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From: john%ghostwheel.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Offensive use of Sound possible?
Message-ID: <1991Feb15.072221.11732@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 15 Feb 91 07:22:21 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
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From: john%ghostwheel.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
In article <1991Jan21.041118.5204@cbnews.att.com> tipmo@oak.circa.ufl.edu writes:
>	Here's a question I've been wondering about. 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. From
>my uneducated point of view, this looks like a VERY good weapon to use against
>ground troops, fortifications (perhaps) and especially  fighter jets. Has
>anyone heard anything about this?

I have never heard of such things, and I think I would have it they
exist.  Of course, you could argue that the air blast off an explosive
is such a weapon, however it is not usually the air shock that kills,
it is the fragmentation of the casing.  The biggest problem with using
focused sound waves is 1) focusing them and 2) shocks decay very
rapidly.  

John

--
John K. Prentice    john@unmfys.unm.edu (Internet)
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Computational Physics Group, Amparo Corporation, Albuquerque, NM, USA