New Navy Sound Weapon Will Make You Hear Voices (Hint: Your Own)

Using sound as a weapon isn’t anything new. All branches of the U.S. armed forces have experimented with different techniques through the years with varying degrees of success. The latest Navy sound weapon is a novel idea though, and one that’s non-lethal as well.

According to Interesting Engineering, the U.S. Navy has developed a new device that keeps you from talking. It’s an ingenious idea actually. The new electronic device repeats a speaker’s own voice back at them while they attempt to talk. And it’s so directional that the speaker will only hear their voice and no other.

We’ve all experienced how difficult it is to have a conversation when your voice keeps echoing back to you. Phone, Skype, Zoom – just about any type of modern communication is subject to this now occasional problem. Image what it would be like on the battlefield when you can’t talk or even think because your voice keeps echoing back at you. That’s exactly the idea behind the new device, called Acoustic Hailing And Disruption (AHAD).

The word is that before it reaches the battlefield, AHAD may be used as a crowd control device first. It should be noted that  AHAD could have other applications because of its directionality as well, such as a form of electronic hailing device between ships. 

Although the Navy’s device was developed by Naval Surface Warfare, Crane Division, it appears there’s a Japanese hand-held version available called SpeechJammer. You can see the video below on how the company expects it to be utilized. You have to admit, it’s something that all of us have wanted at one time or another.

In the grand scheme of PsyOps, everything has been tried from giant speakers playing disturbing music, to the “brown note” canon (although disproven, people still think it exists as a “crap canon” as noted in this article), to the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), to using infrasonic to disrupt digestion and eyesight. It seems like this latest Navy sound weapon might be the cleverest, and most non-lethal of all.

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