Tag: directed energy weapons

First Laser Weapon For A Fighter Delivered To The Air Force

The U.S. Air Force has received a high-energy laser weapon that can be carried by aircraft in podded form. The news came today when Lockheed Martin disclosed that at least one of the weapons, which it developed, has been delivered to the Air Force for test work. This effort falls within the wider framework of still-evolving plans to have laser-armed fighter jets that can engage enemy missiles, and possibly other targets too.

A report today from Breaking Defense confirmed that Lockheed Martin delivered its LANCE high-energy laser weapon to the Air Force in February this year. In this context, LANCE stands for “Laser Advancements for Next-generation Compact Environments.” The recipient for the new weapon is the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, which is charged with developing and integrating new technologies in the air, space, and cyberspace realms.

Tyler Griffin, a Lockheed executive, had previously told reporters that LANCE “is the smallest, lightest, high-energy laser of its power class that Lockheed Martin has built to date.”

Indeed, Griffin added that LANCE is “one-sixth the size” of a previous directed-energy weapon that Lockheed produced for the Army. That earlier laser was part of the Robust Electric Laser Initiative program and had an output in the 60-kilowatt class. We don’t yet know what kind of power LANCE can produce although there have been suggestions it will likely be below 100 kilowatts.

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Maui wildfires spark conspiracy theories about space lasers, Oprah land grabs and suspicious trees

The Maui wildfires have drawn bizarre conspiracy theories that elites — such as President Biden and Oprah — may have used lasers to intentionally set the deadly blaze for their own nefarious ends.

Photos claiming to show space lasers raining destruction down on the Hawaiian city have gained millions of views across social media, while images of trees still standing amid the inferno’s aftermath have been cited as evidence that the fires were not natural.

“Everything is burnt but the trees, but don’t point that out or ur a conspiracy theorist,” wrote one user on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, alongside footage of people driving through the cindered remains of a neighborhood.

But the unlikely internet sleuths’ hypotheses were easily debunked.

That post, along with others like it, was flagged by readers who linked to a Britannica article concisely explaining why the trees were still standing.

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PENTAGON REQUESTS $36 MILLION FOR HAVANA SYNDROME

HOUSE SPEAKER KEVIN McCarthy’s debt limit bill unveiled Wednesday would slash $130 billion from a broad range of domestic programs, including clean-energy subsidies and student loan forgiveness. But one thing the bill would not cut is the military, which last month requested an $842 billion budget.

Buried in the Pentagon’s sprawling budget request is an ask for at least $36 million to respond to Havana syndrome, the mysterious symptoms alleged by U.S. spies and diplomats. Initially blamed on microwave weapons wielded by foreign powers like Russia, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded there is “no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device that is causing” the symptoms — opening the possibility that they may be psychogenic in nature.

The amount represents an increase of $2.1 million over the previous fiscal year and “ensures that individuals affected by anomalous health incidents receive timely and comprehensive health care and treatment,” according to the Defense Health Program’s proposed operation and maintenance budget, released on March 13. “Anomalous health incidents,” or AHIs, is the U.S. government’s term for Havana syndrome, named after the CIA officers and diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba who, in 2016, reported symptoms like headaches, nausea, and hearing loud noises. Since then, U.S. Embassy personnel who served in other countries have reportedly been affected, including China, Colombia, France, Georgia, India, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

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The Pentagon is funding experiments on animals to recreate ‘Havana Syndrome’

The Defense Department is funding experiments on animals to determine if radio frequency waves could be the source of the mysterious ailment referred to as “Havana Syndrome” that has afflicted hundreds of U.S. government personnel in recent years, according to public documents and three people familiar with the effort.

This news of the ongoing animal testing, which has not previously been reported, comes after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence determined last week that there is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary wielding a weapon caused the health incidents. Despite the assessment, the Pentagon is continuing to examine that possibility, as POLITICO reported.

The Army in September awarded Wayne State University in Michigan a $750,000 grant to study the effects of radio frequency waves on ferrets, which have brains similar to humans, according to information on the grant posted on USASpending.gov. The aim is to determine whether this exposure induces similar symptoms to those experienced by U.S. government personnel in Havana, Cuba, and China, the documents show.

Symptoms have been described as severe headaches, temporary loss of hearing, vertigo and other problems similar to traumatic brain injury.

DoD has also recently tested pulsed radio frequency sources on primates to try to determine whether their effects can be linked to what the government calls “anomalous health incidents,” according to one former intelligence official and a current U.S. official who were briefed on the effort. Both were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive work. It is not clear whether these studies, which were done internally, are ongoing.

DoD spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Tim Gorman confirmed that the grant to Wayne State University, with collaborators from the University of Michigan, “will develop and test a novel laboratory animal model to mimic mild concussive head injury.”

“Behavioral, imaging, and histological studies will determine if the model is comparable to the abnormalities seen in humans following concussive head injury,” Gorman said, adding that: “The model may subsequently be used to test potential treatments to alleviate the deficits associated with traumatic brain injury.”

Gorman declined to comment on whether DoD has recently conducted these experiments on primates.

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US intelligence: No evidence foreign adversaries behind ‘Havana syndrome’

The U.S. intelligence community has determined it was unlikely that a foreign adversary is responsible for a series of anomalous health incidents (AHI) plaguing intelligence and diplomatic staffers across the globe.

A review conducted by intelligence agencies for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and released Wednesday probed a series of health incidents initially dubbed “Havana syndrome” after government employees first reported experiencing mysterious neurological ailments there in 2016.

But the review attributed those conditions to other factors and noted that intelligence agencies — with varying degrees of confidence — deemed it was unlikely that a U.S. adversary had such capabilities.

“Available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of U.S. adversaries in causing the reported incidents,” the report states. 

“There is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or device that is causing AHIs.”

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These Bizarre CIA Documents Expose The Most Horrifying Secrets

“The Central Intelligence Agency has been a core part of the United States’ defense against foreign and domestic enemies for decades. However, it has attracted plenty of criticism for its methods and motives over the years. Declassified documents have only fuelled this criticism, revealing all manner of unethical or illegal conduct hidden in the CIA’s closet. Many of the declassified secrets are more absurd than creepy. Wacky plots and absurd technology like bird spy drones, catfish spy drones, dragonfly spy drones – a lot of animal spy drones, come to think of it – are among the stranger revelations from declassified archives. However, some of these documents reveal far more gruesome secrets. Plans for political assassinations, mind control, torture, and even inciting international wars reveal that the CIA has gotten up to far more than the public ever suspected.”

First Balloons, Now Space Lasers: Chinese Satellite Blasts Green Lights Over Hawaii

Chinese spy balloons aren’t the only strange thing flying over U.S. airspace as of late.

Numerous green laser lights were spotted over Hawaii on Jan. 28, initially believed to be from a NASA satellite that monitors the thickness of ice sheets on earth. However, the claim was retracted on Feb. 6, and responsibility was instead attributed to a Chinese atmospheric monitoring satellite.

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan published a photo of the lasers on Jan. 28 saying they were “thought to be from a remote-sensing altimeter satellite ICESAT-2/43613,” the NASA satellite. Then, on Feb. 6, NAOJ released an updated report and said it was unlikely to have come from the NASA satellite due to the trajectory of the lasers.

NASA scientist Dr. Alvaro Ivanoff determined via a simulation that the culprit was likely China’s Daqi-1/AEMS satellite, according to Science Alert.

Daqi-1 monitors the earth’s atmospheric environment and can project lasers from its Aerosol and Carbon Dioxide Detection Lidar (ACDL), according to The Science Times.

NASA’s IceSAT-2 functions similarly and fired 10,000 lasers per second to measure changes on the earth’s surface, according to The Science Times.

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Lasers Can “Hack” Self-Driving LiDAR Sensors, Creating False “Blind Spots”, New Study Reveals

In what is likely going to be another thorn in the side of Elon Musk, Tesla and Autopilot, it was revealed in a report last week that many self-driving features in vehicles can be “messed with” using lasers. 

A brand new study that was put together and uploaded in late October, called “You Can’t See Me: Physical Removal Attacks on LiDAR-based Autonomous Vehicles Driving Frameworks” made the revelation, which was also reported on by Cosmos Magazine. 

Researchers in the U.S. and Japan found that vehicles could be tricked into not seeing pedestrians (or other objects in their way) using lasers. These cars, which use LiDAR to sense objects around them, send out laser lights and then use the reflection back to judge how far away objects are. 

The study revealed that a perfectly timed laser shone back into a LiDAR system can create “a blind spot large enough to hide an object like a pedestrian,” according to Cosmos. 

The study’s abstract says: “While existing attacks on LiDAR-based autonomous driving architectures focus on lowering the confidence score of AV object detection models to induce obstacle misdetection, our research discovers how to leverage laser-based spoofing techniques to selectively remove the LiDAR point cloud data of genuine obstacles at the sensor level before being used as input to the AV perception. The ablation of this critical LiDAR information causes autonomous driving obstacle detectors to fail to identify and locate obstacles and, consequently, induces AVs to make dangerous automatic driving decisions”

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FBI Agents Reporting Havana Syndrome” Symptoms on U.S. Soil Hire Lawyers to Investigate

Experts have been claiming for years that “Havana Syndrome” (diagnosed in American government employees and their family members) is likely being caused by exposure to electromagnetic and/or microwave energy also known as radio requency (RF) (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). In August the Biden administration started providing financial compensation to some victims; however, allegedly few if any of them are employed by the CIA.  In September FBI agents who reported symptoms also claimed they were being ignored by the government and recently some of them hired lawyers.

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CNN TO AIR REPORT ON IMMACULATE CONCUSSION: THE TRUTH BEHIND HAVANA SYNDROME

In a CNN Special Report Immaculate Concussion: The Truth Behind Havana Syndrome, airing Sunday at 8pmET/PT, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta investigates one of the most complex and controversial health mysteries in recent years known as “Havana Syndrome.”

The special explores a cluster of unexplained health incidents resembling concussion-like injuries, which were first reported by American officials and covert personnel serving in Havana in late 2016. The victims describe suffering from vertigo, headache, brain fog, and in some cases, pain or ringing in the ears without any apparent mechanism of injury. Since 2016, similar incidents have been reported by US government officials around the world.

But what causes the mysterious illness? Dr. David Relman, who co-authored the influential American Academy of Sciences report, concluded that microwave energy is a plausible explanation. This finding takes Gupta’s journey down an eye-opening road into how microwave energy interacts with the brain and what types of directed energy technologies are potentially capable of doing this.

CNN Special Report Immaculate Concussion: The Truth Behind Havana Syndrome will stream live for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com and CNN OTT and mobile apps under “TV Channels,” or CNNgo where available. The doc will also be available On Demand beginning Monday, September 26th, to pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN apps, and Cable Operator Platforms

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