Tag: directed energy weapons

‘Nobody Else Has It’: Trump Confirms Mysterious US ‘Sonic Weapon’ Used During Capture of Venezuela’s Maduro

A ‘secret’ weapon was used in Caracas Op, Trump confirms.

On January 3, US special operators realized a jaw-dropping operation that neutralized air defense over the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and invaded the heavily guarded presidential palace of Miraflores, extracting dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife, taking them back to New York to stand trial.

In the raid, dozens of Cuban and Venezuelan guards were killed, while the US suffered no fatalities.

One of the most mysterious aspects of the operation, which US President Donald J. Trump has now confirmed, is that US special forces are said to have used a ‘secret sonic weapon’ during the daring capture of Maduro.

Daily Mail reported:

“The President on Tuesday night bragged that ‘nobody else’ has the weapon, while glorifying the capabilities of the US military.

[…] [NewsNation anchor Katie Pavlich] asked Trump whether Americans should be ‘afraid’ of these sonic devices.

‘Well yeah,’ Trump responded. He then added that only the US military has access to the sonic weapons by noting, ‘It’s something I don’t want to… nobody else has it’.”

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How the Pentagon Is Quietly Turning Laser Communications Into the Backbone of Future Space Warfare

Military communications have long depended on radio waves bouncing invisibly across land, sea, air, and space. However, as satellites multiply in orbit and the electromagnetic spectrum grows increasingly contested, the limits of traditional radio-frequency links are becoming harder to ignore.

Now, a new empirical study suggests that a less visible—and far more powerful—alternative is edging closer to practical, operational use: laser-based communications that can adapt on the fly to harsh and unpredictable conditions.

In a paper published in Optical Engineering, researchers from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency (SDA) describe the development and testing of a new optical receiver designed to support the SDA’s latest laser communication standard.

The research focuses on how to reliably receive laser signals that fluctuate wildly in strength as satellites race overhead—but its implications extend well beyond the lab.

At stake is whether the U.S. military can build a resilient, high-speed space communications backbone capable of supporting future defense operations.

The study focuses on the Space Development Agency’s Optical Communication Terminal standard, a set of specifications intended to ensure that laser communication systems built by different vendors can communicate with one another.

Interoperability is central to SDA’s “Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture” (PWSA), a satellite architecture composed of hundreds of relatively small spacecraft operating together in low Earth orbit.

Laser links promise far higher data rates than radio systems and are inherently harder to jam or intercept. However, they also introduce new technical hurdles, especially when signals must pass through Earth’s turbulent atmosphere.

“The Space Development Agency (SDA) has developed an Optical Communication Terminal standard to ensure system interoperability among a number of industry partners by defining critical technical specifications ranging from initial pointing, acquisition, and tracking to data modulation formats and error-correction protocols,” researchers explain.

That standard, now in its fourth major revision, adds support for what are known as burst-mode waveforms—signals that trade continuous transmission for short, intense pulses.

The appeal of burst mode lies in flexibility. When a satellite passes over a ground station, the strength of its laser signal can vary by roughly 20 decibels from start to finish due to changing distance, pointing geometry, and atmospheric distortion.

Rather than designing a system for worst-case conditions and accepting inefficiency the rest of the time, burst-mode signaling allows operators to dynamically sacrifice data rate in exchange for greater signal margin. To put it simply, the link can slow down when conditions are bad, rather than dropping out entirely.

To test how well this concept works in practice, researchers built and characterized a prototype ground receiver optimized for the SDA standard’s new burst-mode formats.

Unlike more complex coherent optical systems, the receiver relies on a large-area avalanche photodiode (APD) that can collect distorted light without the need for adaptive optics. That choice reflects a broader design philosophy: favoring robustness and simplicity over maximum theoretical performance.

“Burst-mode waveforms offer extended receiver power efficiency at the expense of data rate for longer range applications or size, weight, and power constrained terminals,” researchers explain.

For a mobile ground station, a ship at sea, or even an aircraft receiving data from space, maintaining a reliable link can matter more than pushing the highest possible throughput at every moment.

The experiments described in the paper show that the prototype receiver performs close to theoretical expectations across a wide range of operating conditions, particularly once front-end signal conditioning is applied.

While researchers stop short of claiming a fully fielded system, they describe it as an initial demonstration of an SDA-compliant burst-mode optical receiver—an important milestone for a standard intended to underpin real-world deployments.

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Trump Class Battleships Could Get Megawatt Lasers: Navy’s Top Officer

The U.S. Navy’s top officer wants directed energy weapons to become the go-to choice for the crews of American warships when faced with close-in threats. He also said that more powerful megawatt-class lasers should not be seen as “beyond” the capabilities that could be found on the future Trump class warships. The Navy has been a leader within the U.S. military in fielding laser weapons and is actively pursuing systems that employ high-power microwaves, but there continue to be significant hurdles to these efforts.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle talked with TWZ and other outlets about his service’s directed energy weapon plans at a roundtable at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) annual symposium earlier today. Caudle has long been an outspoken proponent of directed energy capabilities.

“My thesis research at [the] Naval Post Graduate School was on directed energy and nuclear weapons,” Caudle said. “This is my goal, if it’s in line of sight of a ship, that the first solution that we’re using is directed energy.”

In particular, “point defense needs to shift to directed energy,” the admiral added. “It has an infinite magazine.”

When it comes to point defense for its ships, the Navy currently relies heavily on Mk 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems armed with six-barrel 20mm M61 Vulcan rotary cannons and launchers for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM). Each Phalanx has enough ammunition to fire for a total of around 30 seconds, at most at the lower of two rate-of-fire settings, before needing to be reloaded. RAM launchers available today can hold either 11 or 21 missiles at a time, and the latest versions of those missiles cost around $1 million each. Many ships across the Navy also have 5-inch or 57mm main guns, and/or 30mm automatic cannons, which can also be used against close-in threats.

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Did A Mysterious “Sonic Weapon” Really Aid Delta Force In Capturing Maduro?

viral and as-yet totally unsubstantiated claim that U.S. forces used a mysterious “sonic weapon” that left security forces bleeding and stunned during the recent operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro has been getting a ton of attention. The allegation – amplified, but not expressly confirmed by the White House – does add to years now of persistent rumors of weapons very loosely similar to this description being in use globally, with separate news on that front having broken just today. When it comes to the United States, this has been further fueled by decades of known work on directed energy weapons, including ones intended to produce novel auditory and less-than-lethal effects.

The sonic weapon claim looks to originate with a video posted on TikTok on January 9 by an individual who goes by Varela News (and who uses the handle @franklinvarela09). The Spanish-language clip is a purported interview with a member of the Venezuelan security forces who was involved in the response to the U.S. operation in Caracas just over a week ago. The contents of the clip gained wider traction online after Mike Netter shared an English transcription in a post on X that same day. Netter is a political commentator and advocate who describes himself as the “main proponent” of the failed 2021 effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom. He is now Vice Chair of an organization called Rebuild California and hosts a radio show on KABC, a Cumulus Media station that broadcasts in the Greater Los Angeles area.

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US used powerful mystery weapon that brought Venezuelan soldiers to their knees during Maduro raid: witness account

The US used a powerful mystery weapon that brought Venezuelan soldiers to their knees, “bleeding through the nose” and vomiting blood during the daring raid to capture dictator Nicolas Maduro, according to a witness account posted Saturday on X by the White House press secretary.

In a jaw-dropping interview, the guard described how American forces wiped out hundreds of fighters without losing a single soldier, using technology unlike anything he has ever seen — or heard.

“We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation,” the guard said. “The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.”

Moments later, a handful of helicopters appeared — “barely eight,” by his count — deploying what he estimated were just 20 US troops into the area.

But those few men, he said, came armed with something far more powerful than guns.

“They were technologically very advanced,” the guard recalled. “They didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before.”

What ensued, he said, was not a battle, but a slaughter.

“We were hundreds, but we had no chance,” he said. “They were shooting with such precision and speed; it felt like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute.”

Then came the weapon that still haunts him.

“At one point, they launched something; I don’t know how to describe it,” he said. “It was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside.”

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Israel’s ‘Game-Changing’ Iron Beam Laser System Enters Combat, Offering U.S. Blueprint for Future Missile Defense

Israel has begun field deployment of its “game-changing” Iron Beam laser air defense system, according to the country’s Defense Ministry, which confirmed the technology is now operating as part of the country’s layered missile defense network, with its combat performance expected to inform U.S. missile defense planning.

The announcement, made Sunday, follows months of phased rollouts and testing by Israel’s defense establishment and domestic industry partners. Defense officials said the system is already being positioned at multiple sites nationwide.

Senior defense officials have described the high-energy laser as a system that will “fundamentally change the rules of engagement” as Israel confronts sustained rocket and drone threats from Iran and its regional terror proxies.

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Hypersonics, AI, Space Weapons, & Directed Energy: Lawmakers Release Defense Bill As Expiring Obamacare Subsidies Marinate On Back-Burner

With Congress in its second-to-last week in session for this year, lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee released the final bill text of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Sunday night, which allocates a topline of roughly $8 billion over the $892.6 billion the Department of Defense had requested, and what the House version of the NDAA provided which stuck to the Pentagon’s request. 

The NDAA is the annual law passed by Congress that sets the budget, policies, and legal authorities for the U.S. military and national defense programs. It shapes everything from troop pay to weapons development and foreign military aid.

“This year’s National Defense Authorization Act helps advance President Trump and Republicans’ Peace Through Strength Agenda by codifying 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the warrior ethos,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in a Sunday statement. 

The $8B increase is a ‘compromise‘ – as the Senate tried to jack the budget up by $32 billion over the department’s request. According to Breaking Defense, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, noted that appropriators would have the last word on the final budget, but was optimistic that the $8 bullion figure was in the ballpark.

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Mind-altering ‘brain weapons’ no longer only science fiction, say researchers

Sophisticated and deadly “brain weapons” that can attack or alter human consciousness, perception, memory or behaviour are no longer the stuff of science fiction, two British academics argue.

Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando, of Bradford University, are about to publish a book that they believe should be a wake-up call to the world.

They are this weekend travelling to The Hague for a key meeting of states, arguing that the human mind is a new frontier in warfare and there needs to be urgent global action to prevent the weaponisation of neuroscience.

“It does sound like science fiction,” said Crowley. “The danger is that it becomes science fact.”

The book, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, explores how advances in neuroscience, pharmacology and artificial intelligence are coming together to create a new threat.

“We are entering an era where the brain itself could become a battlefield,” said Crowley. “The tools to manipulate the central nervous system – to sedate, confuse or even coerce – are becoming more precise, more accessible and more attractive to states.”

The book traces the fascinating, if appalling, history of state-sponsored research into central nervous system (CNS)-acting chemicals.

During the cold war and after, the US, Soviet Union and China all “actively sought” to develop CNS-acting weapons, said Crowley. Their purpose was to cause prolonged incapacitation to people, including “loss of consciousness or sedation or hallucination or incoherence or paralysis and disorientation”.

The only time a CNS-acting weapon was used at scale was by the Russian Federation in 2002 to end the Moscow theatre siege. Security forces used fentanyl derivatives to end the siege, in which armed Chechen militants had taken 900 theatregoers hostage.

Most of the hostages were freed, but more than 120 died from the effects of the chemical agents and an undetermined number suffered long-term damage or died prematurely.

Since then, research has made significant advances. The academics argue that the ability exists to create much more “sophisticated and targeted” weapons that would once have been unimaginable.

Dando said: “The same knowledge that helps us treat neurological disorders could be used to disrupt cognition, induce compliance, or even in the future turn people into unwitting agents.”

The threat is “real and growing” but there are gaps in international arms control treaties preventing it from being tackled effectively, they say.

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Army Secretary: Love the killer drone or be left behind

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s opening remarks at this year’s United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting & Exposition — that drones will “absolutely dominate warfare in the twenty-first century” — set the tone for a conference swarming with them.

Describing them as cheap, yet cutting-edge warfighting tools, Driscoll sold drones as a fundamental shift in how wars will be fought — and thus an essential asset to the Army of the future.

“If small arms defined the twentieth century, drones will define the twenty-first. They are the perfect convergence of artificial intelligence, advanced materials, batteries and propulsion systems, sensor fusion and much more,” Driscoll told attendees. “They will absolutely dominate warfare in the twenty-first century.”

Drones “are reshaping how humans inflict violence on each other at a pace never witnessed in human history. They are cheap, modular, precise, multi-role and scalable, and we will rapidly integrate them into our formations,” he said.

Driscoll’s words were music to industry’ ears at AUSA, where scores of tech-forward companies hungry for collaboration with the DoD promoted their state-of-the-art drones to these ends.

Of course the drones’s lethal capacities were at center stage. Elbit America’s display presented its Skystriker loitering munition as a “one-shot, one-kill system” and as a “high lethality warhead for a variety of targets.” A representative for DraganFly, meanwhile, stressed their drones’ ability to carry explosives. And General Atomics’ flyers depicted one of its models equipped and firing a laser weapon — the “High Energy Laser (HEL) Weapon System.”

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Portland Antifa DECLARES WAR on U.S. Military — Calls for Mass LASER Attack on Helicopters Over Portland ICE Facility This Saturday, October 11th

The radical Antifa militants infesting Portland have issued a brazen call to arms: a coordinated “laser party” aimed at blinding and potentially crashing U.S. military helicopters patrolling the skies over the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.

Independent journalist Andy Ngo reported the blog’s announcement and said organizers urged participants to converge at different vantage points across the city and “unleash your beam at the cop copter.”

According to the announcement:

YOU’RE INVITED: LASER TAG!

Every night for weeks we are forced to listen to the threatening rhythm of helicopter blades as the federal regime spies on us. The only limit power knows is our refusal to submit.

This Saturday, October 11th, at 9pm you are invited to fight back. All you need is a laser. Leave home – they can see where the laser is coming from. Go to a park, a field, or some other public place, and once the clock strikes 9 unleash your beam at the cop copter. Mask up. Coordinate with friends to throw a laser party!

Let’s take back the night together! It won’t take many of us to ground the helicopters!

Every night for weeks we are forced to listen to the threatening rhythm of helicopter blades as the federal regime spies on us. The only limit power knows is our refusal to submit. This Saturday, October 11th, you are invited to fight back. All you need is a laser. Leave home – they can see where the laser is coming from. Go to a park, a field, or some other public place, and once the clock strikes 9 unleash your beam at the cop copter. Mask up. Coordinate with friends to throw a laser party!

Let’s take back the night together! It won’t take many of us to ground the helicopters!

The spread of accessible acts of resistance, scattered around the city, can cause significant disruption while being difficult (if not outright impossible) to control. Actions that aim at destroying the capacity of our enemies to enforce control in simple and concrete ways can make more daring actions possible.

The Portland Police also use aerial surveillance to target protests and usually have one of their Cessna spy planes in the sky. In 2020 and 2021, PPB used the plane to target specific protesters for arrest. Let’s blind all the eyes in the sky!

During the uprising in Chile in 2019, lasers were used to take down a police drone. It is unlikely that a single laser would have much effect, but many working together can clearly blind cameras and sensors or even force the drone down to earth entirely.

Lasers have the clear downside of being easily traced back to their source, especially from the air. If enough lasers are pointed at the aircraft, we think it will not be able to safely stay in the air for long enough to continue to pinpoint the source for law enforcement, and numbers will make it difficult to focus on a single person. Be ready to dispose of the laser if you need to – wear gloves and clean it with alcohol in case you have to toss it in a hurry. Consider taking precautions to keep DNA off of it as well.

Besides, lasers just look cool!

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