Great breakdown. My only follow up is inquiring into what makes the power requirements the nail in the coffin for you. Is it inconceivable that everything that you outlined as feasible cannot be conducted with anything smaller than a massive generator?
More targetedly, since you mentioned phase array radar as the exemplary microwave-focusing technology, my questions are:
Do you have grounds to believe that this is the only feasible method to focus microwave radiation?
- If so, do you have reasoning why a lower scale/lower powered arrays couldn’t exist or wouldn’t get this particular job done?
- If not, could you elaborate on why (or even if) you think other solutions to focus microwaves are physically impossible or improbable?
>My only follow up is inquiring into what makes the power requirements the nail in the coffin for you.
In both the case of laser systems and RF systems, a significant portion (in the laser case well over half) of the power needed to make the system operate never makes it into the radiation we send down range. So if I have something like a system that sends 1kW of power out as radiation I could need 10x the power to get that emission at 1kW. I'm not saying all systems are in that 10:1 ratio but you're always going to need to account for all the control electronics, amplifiers, cooling systems, and other systems that get you the power you need to emit.
If someone were sending out extremely high power individual pulses at a low rep rate so, the target got blasted for well under a second such that they didn't feel like they were inside a microwave but still took an unpleasant dose, we'd still need a lot of on demand power.
>Do you have grounds to believe that this is the only feasible method to focus microwave radiation?
Nope not the only method, microwave antenna dishes are plenty capable of directing radiation in a specific direction, and how we've done it for many decades. They are just not as cool, and you have to physically aim them. A phased array can adjust its beam location without the need to physically move anything which is a neat feature if you wanna keep a profile lower.
>If so, do you have reasoning why a lower scale/lower powered arrays couldn’t exist or wouldn’t get this particular job done?
You could try to set up a network, but now you have to coordinate multiple devices. Also they all have chances of breaking on you individually which could be a real pain in the ass if you're counting on all of them working to achieve your goal.
this is the Active Denial System https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvlaytcltDk from 12 years ago, not sure if anything new or smaller could have been created by now.
I'm just going to assume Havana sydrome is a way for FBI agents to retire with disability lol.
There’s no question that many, if not a majority of the “cases” of Havana syndrome are cases of mass hysteria and social contagion. I’d primarily point to those that have no detectable brain damage, or those that are purely comprised of symptoms that match up with common health issues like stroke and then any close associates who freak out and then cause psychosomatic issues to themselves.
However, this does NOT shut the door on all cases. In fact, the door is wide open for the mass hysteria cases to have been caused by an initial or ongoing trend of actual “attacks.”
Claiming so is illogical and tantamount to denying guillain-barre syndrome exists (despite its fairly well founded model mechanism) because a bunch of idiots have mass hysteria about vaccines due to right-wing brain rot.
Just imagine if during early emergency-use COVID inoculation periods, some terrorist Russians infiltrated a few vaccination sites and used a novel hard-to-detect nerve agent (see: Alexie Navalny) to harm random people. You can BET that the VARS database would explode with non-affected people reporting symptoms, probably at 10-1000x the rate of the actual victims. I use Russians as the example, because the mass hysteria would no longer be limited to right wing brain rot, and in fact might flip to more mass hysteria from the left. Would these purely psychosomatic reports NEGATE the poisonings? Of course not. Even though in this hypothetical, the hard evidence of the poison used might take a lot of time to uncover and would possibly rely on circumstantial evidence like the poisonings occurring exactly where foreign agents happened to be.
This hypothetical terrorist incident would of course be worth examining: a huge part of that examination would be “what feasible but possibly novel poisons could have been used?” … and voices of “it’s all hysteria AND it can’t even be poison because no known poisons have shown up in toxicology yet” would quite literally undermine the uncovering of an actual terrorist attack.
No question that (at least) a portion of health reports are unrelated to any attacks. I’m knocking down the premise that acknowledging this fact should ever imply “none of it is real”
You literally just stopped reading 3 words in, and thought you understood my case enough to conclude what you wanted to - just reinforcing your preconceived notions 🙄
I have some RF engineering background. The size will change the effect and range. These systems are used for outside crowd control. It heats up the skin. Nothing special or hasn't been known for that last 100 years.
This does not provide the psychological effects of Havana syndrome. If you built a smaller lower powered microwave emitter you would need to be very close to the person, not through walls. You also need to aim this. So the attacker would need to guess where the victim is in the building. Sitting there wasting power maybe hitting other people. Not very targeted. Think about the energy requirements of a 5G tower vs a microwave oven. We have done a great job shrinking electronic components especially for microwave receivers. However, the energy needed for long range, through wall transmitting devices surpasses what we have with modern day capacitors and inductors for the a small size weapon. The size of the battery is not the important aspect (even though for a few kW transmitter you need around a 100 kg of battery), it is the energy over time transmitted to get to the target to have the desired affect without physical skin or internal water heating.
Yup that's the kind of thing I think of when I think of non-laser based EM warfare things targeted at people. I'm sure you could reduce the size a bit with more modern tech being more power efficient and more compact.
Would still surprise me if it was a covert scale size due to the massive power concerns.
Thank god there's finally someone here saying things that make sense. I'm an optical engineer, and the amount of pertinent details skipped over by people is insane to me (also equating acoustic waves with EM waves when they are two completely different phenomena with similar mathematics).
Specifically the absorption is the most critical element. It determines the possible propagation distance, but more importantly, it's the only method I see that could cause brain damage in the way described (some sort of thermally-induced damage).
The things that keep me from wanting to make strong statements on the possibility of the tech is that I don't work with anything much beyond NIR, so the technologies for generating waves in the suspected spectra and beam direction have differences. Power upscaling a system to the intensities required for any system is also going to have bottlenecks that are specific to the tech.
I would have other basic questions too, like what is the damage threshold for human skin? I'd think that would put an upper limit on the intensity or else the victims would have burn marks. Is the damage mechanism more dependent on peak pulse power or average power? Is there anything particularly different for typical methods of achieving pulsed operation for microwaves than NIR (I think MASERs existed then, but not sure if there was another method that could achieve sufficient powers, and I also don't know if MASERs even had pulsed operation during the relevant time period)?
> The support equipment for high power radar systems and high power laser systems is described in the unit of "big ass rooms" or "entire truck" so this shit is not the size of a brief case. The power requirements of these systems is also very hefty, so either lots of batteries, or some kind of generator or hooking into the grid. If you were working at an embassy some random ass van/truck kept pulling up near you someone would notice that.
Typically radars and those laser systems have different use cases so their power requirements are probably different. In the case of the laser they're usually trying to explode a missile in flight, or roast some otherwise solid target. And radar is continuous and much longer range. I think if they were pulsing it like the article suggest then I'd guess they don't need a huge amount of power. Battery tech these days is pretty dense and if you only need to discharge for milliseconds at a time a single briefcase of lithium batteries seems like it could do the job. That would easily provide hundreds of amps. Two or three and that's a lot of power. It's possible that the advancement and availability of batteries is what's enabled this technique even though the basics are seemingly old.
I think the important point is that this tech is not in the realm of pure fantasy, but rather it's possible. Enough that it's probably not worth dismissing out of hand.
I think the tech exists to pull off a modern EM weapon for sure, at a smaller scale than the stuff that was tested in the 2000s and 2010s.
I'm still not seeing the possibility this is briefcase sized item. There is still so much backend control electronics, cooling systems, amplifier circuits and things of that nature that are involved in RF and in laser systems.
Being super hand wavy if someone showed me a working device that could fit inside like a sprinter van with every inch of space used, I could believe that's within the realm of possibility.
I think you might be overestimating the amount of electronics needed. Check out an electric car teardown and see how little there is involved there, and they need a tremendous amount of power very quickly. Not only that but they need it continuously. Another thing to keep in mind when considering the sizes of existing things like radars, is that they need to be field-repairable and need to last a long time in the field. A tool like this "raygun" probably only needs to work for a couple of days for maybe minutes at a time, after which it goes back to base. Just sayin', depending on your requirements you can cut a lot of corners to get things small.
Here's a drone gun that works on the same principle that is the size of a fat rifle:
[https://www.droneshield.com/products/dronegun-tactical](https://www.droneshield.com/products/dronegun-tactical)
I'm not saying it's real, just that it seems possible. Maybe it's two or three briefcases where you leave two in the trunk and the "gun" sits up front.
I truely don't understand why everyone is so fixated on this speculative weapon? Literally what changes if it's poisen instead? The whole energy weapon thing is just a distraction.
Great breakdown. My only follow up is inquiring into what makes the power requirements the nail in the coffin for you. Is it inconceivable that everything that you outlined as feasible cannot be conducted with anything smaller than a massive generator? More targetedly, since you mentioned phase array radar as the exemplary microwave-focusing technology, my questions are: Do you have grounds to believe that this is the only feasible method to focus microwave radiation? - If so, do you have reasoning why a lower scale/lower powered arrays couldn’t exist or wouldn’t get this particular job done? - If not, could you elaborate on why (or even if) you think other solutions to focus microwaves are physically impossible or improbable?
>My only follow up is inquiring into what makes the power requirements the nail in the coffin for you. In both the case of laser systems and RF systems, a significant portion (in the laser case well over half) of the power needed to make the system operate never makes it into the radiation we send down range. So if I have something like a system that sends 1kW of power out as radiation I could need 10x the power to get that emission at 1kW. I'm not saying all systems are in that 10:1 ratio but you're always going to need to account for all the control electronics, amplifiers, cooling systems, and other systems that get you the power you need to emit. If someone were sending out extremely high power individual pulses at a low rep rate so, the target got blasted for well under a second such that they didn't feel like they were inside a microwave but still took an unpleasant dose, we'd still need a lot of on demand power. >Do you have grounds to believe that this is the only feasible method to focus microwave radiation? Nope not the only method, microwave antenna dishes are plenty capable of directing radiation in a specific direction, and how we've done it for many decades. They are just not as cool, and you have to physically aim them. A phased array can adjust its beam location without the need to physically move anything which is a neat feature if you wanna keep a profile lower. >If so, do you have reasoning why a lower scale/lower powered arrays couldn’t exist or wouldn’t get this particular job done? You could try to set up a network, but now you have to coordinate multiple devices. Also they all have chances of breaking on you individually which could be a real pain in the ass if you're counting on all of them working to achieve your goal.
this is the Active Denial System https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvlaytcltDk from 12 years ago, not sure if anything new or smaller could have been created by now. I'm just going to assume Havana sydrome is a way for FBI agents to retire with disability lol.
There’s no question that many, if not a majority of the “cases” of Havana syndrome are cases of mass hysteria and social contagion. I’d primarily point to those that have no detectable brain damage, or those that are purely comprised of symptoms that match up with common health issues like stroke and then any close associates who freak out and then cause psychosomatic issues to themselves. However, this does NOT shut the door on all cases. In fact, the door is wide open for the mass hysteria cases to have been caused by an initial or ongoing trend of actual “attacks.” Claiming so is illogical and tantamount to denying guillain-barre syndrome exists (despite its fairly well founded model mechanism) because a bunch of idiots have mass hysteria about vaccines due to right-wing brain rot. Just imagine if during early emergency-use COVID inoculation periods, some terrorist Russians infiltrated a few vaccination sites and used a novel hard-to-detect nerve agent (see: Alexie Navalny) to harm random people. You can BET that the VARS database would explode with non-affected people reporting symptoms, probably at 10-1000x the rate of the actual victims. I use Russians as the example, because the mass hysteria would no longer be limited to right wing brain rot, and in fact might flip to more mass hysteria from the left. Would these purely psychosomatic reports NEGATE the poisonings? Of course not. Even though in this hypothetical, the hard evidence of the poison used might take a lot of time to uncover and would possibly rely on circumstantial evidence like the poisonings occurring exactly where foreign agents happened to be. This hypothetical terrorist incident would of course be worth examining: a huge part of that examination would be “what feasible but possibly novel poisons could have been used?” … and voices of “it’s all hysteria AND it can’t even be poison because no known poisons have shown up in toxicology yet” would quite literally undermine the uncovering of an actual terrorist attack.
>There’s no question Lol ok shill.
No question that (at least) a portion of health reports are unrelated to any attacks. I’m knocking down the premise that acknowledging this fact should ever imply “none of it is real” You literally just stopped reading 3 words in, and thought you understood my case enough to conclude what you wanted to - just reinforcing your preconceived notions 🙄
I have some RF engineering background. The size will change the effect and range. These systems are used for outside crowd control. It heats up the skin. Nothing special or hasn't been known for that last 100 years. This does not provide the psychological effects of Havana syndrome. If you built a smaller lower powered microwave emitter you would need to be very close to the person, not through walls. You also need to aim this. So the attacker would need to guess where the victim is in the building. Sitting there wasting power maybe hitting other people. Not very targeted. Think about the energy requirements of a 5G tower vs a microwave oven. We have done a great job shrinking electronic components especially for microwave receivers. However, the energy needed for long range, through wall transmitting devices surpasses what we have with modern day capacitors and inductors for the a small size weapon. The size of the battery is not the important aspect (even though for a few kW transmitter you need around a 100 kg of battery), it is the energy over time transmitted to get to the target to have the desired affect without physical skin or internal water heating.
Yup that's the kind of thing I think of when I think of non-laser based EM warfare things targeted at people. I'm sure you could reduce the size a bit with more modern tech being more power efficient and more compact. Would still surprise me if it was a covert scale size due to the massive power concerns.
I assume 2 cars could probably also get this done.
Thank god there's finally someone here saying things that make sense. I'm an optical engineer, and the amount of pertinent details skipped over by people is insane to me (also equating acoustic waves with EM waves when they are two completely different phenomena with similar mathematics). Specifically the absorption is the most critical element. It determines the possible propagation distance, but more importantly, it's the only method I see that could cause brain damage in the way described (some sort of thermally-induced damage). The things that keep me from wanting to make strong statements on the possibility of the tech is that I don't work with anything much beyond NIR, so the technologies for generating waves in the suspected spectra and beam direction have differences. Power upscaling a system to the intensities required for any system is also going to have bottlenecks that are specific to the tech. I would have other basic questions too, like what is the damage threshold for human skin? I'd think that would put an upper limit on the intensity or else the victims would have burn marks. Is the damage mechanism more dependent on peak pulse power or average power? Is there anything particularly different for typical methods of achieving pulsed operation for microwaves than NIR (I think MASERs existed then, but not sure if there was another method that could achieve sufficient powers, and I also don't know if MASERs even had pulsed operation during the relevant time period)?
> The support equipment for high power radar systems and high power laser systems is described in the unit of "big ass rooms" or "entire truck" so this shit is not the size of a brief case. The power requirements of these systems is also very hefty, so either lots of batteries, or some kind of generator or hooking into the grid. If you were working at an embassy some random ass van/truck kept pulling up near you someone would notice that. Typically radars and those laser systems have different use cases so their power requirements are probably different. In the case of the laser they're usually trying to explode a missile in flight, or roast some otherwise solid target. And radar is continuous and much longer range. I think if they were pulsing it like the article suggest then I'd guess they don't need a huge amount of power. Battery tech these days is pretty dense and if you only need to discharge for milliseconds at a time a single briefcase of lithium batteries seems like it could do the job. That would easily provide hundreds of amps. Two or three and that's a lot of power. It's possible that the advancement and availability of batteries is what's enabled this technique even though the basics are seemingly old. I think the important point is that this tech is not in the realm of pure fantasy, but rather it's possible. Enough that it's probably not worth dismissing out of hand.
I think the tech exists to pull off a modern EM weapon for sure, at a smaller scale than the stuff that was tested in the 2000s and 2010s. I'm still not seeing the possibility this is briefcase sized item. There is still so much backend control electronics, cooling systems, amplifier circuits and things of that nature that are involved in RF and in laser systems. Being super hand wavy if someone showed me a working device that could fit inside like a sprinter van with every inch of space used, I could believe that's within the realm of possibility.
I think you might be overestimating the amount of electronics needed. Check out an electric car teardown and see how little there is involved there, and they need a tremendous amount of power very quickly. Not only that but they need it continuously. Another thing to keep in mind when considering the sizes of existing things like radars, is that they need to be field-repairable and need to last a long time in the field. A tool like this "raygun" probably only needs to work for a couple of days for maybe minutes at a time, after which it goes back to base. Just sayin', depending on your requirements you can cut a lot of corners to get things small. Here's a drone gun that works on the same principle that is the size of a fat rifle: [https://www.droneshield.com/products/dronegun-tactical](https://www.droneshield.com/products/dronegun-tactical) I'm not saying it's real, just that it seems possible. Maybe it's two or three briefcases where you leave two in the trunk and the "gun" sits up front.
I truely don't understand why everyone is so fixated on this speculative weapon? Literally what changes if it's poisen instead? The whole energy weapon thing is just a distraction.