were armed with nonlethal weapons,

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so if the robot makes a bad decision
and shoots the wrong person,

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again, they haven't actually killed them.

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Now, there's a whole range
of different sorts of nonlethal weapons,

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some of which are available now,

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some of which they're developing.

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You've got traditional things
like pepper spray,

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OC spray up at the top there,

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or Tasers over here.

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The one on the top right here
is actually a dazzling laser,

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intended to just blind
the person momentarily

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and disorient them.

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You've got nonlethal shotgun rounds

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that contain rubber pellets
instead of the traditional metal ones.

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And this one in the middle
here, the large truck,

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is called the Active Denial System,

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something the US military
is working on at the moment.

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It's essentially a big
microwave transmitter.

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It's sort of your classic
idea of a heat ray.

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It goes out to a really long distance,

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compared to any of these
other sorts of things.

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Anybody who is hit with this
feels a sudden burst of heat,

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and just wants to get out of the way.

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It is a lot more sophisticated
than a microwave oven,

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but it basically is boiling
the water molecules

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in the very surface level of your skin.

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So you feel this massive heat,

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and you go, "I want
to get out of the way."

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And they think this will be really useful

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in places where we need to clear
a crowd out of a particular area,

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if the crowd is being hostile.

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If we need to keep people
away from a particular place,

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we can do that with these sorts of things.

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So there's a whole range
of different nonlethal weapons

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we could give military personnel,

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and there's a whole range of situations

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where they're looking at them and saying,

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"These things would be really useful."

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But as I said,

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the military and the police
are very different.

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(Laughter)

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Yes, you don't have to look
very hard at this to recognize

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that they might be very different.

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In particular,

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the attitude to the use of force

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and the way they're trained to use force

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is especially different.

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The police --

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and knowing because I've actually
helped to train police --

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police, particularly
in Western jurisdictions at least,

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are trained to De-escalate force,

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to try and avoid using force
wherever possible,

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and to use lethal force
only as an absolute last resort.

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Military personnel
are being trained for war.

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So they're trained that,
as soon as things go bad,

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their first response is lethal force.

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The moment the fecal matter
hits the rotating turbine --

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(Laughter)

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you can start shooting at people.

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So their attitudes

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to the use of lethal force
are very different,

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and I think it's fairly obvious

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that their attitude to the use
of nonlethal weapons

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would also be very different
from what it is with the police.

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And since we've already had
so many problems

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with police use of nonlethal
weapons in various ways,

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I thought it would be a good idea
to look at some of those things

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and relate it to the military context.

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I was very surprised when I started
to do this to see that, in fact,

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even the people who advocated the use
of nonlethal weapons by the military

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hadn't actually done that.

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They generally seemed to think,

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"Why would we care
what's happened with the police?

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We're looking at something different,"

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and didn't seem to recognize

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they were looking at pretty
much the same stuff.

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So I started to investigate
some of those issues,

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and have a look at the way
police use nonlethal weapons

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when they're introduced,

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and some of the problems that might
arise out of those sorts of things

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when they actually do introduce them.

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And of course, being Australian,

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I started looking at stuff in Australia,
knowing from my own experience

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of various times when nonlethal weapons
have been introduced in Australia.

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One of the things I particularly
looked at was the use of OC spray --

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oleoresin capsicum spray, pepper spray --

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by Australian police,

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and seeing what had happened
when that had been introduced,

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and those sorts of issues.

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And one study that I found,
a particularly interesting one,

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was in Queensland,

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because they had a trial period
for the use of pepper spray

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before they actually
introduced it more broadly.

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And I went and had a look
at some of the figures here.

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Now, when they introduced
OC spray in Queensland,

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they were really explicit.

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The police minister's and a heap
of public statements were made about it.

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They were saying, "This is explicitly
intended to give police an option

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between shouting and shooting.

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This is something they can use
instead of a firearm

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in situations where they would have
previously had to shoot someone."

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So I looked at all
of the police shooting figures.

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And you can't actually
find them very easily

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for individual Australian states;

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I could only find these.

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This is from an Australian Institute
of Criminology report.

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You can see, in the fine print at the top:

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"Police shooting deaths"
means not just people shot by police,

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but people who have shot themselves
in the presence of police.

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But these are the figures
across the entire country,

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and the red arrow represents
the point where Queensland said,

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"Yes, this is where we're going to give

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all police officers
across the entire state

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access to OC spray."

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So you can see there were six deaths
sort of leading up to it,

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every year for a number of years.

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There was a spike a few years before,

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but that wasn't actually Queensland.

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Anyone know where that was?

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Wasn't Port Arthur, no.

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Victoria? Yes, correct.

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That spike was all Victoria.

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(Laughter)

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So it wasn't that Queensland
had a particular problem

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with deaths from police
shootings and so on.

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So, six shootings
across the whole country,

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fairly consistently over the years before.

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The next two years were the years
they studied -- 2001, 2002.

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Anyone want to take a stab
at the number of times,

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given how they've introduced this,

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the number of times police in Queensland
used OC spray in that period?

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Hundreds? One? Three?

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A thousand is getting better.

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Explicitly introduced as an alternative
to the use of lethal force --

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an alternative between
shouting and shooting.

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I'm going to go out on a limb here

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and say that if Queensland police
didn't have OC spray,

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they wouldn't have shot 2,226 people

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in those two years.

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(Laughter)

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In fact, if you have a look
at the studies they were looking at,

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the material they were
collecting and examining,

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you can see the suspects were only armed
in about 15 percent of cases

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where OC spray was used.

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It was routinely being
used in this period,

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and, of course, still is routinely used --

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because there were no complaints about it,

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not within the context
of this study, anyway --

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it was routinely being used
to deal with people who were violent,

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who were potentially violent,

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and also quite frequently used

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to deal with people who were
simply passively noncompliant.

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This person is not doing anything violent,

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but they just won't do
what we want them to.

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They're not obeying
the directions we're giving them,

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so we'll give them a shot
of the OC spray -- that'll speed them up.

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Everything will work out better that way.

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This was something explicitly introduced

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00:10:21,132 --> 00:10:22,964
to be an alternative to firearms,

249
00:10:22,988 --> 00:10:24,965
but it's being routinely used

250
00:10:24,989 --> 00:10:27,973
to deal with a whole range
of other sorts of problems.

251
00:10:28,466 --> 00:10:30,790
Now one of the particular
issues that comes up

252
00:10:30,814 --> 00:10:33,576
with military use of nonlethal weapons --

253
00:10:33,600 --> 00:10:36,519
and people actually say,
"There might be some problems" --

254
00:10:36,543 --> 00:10:39,576
there's a couple of particular
problems that get focused on.

255
00:10:39,961 --> 00:10:45,112
One of those problems is: nonlethal
weapons may be used indiscriminately.

256
00:10:45,136 --> 00:10:48,357
One of the fundamental principles
of military use of force

257
00:10:48,381 --> 00:10:50,149
is that you have to be discriminate;

258
00:10:50,173 --> 00:10:52,926
you have to be careful
about who you're shooting at.

259
00:10:52,950 --> 00:10:55,576
So one of the problems suggested
with nonlethal weapons

260
00:10:55,600 --> 00:10:57,791
is that they might be used
indiscriminately --

261
00:10:57,815 --> 00:11:00,451
that you would use them
against a whole range of people,

262
00:11:00,475 --> 00:11:02,780
because you don't have
to worry so much anymore.

263
00:11:02,804 --> 00:11:06,415
And in fact, one particular instance
where I think that actually happens

264
00:11:06,439 --> 00:11:09,297
was the Dubrovka Theater
siege in Moscow in 2002,

265
00:11:09,321 --> 00:11:12,336
which probably a lot of you,
unlike most of my students at ADFA,

266
00:11:12,360 --> 00:11:13,953
are old enough to remember.

267
00:11:13,977 --> 00:11:16,738
So, Chechens had come in
and taken control of the theater.

268
00:11:16,762 --> 00:11:20,070
They were holding something
like 700 people hostage.

269
00:11:20,094 --> 00:11:21,724
They'd released a bunch of people,

270
00:11:21,748 --> 00:11:24,114
but they still had
about 700 people hostage.

271
00:11:24,138 --> 00:11:29,576
And the Russian military police
special forces, "Spetsnaz,"

272
00:11:29,600 --> 00:11:31,576
came in and stormed the theater.

273
00:11:31,600 --> 00:11:35,043
The way they did it was to pump
the whole thing full of anesthetic gas.

274
00:11:35,067 --> 00:11:39,669
And it turned out
that lots of the hostages died

275
00:11:39,693 --> 00:11:41,608
as a result of inhaling the gas.

276
00:11:42,481 --> 00:11:44,576
It was used indiscriminately.

277
00:11:44,600 --> 00:11:46,997
They pumped the whole theater
full of the gas.

278
00:11:47,489 --> 00:11:50,179
And it's no surprise that people died,

279
00:11:50,203 --> 00:11:53,576
because you don't know how much gas
each person is going to inhale,

280
00:11:53,600 --> 00:11:57,495
what position they'll fall in when
they become unconscious, and so on.

281
00:11:57,519 --> 00:12:00,576
There were, in fact,
only a couple of people who got shot

282
00:12:00,600 --> 00:12:02,044
in this episode.

283
00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:04,576
So when they had a look at it afterward,

284
00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:07,542
there were only a couple of people
who'd apparently been shot,

285
00:12:07,566 --> 00:12:10,442
by the hostage takers
or by the police forces

286
00:12:10,466 --> 00:12:12,472
trying to deal with the situation.

287
00:12:12,496 --> 00:12:14,203
Virtually everybody that got killed

288
00:12:14,227 --> 00:12:16,648
got killed from inhaling the gas.

289
00:12:17,123 --> 00:12:20,451
The final toll of hostages
is a little unclear,

290
00:12:20,475 --> 00:12:22,403
but it's certainly a few more than that,

291
00:12:22,427 --> 00:12:24,716
because other people died
over the next few days.

292
00:12:24,740 --> 00:12:26,787
So this was one problem they talked about,

293
00:12:26,811 --> 00:12:28,675
that it might be used indiscriminately.

294
00:12:28,699 --> 00:12:30,944
A second problem
people sometimes talk about

295
00:12:30,968 --> 00:12:32,936
with military use of nonlethal weapons --

296
00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:35,839
and it's actually why,
in the chemical weapons convention,

297
00:12:35,863 --> 00:12:38,436
it's very clear that you can't use
riot-control agents

298
00:12:38,460 --> 00:12:39,749
as weapons of warfare --

299
00:12:39,773 --> 00:12:43,802
is that it's seen that sometimes
nonlethal weapons might be used

300
00:12:43,826 --> 00:12:45,747
not as an alternative to lethal force,

301
00:12:45,771 --> 00:12:48,047
but as a lethal force multiplier:

302
00:12:48,714 --> 00:12:50,655
that you use nonlethal weapons first,

303
00:12:50,679 --> 00:12:53,655
so your lethal weapons
will actually be more effective.

304
00:12:54,157 --> 00:12:57,513
The people you'll be shooting at
won't be able to get out of the way.

305
00:12:57,537 --> 00:13:00,930
They won't be aware of what's happening,
and you can kill them better.

306
00:13:00,954 --> 00:13:02,986
And that's exactly what happened here.

307
00:13:03,691 --> 00:13:06,747
The hostage takers who had
been rendered unconscious by the gas

308
00:13:06,771 --> 00:13:08,189
were not taken into custody;

309
00:13:08,213 --> 00:13:09,912
they were simply shot in the head.

310
00:13:11,531 --> 00:13:15,576
So this nonlethal weapon
was being used in this case

311
00:13:15,600 --> 00:13:18,576
as a lethal force multiplier,

312
00:13:18,600 --> 00:13:22,049
to make killing more effective
in this particular situation.

313
00:13:23,440 --> 00:13:25,821
Another problem I want to quickly mention

314
00:13:25,845 --> 00:13:28,075
is that there's a whole heap of problems

315
00:13:28,099 --> 00:13:31,576
with the way people are actually
taught to use nonlethal weapons,

316
00:13:31,600 --> 00:13:34,133
and get trained about them
and then tested and so on.

317
00:13:34,157 --> 00:13:37,032
Because they're tested
in nice, safe environments,

318
00:13:37,056 --> 00:13:39,693
and are taught to use them
in nice, safe environments --

319
00:13:39,717 --> 00:13:43,002
like this, where you can see
exactly what's going on.

320
00:13:43,026 --> 00:13:45,801
The person spraying the OC spray
is wearing a rubber glove

321
00:13:45,825 --> 00:13:48,267
to make sure they don't get
contaminated, and so on.

322
00:13:48,291 --> 00:13:49,902
But they're never used like that.

323
00:13:49,926 --> 00:13:52,094
They're used out in the real world,

324
00:13:52,118 --> 00:13:54,452
like in Texas, like this:

325
00:13:54,476 --> 00:13:57,066
["Police Taser Great-Grandmother
During Traffic Stop"]

326
00:13:57,090 --> 00:14:00,576
I confess, this particular case
was one that piqued my interest in this.

327
00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:03,048
It happened while I was working
as a research fellow

328
00:14:03,072 --> 00:14:04,260
at the US Naval Academy.

329
00:14:04,284 --> 00:14:07,261
News reports started
coming up about this situation,

330
00:14:07,285 --> 00:14:09,685
where this woman was arguing
with a police officer.

331
00:14:09,709 --> 00:14:11,092
She wasn't violent.

332
00:14:11,116 --> 00:14:14,029
In fact, he was probably
six inches taller than me,

333
00:14:14,053 --> 00:14:15,591
and she was about this tall.

334
00:14:16,372 --> 00:14:18,079
And eventually she said to him,

335
00:14:18,103 --> 00:14:20,204
"Well, I'm going to get back in my car."

336
00:14:20,228 --> 00:14:23,370
And he says, "If you get back
in your car, I'm going to tase you."

337
00:14:23,394 --> 00:14:26,514
And she says, "Oh, go ahead.
Tase me." And so he does.

338
00:14:26,538 --> 00:14:28,553
And it's all captured by the video camera

339
00:14:28,577 --> 00:14:31,234
running in the front of the police car.

340
00:14:32,176 --> 00:14:34,318
So, she's 72.

341
00:14:35,072 --> 00:14:38,526
And it's seen that this is the most
appropriate way of dealing with her.

342
00:14:38,550 --> 00:14:41,675
And there are other examples
of the same sorts of things,

343
00:14:41,699 --> 00:14:42,865
where you think,

344
00:14:42,889 --> 00:14:46,219
"Is this really an appropriate way
to use nonlethal weapons?"

345
00:14:46,243 --> 00:14:48,875
"Police Chief Fires Taser
into 14 year old Girl's Head."

346
00:14:48,899 --> 00:14:51,463
"She was running away.
What else was I suppose to do?"

347
00:14:51,487 --> 00:14:53,709
(Laughter)

348
00:14:53,733 --> 00:14:55,001
Or Florida:

349
00:14:55,693 --> 00:14:58,503
"Police Taser 6-year-old
Boy at Elementary School."

350
00:14:58,527 --> 00:15:02,264
And they clearly learned a lot from it,
because in the same district:

351
00:15:02,288 --> 00:15:04,929
"Police Review Policy
After Children Shocked:

352
00:15:04,953 --> 00:15:07,660
2nd Child Shocked by Taser
Stun Gun Within Weeks."

353
00:15:07,684 --> 00:15:09,644
Same police district.

354
00:15:09,668 --> 00:15:12,853
Another child within weeks
of Tasering the six-year-old boy.

355
00:15:12,877 --> 00:15:16,362
Just in case you think it's only going
to happen in the United States,

356
00:15:16,386 --> 00:15:18,204
it happened in Canada as well:

357
00:15:18,228 --> 00:15:19,774
["Mounties Zap 11-year-old Boy"]

358
00:15:19,798 --> 00:15:21,908
And a colleague sent me
this one from London:

359
00:15:21,932 --> 00:15:23,802
["Arrested Man, 82, Shot with Taser"]

360
00:15:23,826 --> 00:15:28,237
But my personal favorite,
I have to confess, does come from the US:

361
00:15:28,261 --> 00:15:31,553
"Officers Taser 86-year-old
Disabled Woman in her Bed."

362
00:15:31,577 --> 00:15:33,783
(Laughter)

363
00:15:33,807 --> 00:15:35,911
I checked the reports on this one.

364
00:15:35,935 --> 00:15:38,009
I looked at it. I was really surprised.

365
00:15:38,033 --> 00:15:42,201
Apparently, she took up a more
threatening position in her bed.

366
00:15:42,225 --> 00:15:43,915
(Laughter)

367
00:15:43,939 --> 00:15:45,988
I kid you not,
that's exactly what it said:

368
00:15:46,012 --> 00:15:48,999
"She took up a more threatening
position in her bed."

369
00:15:49,366 --> 00:15:50,682
OK.

370
00:15:50,706 --> 00:15:52,151
But I'd remind you --

371
00:15:52,175 --> 00:15:54,691
I'm talking about military
uses of nonlethal weapons,

372
00:15:54,715 --> 00:15:55,873
so why is this relevant?

373
00:15:55,897 --> 00:15:59,119
Because police are actually
more restrained in the use of force

374
00:15:59,143 --> 00:16:00,610
than the military are.

375
00:16:00,634 --> 00:16:03,320
They're trained to be more
restrained in the use of force

376
00:16:03,344 --> 00:16:04,514
than the military are.

377
00:16:04,538 --> 00:16:07,080
They're trained to think more,
to try and De-escalate.

378
00:16:07,104 --> 00:16:09,451
So if you have these problems
with police officers

379
00:16:09,475 --> 00:16:10,641
with nonlethal weapons,

380
00:16:10,665 --> 00:16:12,308
what on earth would make you think

381
00:16:12,332 --> 00:16:14,847
it's going to be better
with military personnel?

382
00:16:15,474 --> 00:16:17,907
The last thing that I would like to say:

383
00:16:18,772 --> 00:16:20,209
When I'm talking to the police

384
00:16:20,233 --> 00:16:22,773
about what a perfect nonlethal
weapon would look like,

385
00:16:22,797 --> 00:16:24,811
they almost inevitably say the same thing.

386
00:16:24,835 --> 00:16:27,517
They say, "It's got to be something
that's nasty enough

387
00:16:27,541 --> 00:16:29,981
that people don't want
to be hit with this weapon.

388
00:16:30,005 --> 00:16:31,408
So if you threaten to use it,

389
00:16:31,432 --> 00:16:33,193
people are going to comply with it.

390
00:16:34,496 --> 00:16:36,404
But it's also going to be something

391
00:16:36,428 --> 00:16:38,507
that doesn't leave any lasting effects."

392
00:16:41,034 --> 00:16:42,191
In other words,

393
00:16:42,215 --> 00:16:45,817
your perfect nonlethal weapon
is something that's perfect for abuse.

394
00:16:45,841 --> 00:16:49,390
What would these guys have done
if they'd had access to Tasers,

395
00:16:49,414 --> 00:16:52,905
or to a manned, portable version
of the Active Denial System --

396
00:16:53,699 --> 00:16:56,163
a small heat ray that you
can use on people

397
00:16:56,187 --> 00:16:57,638
and not worry about.

398
00:16:58,543 --> 00:17:00,200
So I think yes,

399
00:17:00,224 --> 00:17:03,774
there may be ways that nonlethal weapons
will be great in these situations,

400
00:17:03,798 --> 00:17:05,757
but there's also a whole heap of problems

401
00:17:05,781 --> 00:17:07,679
that need to be considered as well.

402
00:17:07,703 --> 00:17:08,863
Thanks very much.

403
00:17:08,887 --> 00:17:11,611
(Applause)