Effective Crowd Control

Wired News describes it as the "Goodbye Weapon". The military has developed a non-lethal beam weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq. It creates a burning sensation in which "most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds." Any damage, even to the eyes (which rarely happened in tests - even monkeys under anesthesia blinked), is healed in 24 hours.