Tag: directed energy weapons

Havana Syndrome hits the homefront: Senior defense officials hospitalized

At least six new suspected Havana syndrome cases are being treated at Walter Reed as reports of mysterious neurological incidents involving U.S. government personnel emerge in the Washington, D.C. area.

The patients are receiving treatment for confirmed or suspected brain injuries at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, raising concerns about potential directed-energy attacks on American soil, according to NewsNation. The cases follow reports of suspected incidents involving U.S. government personnel in the area around the nation’s capital — although investigators have not publicly established the cause of the injuries or identified a responsible party.

These cases occur at a time when there is renewed conversation regarding Havana Syndrome and government transparency regarding the manner.

Walter Reed Hospital did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Havana syndrome typically impacts diplomats and intelligence officers operating overseas. Symptoms include tinnitus, blurred vision, dizziness, and vertigo — and they usually follow a loud noise and intense pain in the ears and head,” per the Government Accountability Office.

However, the new suspected cases are in government workers based out of Washington, D.C., with some being senior members in the defense community. Some of the victims were involved in direct-energy technology research, investigative journalist Catherine Herridge reported on NewsNation.

Prior to the symptoms, many of these victims reported suspicious vehicles operating nearby, following a sudden shock or disorientation. Others claimed that their pets sensed something was amiss before they did.

“I’ve had people tell me that they’ve been walking their dogs and the first instant they realize that something is happening is that the dog reacts,” Herridge said. “I anticipate that we probably will be learning more before the end of the year about ultimately the government findings.”

The U.S. is investigating whether or not a foreign entity was involved, NewsNation reported.

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Pentagon ready to use HEAT RAY weapon at the border to prevent migrants from crossing into US

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gotten approval from the Pentagon to test out a military heat-ray weapon along the US-Mexico border, according to a memo that was obtained by CNN.

The weapon, formally called the Active Denial System, is nonlethal and fires an unseen beam of electromagnetic energy with a range of just over half a mile.

When the beam hits a person’s skin, it produces an intense burning sensation, similar to when a person opens an oven. The military says this “tingling effect” fades after 10 to 15 minutes, but the weapon also triggers “an instinctive and irresistible urge to run from the effect.”

DHS has not said how the weapon will be used yet. However, current and former Customs and Border Protection officials say the agency has talked internally for years about using it to break up crowds at the southern border, per the report.

Under the memo, DHS gets a “temporary loan” of the single ADS unit for seven months starting in September. The memo says the system “shall not be operated by DoW (Department of War) personnel.”

The memo also places DHS fully in charge of “system employment, use and development of tactics, techniques and procedures.” A defense official told reporters that when the seven months are up, DHS may ask to keep using the system for border work if it can show that it is useful.

In a statement to CNN, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said, “CBP is continually evaluating new technologies, especially those that enhance operational effectiveness and strengthen mission capabilities.”

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War Department Expands Use Of High-Energy Laser And Microwave Capabilities

The Department of War (DOW) has announced the selection of four high-energy laser and high-powered microwave systems to expand its operational capabilities across the United States.

The directed-energy systems were selected following a counter-drone pilot program by the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, according to an Oct. 5 DOW statement.

“High-energy lasers and high-powered microwave systems are tools that can be effectively used in a layered drone defense,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of the task force.

“This pilot program will test these capabilities in an operational environment so we can understand how best to integrate and sustain them to defend the homeland,” Ross said.

The four systems selected for the pilot are laser weapon systems from defense companies Boeing, Kord, and AeroVironment, and a microwave system from Epirus.

The pilot program comes after Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard said during a symposium in Alabama on Aug. 13 that American military bases were ill-equipped to defend against swarm drone attacks.

Jarrard warned that small, unmanned aircraft systems or drones were quickly proliferating in the open market, posing a major security threat in the hands of malicious actors.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) does not have the decision speed to respond to swarms of small drones, said Jarrard, who is vice commander of NORAD’s United States Element.

“We don’t have the sensors,” Jarrard said. “So we are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that, and obviously we’ve seen it used. We’re seeing it used on a daily basis around the world, and we’ve got to figure out how to mitigate that threat, but we’re not there yet.”

During a Sept. 30 address at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called drone warfare the “biggest battlefield revolution” in many generations.

The latest pilot phase will test the performance of the directed-energy systems, providing real-time data and feedback on requirements, costs, and best practices of these technologies, the DOW said in the statement.

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Report: Dozens of Suspected ‘Directed Energy Attacks’ Carried Out Inside the United States

Award-winning journalist Catherine Herridge shared shocking details from an exclusive report on Thursday about an investigation into “energy attacks” that may have taken place on American soil.

Herridge appeared on NewsNation to share what she’d learned, saying, “According to my national security contacts, I understand multiple incidents of suspected directed energy attacks were reported in 2021 involving U.S. government personnel who were investigating directed energy weapon technology and trying to reverse-engineer a device.”

“These debilitating brain injuries affecting diplomats, spies, military operatives, and even civilians are known as Havana Syndrome, after a cluster of cases were identified in Cuba a decade ago,” she continued.

“I understand that more than two dozen suspected incidents had been reported inside the U.S., including a significant number of cases at an off-site U.S. government intelligence research facility in northern Virginia.”

A Space Force veteran sat down with Herridge and told her he was “targeted in his own home outside Washington, D.C.”

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Israel developing space lasers to attack above the Earth, Katz says

Israel is developing space lasers to carry out attacks above the Earth, Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday.

“One of the central goals that the prime minister and I set is that we are recruiting the best minds,” he said in a briefing with military reporters. “As of today, no country has the ability to mount attacks in space. We must be the leading country in the world with this capability.”

“If we achieve this, it will ensure the advantage of deterrence, of the ability to attack, destroy, and all of the other matters, versus our enemies with large resources,” he added.

Last Thursday, Katz said Israel was committed to becoming the leading player with capabilities to attack from space. But his latest statement was the first time he had specifically mentioned space lasers.

Israel is already a leading country in this field, having developed Iron Beam as a land-based space laser. During a recent visit to Elbit, The Jerusalem Post both witnessed and was informed about a project to enable fighter jets to fire lasers in the future.

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US Military Shoots Down 3 Mexican Cartel Drones With Laser

A laser system was used to shoot down three drug cartel drones in southern Texas, close to the Mexican border, the U.S. military said on Aug. 27.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, in a joint statement, said an Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) was used overnight on Aug. 25-26 in the Rio Grande Valley.

The Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) deemed the three drones to be hostile and posing a physical threat to U.S. military personnel and their partners in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of JTF-SB, said the successful operation against the drones was a testament to the readiness, vigilance, and technological edge of his force.

US Will ‘Not Tolerate Hostile Surveillance’

“Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” Taylor said. “By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance.”

Ammon Blair, a former U.S.Border Patrol agent and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure & Sovereign Texas Initiative, told The Epoch Times in March 2025 that he recalled hearing cartel-operated drones overhead while working along the Texas border.

“You’d be running, and you’d have a drone right above your head and tracking every move you made,” Blair said at the time.

In February, the airspace around El Paso International Airport was closed for 7 hours for “special security reasons.”

The White House told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement at the time that Mexican cartel-operated drones had breached U.S. airspace and that the Department of War took action to disable them.

In other parts of Mexico, cartels have used drones to drop explosives in deadly attacks, but there is no suggestion the drones in the Texas incident were armed.

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Huntsville Defense Firm Unveils Homegrown “Firefly” Laser That Zaps Enemy Drones in Seconds

A Huntsville, Alabama defense company gave an up-close demonstration this week of a powerful new anti-drone laser system designed to knock unmanned aerial threats out of the sky before they can endanger U.S. military personnel or American civilians.

KBR and its Huntsville-based subsidiary Kord demonstrated FIREFLY, a mobile high-energy laser weapon designed to detect, track, and destroy unmanned aircraft before they can reach American troops, civilian gatherings, or critical infrastructure.

Attendees were required to put on laser-protection goggles before the test began. On a live screen, observers watched as the system’s sensors and AI-assisted targeting technology identified and followed a drone.

Then FIREFLY took it down.

Axios reported that the truck-mounted 20-kilowatt system disabled the quadcopter in under four seconds. Kord officials said the onboard batteries provide roughly 15 minutes of total “laser-on time,” the unit can be deployed in about 30 minutes, and an operator can learn the controls in as little as five minutes.

“This is a homegrown product,” KBR’s David Zoller said, according to WAFF.

“I think often we can look at the work that happens in Huntsville, you see Redstone, you see all the traffic and everything, and you kinda have to wonder what’s going on over there,” Zoller continued. “Well, it’s protecting the people, and this is one of the methods that we’re doing it.”

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Former FBI Agent Claims Nuclear Lab Worker May Have Been Killed With DIRECT ENERGY WEAPON

A former FBI agent has advanced a bombshell theory that the Los Alamos National Laboratory worker whose remains were recovered from a New Mexico forest was eliminated using a direct energy weapon, complete with psychological manipulation technology that could explain her sudden, out-of-character departure from home.

The claims inject a technological dimension into the pattern of mysterious deaths and disappearances among those with access to nuclear and classified aerospace secrets—suggesting outside actors may be deploying exotic tools to silence key personnel and block public knowledge.

Melissa Casias, a 53-year-old administrative assistant at the elite lab, vanished on June 26, 2025 after dropping her husband, a lab superintendent, at work.

Her actions that day were atypical: she claimed she needed to retrieve a forgotten security badge even though she had it, visited her daughter to drop off a sandwich while saying she would work from home, then returned to the house, wiped both phones clean of all data, and walked away without keys, identification or purse.

Surveillance last placed her walking alone eastward on State Road 518 roughly three miles from the family home in Ranchos de Taos around 2:20 p.m.

Her skeletal remains turned up on May 28, 2026 in the Carson National Forest, discovered by a hiker near a handgun the family said did not belong to her. As previously reported, identification followed in early June.

Forensic teams reconstructed the skull from fragments found at the scene. New Mexico State Police confirmed that “the initial CT scan did not reveal any projectiles in the skull.” No official cause of death has yet been issued by the medical examiner.

Former FBI agent Ben Hansen examined the details shared so far and concluded they point strongly away from suicide. “Just what they have shared is highly highly suspicious,” he stated on the Brian Entin Investigates podcast. “I don’t know if I give a percentage but it’s kind of more like an 80 percent foul play versus someone who’s depressed is the way I see it.”

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Gabbard Rescinds Intelligence Reports on Mysterious Syndrome

Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has retracted intelligence community reports on mysterious health problems known as Havana Syndrome, according to a memorandum released on June 11.

Gabbard found that the intelligence community assessments of the anomalous health incidents, released in 2023 and 2025, failed to meet the community’s analytic standards.

That included selectively excluding intelligence and evidence that did not support the conclusions and relying on an “ethically flawed medical study without noting methodological critiques,” Gabbard’s office said in the memo, sent to members of Congress.

The 2023 assessment concluded it was very unlikely that a foreign adversary was behind the incidents, which have impacted staffers in countries such as Cuba and China.

The updated assessment released in 2025 said most intelligence agencies still held it was very unlikely an enemy was responsible for the syndrome, but two components judged there was a “roughly even chance” that a foreign actor had used a novel weapon to target Americans, or had developed such a weapon.

Gabbard’s team said future assessments on the matter would adhere to “rigorous ethical standards incorporating all available intelligence sources and engaging a broad range of experts from agencies including the CIA.”

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Former Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times Reporter Claims She Was Attacked with ‘Direct Energy Weapons’ at Her Home Over Epstein Reporting

A veteran journalist who has spent months covering Jeffrey Epstein’s sprawling Zorro Ranch compound in New Mexico says she is permanently leaving the United States after suffering what she describes as two “direct energy weapon” attacks inside her home office in New Mexico.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, a former Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times reporter turned bestselling novelist and independent investigator, announced her plan to flee the country in a post on her Substack last week.

The reporter claims the attacks left her with symptoms matching “Havana syndrome” and forced her to abandon her New Mexico residence immediately.

“Okay, folks. It appears my home has been located by, well, whomever is unhappy about my reporting about Zorro Ranch and the local cover up here and the military intelligence roots of the child sex trafficking operation Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were running here in New Mexico,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote.

The post continued, “This morning, I was hit in my home office by two episodes of what I later learned were likely Direct Energy Weapon attacks. Look up Havana Syndrome. My symptoms are consistent with such attacks, and entirely new. We wasted no time in leaving the house, for good. We will be staying in safe houses while we finish plans to permanently relocate abroad.”

“The hardest part will be transporting our pets. It is very expensive. I am going to set up a gofundme to help cover that expense and a security detail until we are out of the USA. Yes, it has come to this. We kind of figured it might,” the post concluded.

The U.S. Department of Defense defines DEWs as systems that use concentrated electromagnetic energy, rather than kinetic energy, to “incapacitate, damage, disable, or destroy enemy equipment, facilities, or personnel.”

The U.S. has researched DEWs since the 1960s, with billions invested. The first operational U.S. DE weapon was a 30 kW laser installed on the USS Ponce in 2014.

Other nations, including China, Russia, and Israel, are also actively developing DEWs.

Valdes-Rodriguez wrote in a later post that the attacks may have involved a “backpack-sized” device placed on or near her roof by “private military contractors” and a second incident from “the back of a large semi truck that parked across from my house.”

“These are the most cowardly weapons ever created. They attack you at your most vulnerable and trusting, in your home, in bed, and do not kill right away,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote.

No police report or independent verification of the attacks has been made public.

Valdes-Rodriguez was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and built a respected career in mainstream journalism before transitioning to fiction and, more recently, independent investigative work.

Earlier this year, after the Department of Justice released millions of pages of previously unseen Epstein files, Valdes-Rodriguez began systematically combing through the documents with a laser focus on Epstein’s 7,500-acre Zorro Ranch, now renamed Rancho de San Rafael, located roughly 30 miles outside Santa Fe.

Key elements of her Zorro Ranch investigations include claims that Epstein hired Bradbury Stamm Construction, New Mexico’s largest industrial contractor, known for building facilities at the state’s nuclear weapons labs to construct the remote ranch.

The firm’s phone number appeared in Epstein’s personal contacts.

Valdes-Rodriguez linked this to Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, and alleged Israeli intelligence penetration of U.S. nuclear programs in the 1980s.

Additionally, she reported on a still-active private microwave communications license at the property and its strategic location forming a near-perfect triangle with the two top-secret nuclear labs. She has alleged the ranch may have been used for surveillance operations.

Drawing on FBI tips and DOJ files, she has reported on allegations of buried victims, “two foreign girls,” young girls allegedly raped at the ranch, and possible disappearances of American scientists tied to the area.

Valdes-Rodriguez also reported that former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico John J. Kelly served as Epstein’s personal power of attorney for the 1993 purchase of the ranch from then-Governor Bruce King.

Kelly has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and called the insinuations “categorically false.”

She also highlighted the Zorro Trust’s $85 million Oklahoma Lottery win shortly after Epstein’s 2008 prison stint.

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