According to a Defense One report, the US military is working on a gun that doesn’t shoot bullets but instead fires off extremely loud sound at its targets.
The purpose of the weapon is to act as a scare tactic and minimize casualties.
Defense One has published details pertaining to the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) efforts on a non-lethal 130-decibel noise gun that uses quick laser bursts to generate noise as loud and powerful as a fighter jet.
The gun is called the Laser Induced Plasma Effect (LIPE) and it is able to direct sound at a specific target by way of quick bursts of plasma energy. While it’s slated to tested out in the coming months, early reports indicate that it is so fast it creates a blue ball of plasma in about a nanosecond, and is simultaneously charged with directed laser beams that ultimately wind up producing intense sound at its target.
“We’ve demonstrated it in the lab at very short ranges. But we haven’t been able to demonstrate it at even 100 meters. That’s . . . the next step,” said David Law, the technology division chief at JNLWP.
As Defense One suggests, LIPE could be used to scare enemies on the battle field into retreating. It could also be used for crowd control and security checkpoints.
The next test will be to fire the gun at a target one hundred meters away. The project, which is estimated to cost $3M, will be evaluated again in May 2016.
Via Defense One
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