22 July 2008—New Scientist magazine recently reported that Sierra Nevada Corp., based in Sparks, Nevada, plans to build what it calls a nonlethal microwave ray gun with the ability to beam irritating sounds into people’s heads. But experts in the underlying biophysics say it cannot work: the device would kill you well before you were bothered by the noise. The gun, which is being built by Lev Sadovnik at Sierra Nevada, would take advantage of a phenomenon known as the microwave auditory effect. When microwaves are delivered in short pulses, the cochlear tissue in the ear expands. That expansion is heard as an audible click to anyone receiving the radiation, a sound much like that of two rocks being hit together underwater. The company says that the device, called MEDUSA (for “mob excess deterrent using silent audio”), could be used for crowd control. However, experts say the gun wouldn’t work as advertised. There is no way the ray gun could deliver sound loud enough to be annoying at nonfatal power levels, says Kenneth Foster, a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania who first published research on the microwave auditory effect in 1974. “Any kind of exposure you could give to someone that wouldn’t burn them to a crisp would produce a sound too weak to have any effect,” Foster says. Bill Guy, a former professor at the University of Washington who has also published on the microwave auditory effect, agrees. “There couldn’t possibly be a hazard from the sound, because the heat would get you first,” Guy says. Guy says that experiments have demonstrated that radiation at 40 microjoules per pulse per square centimeter produces sound at zero decibels, which is just barely in hearing range. To produce sound at 60 decibels, or the sound of normal conversation, requires 40 watts per square centimeter of radiation. “That would kill you pretty fast,” Guy says. Producing an unpleasant sound, at about 120 decibels, would take 40 million W/cm2 of energy. One milliwatt per square centimeter is considered to be the safety threshold. “There’s a misunderstanding by the public and even some scientists about this auditory effect,” says Guy.

22 July 2008—New Scientist magazine recently reported that Sierra Nevada Corp., based in Sparks, Nevada, plans to build what it calls a nonlethal microwave ray gun with the ability to beam irritating sounds into people’s heads. But experts in the underlying biophysics say it cannot work: the device would kill you well before you were bothered by the noise. The gun, which is being built by Lev Sadovnik at Sierra Nevada, would take advantage of a phenomenon known as the microwave auditory effect. When microwaves are delivered in short pulses, the cochlear tissue in the ear expands. That expansion is heard as an audible click to anyone receiving the radiation, a sound much like that of two rocks being hit together underwater. The company says that the device, called MEDUSA (for “mob excess deterrent using silent audio”), could be used for crowd control.

However, experts say the gun wouldn’t work as advertised. There is no way the ray gun could deliver sound loud enough to be annoying at nonfatal power levels, says Kenneth Foster, a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania who first published research on the microwave auditory effect in 1974. “Any kind of exposure you could give to someone that wouldn’t burn them to a crisp would produce a sound too weak to have any effect,” Foster says.

Bill Guy, a former professor at the University of Washington who has also published on the microwave auditory effect, agrees. “There couldn’t possibly be a hazard from the sound, because the heat would get you first,” Guy says. Guy says that experiments have demonstrated that radiation at 40 microjoules per pulse per square centimeter produces sound at zero decibels, which is just barely in hearing range. To produce sound at 60 decibels, or the sound of normal conversation, requires 40 watts per square centimeter of radiation. “That would kill you pretty fast,” Guy says. Producing an unpleasant sound, at about 120 decibels, would take 40 million W/cm2 of energy. One milliwatt per square centimeter is considered to be the safety threshold. “There’s a misunderstanding by the public and even some scientists about this auditory effect,” says Guy.

Theoretically, the gun could be used by the military, says James Lin, professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois. “With any weapon, the intent is to do damage,” he says. In this case, Lin says, the gun would be more likely to cause tissue damage, brain damage, or nerve cell damage than an auditory annoyance.

Sadovnik’s project received a grant from the U.S. Navy Small Business Innovation Research several years ago. The Navy awards grants in phases, and the MEDUSA failed to receive a grant beyond the first phase. Now Sadovnik is working on the project at Sierra Nevada. He declined to comment for this article.


A Top Secret Program Hidden in Plain Sight

Was Artificial Telepathy developed by the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, NASA or the U. S. military? This question unreasonably assumes that a single agency or laboratory could research and develop such an exotic weapon all alone. It’s much more reasonable to assume that all of these agencies have combined forces. They’ve probably hidden their secret weapon in plain sight: Under the aegis of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program. See the JNLWP’s home page at: https://www.jnlwp.com/ For a brief history of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program, see:

http://www.iniwic.net/ For several articles on Non-Lethal Weapons, see: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/non-lethal.htm

The Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program would provide perfect cover for an Artificial Telepathy program for several reasons. First, an Artificial Telepathy weapon would naturally fall into the category of Non-Lethal Weapons. Artificial Telepathy is a weapon, but it does not kill. In fact, Artificial Telepathy is a perfect match for several of the core mission applications of Non-Lethal Weapons, namely: Counter-Personnel Operations, Crowd Control, Operations Other Than War (OOTW), Electronic Warfare, Information Operations, and Psychological Operations. See: http://www.unh.edu/ntic/why.shtml

Second, as a weapons system, Artificial Telepathy requires the combination of Directed Energy Weapons (weapons that direct laser, microwave, millimeter wave and infrared energy at targets), high-tech sensors, space-based platforms and supercomputers capable of simulating the behavior of a human brain. The laboratories that serve JNLWP provide all of that. For an overview of the jaw-dropping capabilities of the labs that support the JNLWP, see the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Links page at: https://www.jnlwp.com/Links.asp

Third, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program brings together weapons scientists from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and all branches of the U.S. military – Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard. The JNLWP is headquartered at Quantico, VA, home of the FBI training academy. What better place to base an inter-service mind control program? Fourth, as a joint military-civilian program, the JNLWP provides the perfect means for sharing military weapons technology with law enforcement agencies. The military has no legal right to perform domestic surveillance operations, but the Department of Justice (which oversees the FBI) does. With the help of the FBI and other law enforcement intelligence units, the JNLWP can take military personnel from the Special Operations Division, "sheepdip" them (that is, put them in civilian clothes with valid law enforcement credentials) and send them to work zapping people under the guise of counterintelligence or counterterrorism operations. Finally, evidence from the open literature suggests that those military scientists most strongly associated with the research of Artificial Telepathy are also very strongly associated with Non- Lethal Weapons. For example, Lt. Col. John Alexander, a man notorious for his telepathy experiments at Psi-Tech, was until 1995 Los Alamos National Laboratory’s manager of non-lethal defense research. He has also been instrumental in organizing three Non-Lethal Weapons conventions. Likewise,

Dr. William L. Baker, Chief Scientist at the Directed Energy Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base, NM has reported that his lab plans to build anti-personnel weapons based on "cognitive engineering." The result may be a wide range of Non-Lethal Weapons with human effects similar to those associated with Artificial Telepathy. See David Hambling’s article "Air Force Plan: Hack Your Nervous System" at: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002152.html See Dr. Baker's description of "Controlled Personnel Effects" here: http://www.afrlhorizons.com/Briefs/Jun04/DE0401.html

"For the Controlled Personnel Effects capability, the S&T panel explored the potential for targeting individuals with nonlethal force, from a militarily useful range, to make selected adversaries think or act according to our needs. . . . By studying and modeling the human brain and nervous system, the ability to mentally influence or confuse personnel is also possible. Through sensory deception, it may be possible to create synthetic images, or holograms, to confuse an individual' s visual sense or, in a similar manner, confuse his senses of sound, taste, touch, or smell."

Dr. Baker’s laboratory, the Air Force Research Laboratory, serves as one of the core research facilities used by the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. See their home page: http://www.afrl.af.mil/

AFRL controls a vast array of exotic laser and microwave weapons, and it has its very own Space Directorate and satellite system. The AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate has a budget of more than $300 million per year.

In other words, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program could certainly ask AFRL to launch an Artificial Telepathy program, and AFRL has the capabilities to do so.