Surprise surprise: it seems like tasers are not enough. Things just might get even more 'non-lethal' with the development of a new beam weapon that is being tested by the National Institute of Justice, a US federal research department that develops products for police officers. The new weapon is pictured above. It is a infra-red laser weapon that has been named the PHaSR.

(Yes -- the PHaSR. Apparently the inventors of that acronym never heard or saw any bit of that whole 'Star Trek' thing, where fictional phasers are used to shoot evil aliens and space terrorists and such. Because if the inventors ever did see an episode of Star Trek before, I'm sure they would have felt wrong about stealing a perfectly good acronym from a television show that has been around since the '60s -- right? )

The weapon has two modes. The low power mode uses beams to dazzle and blind criminals, protesters (or whomever) that do not agree with the police officer's commands. The second, high power mode increases the intensity of the beam to inflict burning damage. Unlike military microwave weapons that can fry people fairly easily, the intensity of the PHaSR is much more reasonable for home policing operations. This PHaSR is not capable of penetrating clothes and probably is not able to fire for extended periods due to high power requirements.

There does not seem to be any plans to deploy or field test PHaSR prototypes. But microwave and laser weapons -- as far fetched as they sound -- are definitely a serious avenue of research and development for the military. Recently, in the riots in Greece, rampaging youths used laser pointers and laser tools to blind police officers. It does not seem like it will be that far off before the police apparatus might also want to include beam weapons in their arsenal.