Abstract

Investigation and assessment of non-lethal weapons (NLWs) require development of specific methods and tools different than those applied to conventional weapons, due to reversibility and limited duration of the NLWs’ effects. The capabilities evaluation aims to establish to what extent the NLWs are able to meet the requirements of an operational task. The paper describes the criteria currently applied for assessing the NLWs capabilities and proposes an approach based on selection of criteria and variation of their relative weights depending on studied NLWs and operational tasks specific. The application of this approach is illustrated by a comparative evaluation of a group of non-lethal hand grenades with different effects.