Georgian Police Use Sound Weapons on Demonstrators

Kurt Nimmo TruthNews November 12, 2007

No World System reports:

Leonid Ivashov vice-president of the Academy on geopolitical affairs: “It’s due to the U.S. training program given to Georgia’s riot police that they managed to do what they did. This year Georgia has received over 10 million dollars, more than any other CIS state. Georgia police supplied modern anti-riot machines, and up to date methods of fighting demonstrators.”

From Digital Bits:

The weapon in this case is a directional sound wave generator. The depelopers in the US Government won’t comment, so details are sketchy, but the device most likely operates by generating low-frequency sound pulses and sends them toward a target, like the weapon mentioned here.

Some earlier sound weapons simply caused pain from high decibel noises (like Mariah Carey), or generated severe nausea using subsonics (subsonic or infrasonic noise is defined as any sound whose frequency is less than 20 Hz, like Barry White’s voice).

The human body does not react well to extremely low frequency noises: Certain low frequencies can cause sickness, balance problems and discomfort and pain to soft tissues and organs. At higher energy levels, a subsonic shock wave is powerful enough to do damage.

Previous limitations on this technology included massive amounts of power needed to run a weapon of this type, and the physical size of the device itself (subsonic sound weapons fire such low-frequency sound waves, the gun aperture itself has to be large in order to generate the “noise”).

For more information, see this brief history of sound weapon technology.

It appears the sonic weapons in Georgia are of the LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) variety. Wikipedia notes:

The long range acoustic device (LRAD) is a crowd-control and hailing device developed by American Technology Corporation.

According to the manufacturer’s specifications, the equipment weighs 45 pounds (20 kg) and can emit sound in a 30° beam (only at high frequency, 2.5kHz) from a device 33 inches (83 cm) in diameter. At maximum volume, it can emit a warning tone that is 146 dBSPL (1000 W/m²) at 1 metre, a level that is capable of permanently damaging hearing, and higher than the normal human threshold of pain (120 – 140 dB). The design range extends to 300 metres maximum usable range. At 300 metres, the warning tone (measured) is less than 90 dB. The warning tone is a high-pitched shrill tone similar to that of a smoke detector…. Carl Gruenler, (former) vice president of military and government operations for American Technology Corp. (and who now runs a company making a competing device), says that being within 100 yards (90 m) of the device is extremely painful, but its use should be limited to 300 yards (270 m) to be effectively used. He concedes that the device is powerful enough to cause permanent auditory damage, but that it is only meant to be used for a few seconds at a time.

As the above video demonstrates, the LRADs were used for longer than a few seconds. It can only be assumed that those subjected to the weapon did indeed suffer permanent auditory damage.