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From: cowie-james@CS.YALE.EDU (James Cowie)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Offensive use of Sound possible?
Message-ID: <1991Jan23.043256.7250@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 23 Jan 91 04:32:56 GMT
References: <1991Jan21.041118.5204@cbnews.att.com> <1991Jan22.021825.22248@cbnews.att.com>
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Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158
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From: cowie-james@CS.YALE.EDU (James Cowie)

In article <1991Jan22.021825.22248@cbnews.att.com> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>>From: tipmo@oak.circa.ufl.edu
>>	... I know that sound waves 
>>can be quite destructive if focused/handled/played-with enough and I was
>>wondering if the military has looked into this destructive capability...
>
>Generating really high-power sound waves, and focussing them usefully,
>is relatively difficult.  

I have a paper somewhere which was delivered to some professional
organization of acoustical engineers on this topic.  I could dig it
out if anyone is really interested; it came from their journal many
years ago.  It is a humorous account of the US Army's research into
tactical acoustics throughout WWII, by the guys who actually did the
research.  Generally, they came up with lots of toys which could "put
a man into a mood to beat his wife" (their words) but nothing really
applicable to warfare.  Eventually they turned their attention to ways
of effectively broadcasting propoganda from high-flying aircraft.  

--jim (cowie@yalecs)
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