The Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program is working on a gun that uses rapidly firing lasers to create an extremely loud noise reminiscent of a fighter jet.
The weapon is called the Laser Induced Plasma Effect (LIPE) and while it won’t be able to shoot bullets, the military hopes it’ll cut down on civilian casualties by scaring people off. The gun will direct the sound at a target and send bursts of plasma energy its way.
The LIPE will be tested next month and sends plasma out so fast that it creates a blue ball of plasma but to the unknowing civilian it’ll seem like the noise came out of thin air!
David Law, the Joint Non-Lethal Program’s Technology Chief, told Defense One that the goal of LIPE was to recreate the sound of 130 decibels at a distance of 100 meters. To get that level of volume you’d have to stand behind a fighter jet as it took off from an aircraft carrier.
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From Defense One:
Imagine walking through a field on a cloudless day when you suddenly hear the 130-decibel roar of a fighter jet. But you can’t spot the jet, or even tell which direction the sound is coming from. Rather, it seems to originate from the thin air in front of your face, like a shout from an angry, Old-Testament God. No, you aren’t hallucinating. And you aren’t Moses. You’re experiencing a new type of military weapon intended not to kill but to startle an enemy into retreat. It’s called the Laser-Induced Plasma Effect, or LIPE, a weapon that the U.S. military hopes to begin testing in coming months.
LIPE is the brainchild of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program, a group tasked with inventing better options for crowd control and checkpoint security. The noise comes from a unique manipulation of matter and energy to produce loud sounds at specific target locations, sort of like an incredibly precise missile of noise.
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