Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response rifle
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The Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response rifle (PHASR) is a prototype non-lethal laser dazzler developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. Its purpose is to temporarily disorient and blind a target. Blinding laser weapons have been tested in the past, but were banned under the 1995 UN Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. The PHASR rifle, a low-intensity laser, can skirt this regulation, as the blinding effect is apparently temporary. It also uses a two-wavelength laser. The PHASR was developed at Kirtland Air Force Base, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate in New Mexico.
Its name is a backronym inspired by the name of the phaser, a fictional Star Trek beam weapon, and the shape of the weapon also vaguely resembles that of the phaser rifle used in the latter part of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as some of the later movies.
