The microwave bomb, which works by emitting a massive pulse of radio energy, would render humans unconscious by scrambling neural paths in the brain but would not cause lasting injury.
Campbell, Christy, Microwave Bomb That Does Not Kill, Sunday Telegraph, Sept. 27, 1992.
This fall, a joint committee staffed by the Department of Justice and the Pentagon will decide which "less than lethal" technologies to develop. Here is a sample of systems the committee may consider:...High-power electromagnetic generators that interfere with brain waves and alter behavior.
Walker, Sam, An Array of 'Less Than Lethal' Weapons, Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 5, 1994.
Today, there is a new class of radically new and important radio frequency weapons (RFW) which merits your attention as it emerges. ...This is particularly true of the newly emerging threat of radiofrequency weapons. And even more importantly, we must develop countermeasures before such weapons are used against us.
Prepared Testimony by Lieutenant General Robert L. Schweitzer, U.S. Army (Retired) before the Joint Economic Committee, Federal News Service, Lexis-Nexis, June 17, 1997.
The history of psyops technology is about 200 years old, and it will continue to progress. Hence it is most important to look into the future. It is no longer really difficult to send messages to the targets; that is, the persons who are to be influenced...
I want to alert you that psyops technology may advance from communicating to direct signaling. Some developments in this regard are already taking place.
X-rays and gamma rays are located at the upper end portion of the electromagnetic energy frequency spectrum. What is at the lower end? The most important of all of nature's phenomena.
Suppose it becomes feasible to affect brain cells by low frequency waves or beams, thereby altering psychological states, and making it possible to transmit suggestions and commands directly into the brain.
Who is so rash as to doubt that technological breakthroughs of this general type would not be put promptly to psyop use? More importantly who would seriously assume that such a technology would not be deployed to accomplish political and military surprise?
A few years ago there was much excitement about the Soviet microwave "bombardment" of the US Embassy in Moscow. Why did the KGB, then under Yuri Andropov's leadership, embark on this seemingly scurrilous --and very prolonged -- effort? There was no answer to this question, except that the KGB must have wished to harass US diplomats and cause them to worry about their health. This theory was never convincing.
The question was raised whether the Soviets had discovered a technique of using microwaves for psychological purposes, and whether they were experimenting with this technique on US specialists in the USSR, unwittingly put into Soviet service as guinea pigs.
Impossible, replied the State Department, the waves cannot break through the blood-brain barrier, and the thermal effects are so negligible that the body would not be affected. Nevertheless, embassy personnel were indemnified for health damage.
By 1979, at the latest, it was known that electromagnetic fields rasing body temperatures less than .1 degree Celsius may result in somatic changes. It was most surprising that such a trivial temperature rise was having any effects, and even more astonishing that those effects were significant.
Chemical, physiological and behavioral changes can occur within "windows" of frequency and energy continua. One of those windows is connected with navigation in marine vertebrates and with biological rhythms of humans. Another is at the level of the human electroenchphalogram (EEG), which is in the range of extremely low radio and sound waves, around 20 hertz.
Those findings remain unexplained. They seemed to require energy amplification of the initial stimulus by some 12 orders of magnitude. No such amplification was deemed to be feasible, and none was discovered.
Let us cut the story to the minimum. The original model, according to which the blood-brain barrier cannot be broken, was derived from the axiom that electromagnetic waves interact with tissue in a linear manner. However, it turned out that the molecular vibrations caused by stimulating extracellular electromagnetic fields are non-linear. Utterly unexpectedly, they take the form of soliton waves which can transfer energy along long molecular chains.
By 1982 the term "soliton" finally made it to the technical dictionaries. Here is a definition from the 1982 McGraw-Hill scientific-technical dictionary: "A soliton wave...propagates without dispersing its energy over larger and larger regions of space." As I understand it, it would be more correct to say: "A soliton wave propagates suddenly acquired energy, or energy imparted by shock, without dispersing it."
Significance? Extracellular disturbances such as acoustic or electromagnetic bursts can be propagated across the cell membrane. In this, non-linearities in molecular dynamics rather than chemical kinetics are the key. Put differently, the 12-magnitude energy deficit is overcome, not by brute force, but by the formation of solitons.
Visualize the brain and its environment as structures of waves, and assume that shock waves create solitons. Then imagine that modern electronics with their flexibility, accuracy and speed are put to work.
In addition, the range of resonances probably will be increased. Hence many frequencies, and several options for the transmission of energy across the membranes of brain cells may become feasible. This may imply that the brain cells will be reachable diversely and flexibly, and perhaps routinely...
Possony, Stefan, Scientific Advances Hold Dramatic Prospects for Psy-Strat., Defense & Foreign Affairs, July 1983, p. 34.
Dr. Possony is the founder of International Strategic Studies Association, and former member of Mankind Research Unlimited and former psychological warfare expert with the Office of Naval Research.
High Tech Psychological Arrives in the Middle East
(March 23)--Sources in Dhahran today revealed what might have been the true reason for the seemingly illogical and apparently suicidal attack by Iraqi troops on the deserted city of Al-Khafji, located just 12 miles south of the Kuwaiti border. The report indicates that the top priority objective of the Iraqi strike across the border was a successful attempt to destroy a small, portable FM radio station that had been installed on the roof of the tallest building in the town of Al-Khafji by the U.S. Defense Department's PsyOps Branch.
With the destruction of Saddam Hussein's military command and control system, communications with Iraqi troops in Kuwait are now largely carried out in a very primitive manner by utilizing Iraq's commercial FM radio stations located in the Iraqi towns adjacent to Kuwait's western border. Military orders are encoded and then transmitted by Baghdad's military FM radio station YIHS. These signals are received and re-broadcast, in turn, by designated FM stations located between Baghdad and the Kuwaiti border until the programming arrives at the designated "control" station of the day which then broadcasts directly to the troops in Kuwait on exactly 100.00 MHz (megahertz), which is continuously monitored by all.
In order to nullify this Iraqi military line of communications (LOC), the U.S. PsyOps organization attached to the U.S. Central Command in Dhahran installed a portable FM broadcast transmitter, a gasoline-electric generator and a continuous tape recording system on the top of the tallest building in the deserted city of Al-Khafji. The station transmitted on 100.00 MHz and its power output was adjusted to cover up the transmission of the Iraqi station operating on exactly the same frequency.
According to statements made by captured and deserting Iraqi soldiers, however, the most devastating and demoralizing programming was the first known military use of the new, high tech, type of subliminal messages referred to as ultra-high frequency "silent sounds" or "silent subliminals." (See Newsweek, July 30, 1990, page 61.)
Although completely silent to the human ear, the negative voice messages placed on the tapes alongside the audible programming by PsyOps psychologists were clearly perceived by the subconscious minds of the Iraqi soldiers and the silent messages completely demoralized them and instilled a perpetual feeling of fear and hopelessness in their minds. It was necessary for the Iraqi tank commanders or another crew member to listen to the FM station 24 hours a day for quickly changing deployment orders. They were being exposed to the "silent sounds" during the same listening periods.
The same Dhahran source indicates that the Al-Khafji station has now been repaired and is back in full operation.
Copyright 1991 ITV News Bureau, Ltd.