Its makers claim this infernal machine is the modern face of warfare. It has a nice, friendly sounding name, Silent Guardian.
They asks not to call it a ray-gun, though that is precisely what it is (the term "pain gun" is maybe better).
Silent Guardian is making waves in defence circles. Built by the U.S. firm Raytheon, it is part of its "Directed Energy Solutions" programme.
What it amounts to is a way of making people run away, very fast, without killing or even permanently harming them.
That is what the company says, anyway. The reality may turn out to be more horrific.
Looks like a square transmitter as big as a plasma TV screen but when turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation - similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker - that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings.
It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile.
Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury.
But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonising sensation I've just felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about.
"I have been in front of the full-sized system and, believe me, you just run. You don't have time to think about it - you just run," says George Svitak, a Raytheon executive.
Silent Guardian is supposed to be the 21st century equivalent of tear gas or water cannon - a way of getting crowds to disperse quickly and with minimum harm. Its potential is obvious.
"In Iraq, there was a situation when combatants had taken media as human shields. The battalion commander told me there was no way of separating combatants from non-combatants without lethal force," Mr Svitak says.
He says this weapon would have made it possible because everyone, friend or foe, would have run from it.
In tests, even the most hardened Marines flee after a few seconds of exposure. It just isn't possible to tough it out.
This machine has the ability to inflict limitless, unbearable pain.
What makes it OK, says Raytheon, is that the pain stops as soon as you are out of the beam or the machine is turned off.
One of the "Survivor" said, "But my right finger was tingling hours later - was that psychosomatic?
So what is the problem? All right, it hurts, but then so do tear gas and water cannon and they have been used by the world's police and military for decades.
One thing is certain: not just the Silent Guardian, but weapons such as the Taser, the electric stun-gun, are being rolled out by Britain's police forces as the new way of controlling people by using pain.
And, as the Raytheon chaps all insist, you always have the option to get out of the way (just as you have the option to comply with the police officer's demands and not get Tasered).
It is so easy to see the Taser being used routinely to control dissent and pacify - as, indeed, already happens in the U.S.
And the Silent Guardian? Raytheon's Mac Jeffery says it is being looked at only by the "North American military and its allies" and is not being sold to countries with questionable human rights records.
What happens when someone with a weak heart is zapped?
And, perhaps most worryingly, what if deployment of Silent Guardian causes mass panic, leaving some people unable to flee in the melee? Will they just be stuck there roasting?
Raytheon insists the system is set up to limit exposure, but presumably these safeguards can be over-ridden.
Silent Guardian and the Taser are just the first in a new wave of "non-lethal" weaponry being developed, mostly in the U.S.
They are quick, clean, cheap, easy to use and, most importantly, leave no marks. What would happen if they fell into the hands of unscrupulous nations where torture is not unknown?
The agony the Raytheon gun inflicts is probably equal to anything in a torture chamber - these waves are tuned to a frequency exactly designed to stimulate the pain nerves.
Dr John Wood, a biologist at UCL and an expert in the way the brain perceives pain, is horrified by the new pain weapons.
"They are so obviously useful as torture instruments," he says.
"It is ethically dubious to say they are useful for crowd control when they will obviously be used by unscrupulous people for torture."
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