Context: The President of Serbia has denied that his police forces deployed a banned ‘sonic weapon’ to disperse protestors in the capital city, Belgrade. Serbia is currently witnessing mass anti-government protests against widespread corruption and nepotism.
Relevance of the Topic: Prelims: Key facts about Sonic Weapons.
Acoustic or Sonic Weapons:
- Acoustic or sonic weapons are devices that produce very loud sounds over long distances. They can be designed to emit painful audible or inaudible sound waves.
- Working: Such weapons typically comprise hundreds of transducers — electrical devices that convert energy from one form to another — to create highly concentrated and amplified sound.
- Utility:
- Crowd dispersal weapon. In 2004, for the first time, the US military used speciality equipment capable of projecting loud sounds over vast distances in Iraq.
- Can be used as voice amplifiers to transmit voice messages or other sounds.
Damage: These weapons can cause significant harm to the eardrums and delicate organs of the ears and cause tinnitus (ringing sensation in ears) and hearing loss.
Different types of Sonic Weapons:
- Long-range acoustic devices (LRADs): It has a range of 8,900 metres for intelligible speech, and produces a highly directional beam of extremely loud sound which can reach up to 160 decibels (dB).
- Sounds over 120 dB can cause permanent hearing damage from even short periods of exposure. Sounds over 140 dB are extremely painful.
- Infrasonic weapon: It delivers very low-frequency sounds that would be inaudible but could cause pain and disorientation. Experts are still investigating its capabilities.
Mosquito: This device produces very high-pitched sounds that are audible and painful to only younger people — usually teenagers and those in their twenties. It does not affect older people (30 and above). It is not audible to adults because hearing fades as one gets older.