The United States Army has created and patented a weapon capable of creating such mental confusion that, if you suffer its effects, it will almost instantly silence you and even make you look crazy.

The system is called AHAD and although it is not lethal, it is definitely capable of incapacitating an enemy. In fact, it can only be used at the individual level, targeting anyone who is speaking.

The AHAD system – short for Acoustic Hailing And Disruption – is apparently based on an invention called SpeechJammer, created by Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada and published in ArXiv in 2012.

In fact, the Patent published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, includes this illustrative video made by Kurihara and Tsukada.

Japanese researchers prototyped and published a Windows application that anyone can use to experience the squelch effect. You only need a PC and headphones.

How does it work

The US Navy apparatus is capable of capturing the voice of an individual – for example, and with the intention of giving ideas, a politician haranguing cattle at a rally – and return it exclusively to the ear of that same person with a delay of “several hundreds of milliseconds. “

Our brain is calibrated to listen to our own voice with a negligible delay, but, by introducing a second return signal with more delay than usual, the confusion produced in the brain is such that a human cannot keep thinking while trying to process his own voice. The effect is so disorienting that it makes anyone shut up almost immediately.

To achieve this, AHAD uses a directional microphone capable of picking up the target’s voice clearly, just by pointing at its head from a long distance. Once captured, the electronics process the audio and resend it with the delay that causes confusion using a directional speaker. 

According to the patent, only the AHAD target will be able to hear your delayed voice.

Painless and non-lethal weapon

AHAD is one of the non-lethal weapons of the US military, but unlike other systems, it does not cause pain or have sequelae. An example of a non-lethal acoustic weapon but with definitely harmful effects is the LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), a system that emits high-power sound that can cause pain so acute that it is capable of dispersing any group of enemies. The effects of LRAD are so intense that people have migraines for up to a week after being exposed to its audio waves.

The effect of AHAD wears off instantly as soon as the person stops speaking. But if you try to spin more than a couple of words in a row, it will stop you in your tracks again. The effect is so disorienting, says the patent, that it makes the target think they are going crazy. 

Anyone who witnesses the effect would also be dumbfounded by the speaker’s reaction, but would never know what is going on.

Frankly, I would pay anything to have one of these on the campaign trail. Or take it to Congress during a state of the national debate.