Sonic weapon
weapon that uses soundwaves to discomfort, capacitate or kill opponents
Sonic and ultrasonic weapons (USW) are directed-energy weapons of various types that use sound to injure or incapacitate an opponent. Some sonic weapons make a focused beam of sound or of ultrasound; others produce an area field of sound. As of 2025, military and police forces make some limited use of sonic weapons.
Use and deployment
Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation. This is usually sufficient to incapacitate a person. Less powerful sound waves can cause humans to experience nausea or discomfort.
The possibility of a device that produces frequency that causes vibration of the eyeballs—and therefore distortion of vision—was suggested by paranormal researcher Vic Tandy in the 1990s while attempting to demystify a "haunting" in his laboratory in Coventry. This "spook" was characterised by a feeling of unease and vague glimpses of a grey apparition. Some detective work implicated a newly-installed extractor fan, found by Tandy, that was generating infrasound of 18.9 Hz, 0.3 Hz, and 9 Hz.
A long-range acoustic device (LRAD) produces a 30 degree cone of audible sound in frequencies within the human hearing spectrum (20–20,000 Hz).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sonic weapon” as weapon that uses soundwaves to discomfort, capacitate or kill opponents. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as weapon that uses soundwaves to discomfort, capacitate or kill opponents. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3234202. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2025.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sonic weapon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.