It has been in the public news for a while then I heard other “whispers” and saw some photographs about it via other channels just recently.  Very cool stuff.  Set your phasors to stun…

… Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon. Instead of using fibres, the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.

“We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep,” claims XADS president Peter Bitar.

…

The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out in 2005. It is based on early, unwieldy technology and has a range of only three metres, but an operator can debilitate multiple targets by sweeping it across them for “as long as there is an input power source,” says Bitar.

XADS is also planning a more advanced weapon which it hopes will have a range of 100 metres or more. Instead of firing ionised gas, it will probably use a powerful laser to ionise the air itself. The idea has been around for decades, says LaVerne Schlie, a laser expert at the US Air Force Research Lab in Kirtland, New Mexico. It has only become practical with advances in high-power solid-state lasers.

“Before, it took a laser about the size of two trucks,” says Schlie. “Now we can do it with something that fits on a tabletop.”