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Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
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Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#22These LRADs have always been planned to be used against mass protests, from day one.
Planned? Perhaps. Destined? Certainly. The imperial boomerang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
The Basque Country has been a huge sandbox against the later leftist groups in the rest of Spain.
Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#23Even without knowing the background of those protests: It is heartbreaking to see a crowd of peaceful people (seemingly during a moment of silence) being attacked by their own country and fleeing in panic and pain.
Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#24I wonder how the engineers and scientists who contributed to that less-lethal weapon feel about it.
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There are "dual-use" systems, and there are systems that are only weapons.
There's also technologies and basic research, but those are different matters.
I'm first interested in the more straightforward situation of the people who worked on a less-lethal weapon system, which they might've anticipated would be used in exactly this way. What do they think about that?
Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#25Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#26Is there any counter measure for this? Hardcore hearing protection? Noise cancelling headphones? Handheld sound insulation "shield"?
The report I read said it relied on bone conduction, so hearing protection wouldn't do a whole lot. Only things that can attenuate low frequency sounds before it gets to the ear. So muff style headphones might work, or mass
It's not so much that LRAD relies on bone conduction to inflict pain (and sensorineural hearing loss!), but that the sound levels are so high that even if you block the air conduction route with earplugs, the bone conduction route (approximately 30 dB of attenuation compared with air) still might deliver enough sound to the inner ear to cause pain and hearing loss.
This kind of thing is a problem on aircraft carriers, where people working on the flight deck are so close to loud jets that no amount of conventional hearing protection will adequately conserve hearing. Creare has been working for the last decade and a half on special helmets for the US Navy to overcome this issue, resulting in the HGU-99/P Hearing Protection Helmet.
Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#27Serbia had the LRAD systems on hand, after buying them in 2022, most likely from Genasys, but possibly from HyperSpike.
https://genasys.com/lrad-products/
It's a legal gray area in Serbia where the use against civilians isn't explicitly forbidden, so they're playing fast and loose and moving fast to crush opposition. It's better than troops just gunning people down, but for a modern, supposedly civilized country it's horrible to see.
The people in power are the type of people that use their power in these ways. The US shouldn't be supplying them. We're not the world police, we don't need to enforce global norms, and we shouldn't be selling hyperoffensive mass crowd control technology. They should be limited to Temu LRAD, or their LRAD at home; we shouldn't be providing them S-Tier dystopian authoritarian kits for DIY oppression.
The people that profited off of this are a special kind of evil. We shouldn't be outfitting dictators, gangsters, or warlords.
But, greed is good. The dollar is king. This is what happens when incentives and principles don't align.
Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#28I don’t think governments should have access to the “make the protestors immediately go away” button that they can just hit whenever they want.
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Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#29Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
#30It really isn't smart to do this kind of thing.
Once an organization actually attacks you, it's very easy to decide that any legitimacy they view themselves as having is irrelevant and to come back next Monday with mortars and machine guns.