Nowadays, the government mechanisms that exercise a state’s physical coercive power often face a difficult dilemma. This dilemma is delineated by the fact that the exercise of too much power may create an unacceptable danger of “collateral damage”; on the other hand the exercise of too little power, may put in risk the safety of their own personnel and compromise the accomplishment of an important and legitimate mission. That is the reason why there is an interesting controversy for the designation of the proper use of force. A feasible answer to this dilemma is the use of non-lethal weapons.

Under the term “non-lethal weapons” is categorized a wide range of technologies, that incorporate different types of physical mechanism, capable of both antipersonnel and antimateriel operations, that are actually seeking to provide a viable intermediate capability, between violence and non violence. The reason is that non-lethal weapons are intended to incapacitate people without causing death or permanent injury, or to disable equipment with minimal damage to the surrounding environment.

The aforementioned equipment includes an interesting array of devices such traditional “rubber bullets” , sprays that make a surface either impossibly slippery or impassively sticky, millimeter-wave “heat rays” that can without the use of excessive violence to drive back people, projectile netting or other entangling devices to capture individuals or vehicles, chemicals, lachrymatory grenades, pepper sprays, controlled impact ammunitions and other.

The characteristics of non-lethal weapons give the opportunity to the user to answer to many emerging and non-traditional threats which should be countered with a progressive response. This is the reason why several countries are currently developing and implementing new non-lethal capabilities. Additionally, non-lethal weapons have a dual-use application as they can provide armed forces and law enforcement agencies with additional options to respond in a tailored and graduated manner.

Regarding law enforcement agencies, non-lethal weapons give the alternative to the user to deal with the most situations of conflict, without endangering his physical integrity and the life of innocent people that are not involved in the riots and are by luck present on the scene of operations. Furthermore, by using this alternative the law enforcement agencies avoid law suits for the excessive use of force.

Non lethal weapons are also useful to special operation troops that need to have all of the necessary means in order to fulfill their mission. Although, they are armed with the most advance weapons that give to them great fire capacity, they cannot do without non-lethal weapons. Lachrymatory and smoke ammunitions are two of the most important non-lethal weapons that are usually used. Special operation troops use them in order to disperse criminals or form a smoke screen that allows safer displacements. Furthermore, they use flash and bang or moral effect grenades.