… holding my ears since I read this report on what to expect at the Republican Convention — N.Y. readies acoustic device to control protests of GOP:
Forget the megaphones. Police will have a much more high-tech – and louder – option to make themselves heard over the din of Manhattan traffic and noisy protesters outside the Republican National Convention.
It’s called the Long Range Acoustic Device, developed for the military and capable of blasting warnings, orders or anything else at an ear-splitting 150 decibels.
Authorities on Thursday unveiled a mini-arsenal of devices and counterterrorism equipment they’re getting ready for the convention, which opens a week from Monday.
The sound machines are being tested at an airfield in a remote section of Brooklyn along with other devices such as hand-held radiation detectors – for a possible “dirty bomb” – and mechanical barriers strong enough to stop a moving vehicle in its tracks.
Now doesn’t that make you feel better? (via Tim Blair, who will be holding his ears too.)
The LRAD has been discussed for possible you in Najaf.
30 years ago, when I was in law school, one of my first year roommates reported his brother’s experience with an experimental sonic crowd control device while attending the Los Angeles Police Department Academy.
A young lady wheeled a big ominous looking black box into his class, plugged it into a wall socket, turned it on and smiled sweetly as every man in the room grabbed his crotch and lurched out the door.
It turned out that the box broadcast an extremely low frequency sound wave at the exact frequency to relax the human male bladder. But it only worked indoors.
Tom:
That sounds like the one they should use in Najaf.
BTW Roger I did not know there was such a thing as a remote section of Brooklyn.
It will be a regular circus I guess. Too bad, the world will be watching and it would be nice if we master a little national decorum for a change.
*sigh* Okay, I’ll pack earplugs too. I should probably pick up a gas mask . . .
Tom H., that story reminds me of a really funny South Park episode where Cartman discovered a certain frequency that when heard by the human ear, caused instant and uncontrollable defecation.
If such a thing exists, I would support using it on any violent protesters!
I remember a mix I once made with the intent to use it to attrect eels. When I opened the airtight bucket it cleared the other fishermen from an area about 50m radious from me. Extremely potent stuff.
I wonder if any kind of sound device would work against these kind of people. They’ll have earplugs handy, and I dont see how a sonic device could work if you cant hear it..
I’d expect some of these people to be the same that was in Genua, Gothenburg and Seattle. If so, they’ll also have primitive body armor, and a communication control center somewhere so they can coordinate actions by cellphones. That’s what they did in Gothenburg.
Those aren’t ordinary people protesting. They are experienced and seasoned demonstrators and hooligans.
Were they preparing the same kinds of precautions during the Dem conventions?
Hmm.
I wonder why not?
Not long ago, a device was issued for beaming high quality sound to a specific person in a crowd [John, you should have filed a patent application... said too many times]. It uses ultrasonic (high frequency, inaudible) sound to get the narrow beam [quick physics - the higher the freqency the narrower the beam for a given sized antenna = speaker], and modulates it with the desired audio.
I wonder if this is a similar trick, or if the just have a big directional speaker that puts out loud noise. The latter has the disadvantage of frying the people close to the speaker (or at least making their ears useless), the latter does not.
It seems very useful for running off the agitators without having to battle the entire organization. On the other hand, some of these groups are probably more dangerous minus their leaders.
It sounds like an interesting time is coming. My favorite weapon for this is great big glue guns.
I would also jam their communications systems, although that would require an FCC waiver and military equipment to do it right. Jamming walkie talkies, etc, is easy. Jamming cell phones requires either local multi-band jammers, or turning off the cell towers (or if the services are sectored, turning off the sectors for the area). Of course, that would discombobulate the law abiding also. Military jammers would be best – they can be directional. Hmmm… since the professional demonstrators seem to be a sign of the time (at least until Al Qaeda does something in the middle of a bunch of them), there may be a whole growth industry here.
Maybe more glue in the glue guns.
I note that the police are going to have a large number of cameras handy. That’s good – it should discourage police abuse of demonstrators, and capture faces and acts of violence for subsequent punishment of those who get out of hand.
It will be interesting to see what ProtestWarrior does. They are a right wing/libertarian group which puts together signs that superficial seem to match the bad guys (War neve solves anything), but have quite a bit of difference in the fine print ( except Hitler, …. ). They get into the middle of the left demos, with those signs, (and appropriate T-shirts, etc) and always with one or more camerament.
Overall, it’s an interesting idea (see here).
John Moore, I read an article in the NYTimes awhile ago about the guy who invented the thing you’ve mentioned– the ultrasonic thingy, and IIRC the guy said he was in talks with the Pentagon.
Sonic non-lethal weapons using extremely low frequencies act on muscles, not ears, so earplugs can’t help. I suspect that high frequency devices do not rely on the target’s hearing either.
ELF sonic weapons cannot be pointed. It takes a huge speaker to form even a weak beam. It might be possible to use noise cancelling technology and create a safe spot for the operator, but anyoone else in the neighborhood, in any direction, is going to get blasted. As I said, higher frequency gives greaterr directivity. Fundamental law of wave mechanics.
What happened.Metallica get too expensive?
Roger and anyone else gonna be on NYC for the convention. Ear plugs are a good idea even if you never go near the protesters, the ambient noise inside the Garden is going to be majorly loud.
If you do venture near the protesters, Sportsman’s Guide has a good selection of Swedish and Soviet gas masks. Make sure you buy fresh filters and don’t install them until the day you intend to use the mask.
And Roger, I’m sure an old Lefty like yer own self doesn’t need advice on how to treat tear-gas exposure.
I can’t find the link, but the Marines did some testing of an ultra-low frequency NLW back in the nineties. It was mounted on a HUMMV. Tom up above is absolutely right – the effect is physical, not aural, and incapacitates within seconds. Sounds like the NYC’s finest are going for straight volume.
I know for a fact that there is a microwave device that causes the surface of exposed skin to feel as if it is on fire. Don’t know if that one has been approved for use or not.
Here’s the microwave weapon the Air Force is developing. And Roger, if you see something like this it might be time to leave.
BTW Roger I did not know there was such a thing as a remote section of Brooklyn.
Floyd Bennett Field.
I am definitely rooting for the NYPD to maintain Law and Order. After the 1992 LA Riots (which I’m sure Roger remembers), I started advocating the “militarization” of the police forces in major cities where they have access to military equipment, and now we’re finally seeing it here. On film, such a force would look like the alternate-universe LAPD shown in the opening sequence of Jet Li’s 2001 film, “The One.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that with this stuff on hand, the cops can go and conduct searches without obtaining warrants, or not inform a suspect of their Miranda rights when being arrested. They need this stuff to keep a potential demonstration from turning into a violent rampage.
We DO know just from how the anarchists acted in 1999 in Seattle that given enough impetus they will go in and trash every business in an area, we need to keep these people under control, and the NYPD’s use of the LRAD and other devices should provide enough deterrence to say to the potential protestors, “We’re here, don’t even THINK of f**king with us ’cause we will f**k you over BAD with this stuff.”
TmjUtah,
My understanding of how low-frequency sonic crowd control devices work is that they hit particular resonant frequencies for specific muscles. My recollection from first reading of these 30-35 years ago is that this was discovered in a French lab with a device which broadcast at (I think) seven cycles a second, which happened to be the frequency used by human muscles in vibrating to create body heat. The sonic device somehow interfered with this natural vibration.
Everyone in the room with the unit felt very sick and some started to collapse. They turned it off before they passed out and died. Which could have made an interesting science-fiction mystery story.
So the things can be bloody dangerous. Further experiments revealed that specific muscle sets could be targeted to make them relax, such as those of the adult male bladder.
But again (my recollection) these late 1960′s & early 1970′s experiments showed such major limitations (enclosed rooms below a certain size) that it was just a laboratory curiousity.
Your Marine story indicates that a way may have been found to make these things work outdoors, sort of. I’d love to know more about them.
And they’d make a dandy plot device for our host.
Tom Hollsinger -
After a cursory search, I can’t find anything on other-than-audible-discomfort sonic weapons near ready for deployment.
The pulse wave generators sound fascinating, but not nearly non-lethal. Kind of like a concussion grenade you point, from what I understand. The Ultra Low Wave stuff is too imperfect at this time as well.