These new 81mm mortar rounds recently underwent their first working demonstration in Quantico, Virginia. The weapons are dangerous, but they’re specifically designed not to be deadly. Each round carries 14 flash bang grenades that stuns, blinds, and deafens the enemy upon impact. In many cases, simply disorienting the enemy for a while is all it takes for soldiers to complete their mission.
Again, these mortars aren’t entirely harmless. A well placed flash grenade can maim or kill an insurgent or an unsuspecting civilian. But a real grenades, bombs, and bullets does a much better job at taking lives. The new non-lethal mortar joins gadgets like “pain rays” in a growing family of weapons in the Pentagon’s arsenal that aren’t designed for deadly force. The military even has a whole book about these weapons.
