Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
220 comments
·March 16, 2025observationist
camilo2025
You are aware that these LRAD systems have been used against US citizens, aren't you?
pclmulqdq
Police also regularly use tear gas against US citizens. These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
killjoywashere
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (a follow-on to the 1925 "Geneva Convention") allows for the use of riot control agents (like tear gas) for law enforcement purposes.
gruez
>These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
see: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...
"Tear gas is bad because it violates the Geneva convention" makes as much sense as "MLK is a bad person because he's a criminal".
sa46
The Geneva Convention bans all chemical weapons. Part of the rationale for a total ban is to avoid escalating to more dangerous chemical agents. Helpful r/AskHistorians thread:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gwtj89/the_c...
conception
Generally if you do it to your own people the world is fine with.. just about anything.
tbrownaw
> These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
Isn't that a category ban that came out of a couple specific members of that category that were used and had particularly nasty effects? And then countries' domestic law enforcement rules tend to be defined in different terms.
laweijfmvo
are they against the Geneva convention because of the direct effects, or because in a war you’d then proceed to kill everyone while they’re coughing?
amelius
What would ICC think of it, I wonder.
ofcourseiwasone
I went hiking in Honolulu once with this woman who worked for the US gov I met on tinder. We went through this bamboo grove behind the city. All of sudden there was this overwhelming tiredness that took me over and I had to sleep. I needed to sit down by a rock and fell asleep very quickly. Then I woke up really quickly but it seemed like avea have passed. It was crazy. I was super healthy back then and don't have any issues or take any medicines. It was crazy, let me tell you, that woman was very precise but very strange.
spacecadet
My American Citizen score card:
LRAD + Tear gas 2009
Tear gas 2017
Tear gas 2021
Still got the exhausted canister from 2009 as a souvenir. Carry a bottle of water, the tear gas rinses out quickly.
null
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observationist
Yes - we've got a long way to go with regards to these technologies.
hammock
When?
perching_aix
Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device#Uni...
Was an especially commonly discussed topic in 2020 during the George Floyd related protests. Some notable video resources on how to defend against these devices and what one can expect: [0] and [1]. To save you time, if i remember correctly, the most effective is one of those plastic riot shields held in reverse to direct the sound back at the sender (notably pretty difficult when you don't want to just hit other protesters, or don't know where the sound is coming from and/or are getting hit by reflections).
worldsayshi
Apparently used multiple times during Black Lives Matter protests: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/06/04/204368...
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tonyhart7
the only acceptable condition to use it maybe if there are riot or violence breakout in that area not for peaceful protest
__MatrixMan__
If you were at a protest that was starting to get a bit rowdy and somebody used one of these on you, what would you do? I'd either come back prepared for actual violence, or switch from protest to sabotage.
It just screams "escalation" to me.
JumpCrisscross
> If you were at a protest that was starting to get a bit rowdy and somebody used one of these on you, what would you do?
Leave. The moment it turns into a riot you’re doing damage to your cause. (If you’re in a protest and see hooligans, restrain them.)
propagandist
And that is possibly the aim. When the protests turn into violence or sabotage, the state uses that to justify its own violent repression.
s1artibartfast
yes, it is an escalation.
Governance is maintaining public support for the government having a monopoly on violent escalation.
If the government does not have this power, then any person has an individual veto over the rest of the country.
Laws are used to describe how and when individuals can protest.
Philorandroid
Are chemical irritants preferable, then? Or just LEOs in riot gear with rubber batons? There's no amount of pushback or repercussion that a rioter will feel is fair or humane, and the mindset of "I'll turn violent and/or destructive if my participation in civil unrest is punished" is a perfect justification for these systems to exist.
AngryData
I don't find it acceptable for any reason whatsoever.
timewizard
It's a weapon meant to deny the use of an area by threatening non-selective permanent physical damage. There are very few legitimate civil use cases for something like that.
Aeolun
Something like protecting the capitol from being stormed by a mob?
stefantalpalaru
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g-b-r
[flagged]
smallmancontrov
Everything short of the worst we've ever done is totally OK? What even is this argument?
shermantanktop
This attempted deflection is as old as the hills. The Soviet Union spent a great deal of propaganda time talking about American slavery and Jim Crow, and it wasn’t because they cared about the issues. We call it “whatabout” now but it’s been the first defensive move when defending the indefensible for ages.
heraldgeezer
Ah "but the USA!!". Cant tell if you are a suburb leftie who lives there or a russian troll.
grujicd
Close friend who was on the spot described it as car or plane running towards you, you don't only hear it, you also feel vibrations in the body creating panic and fear.
All demonstrations of LRAD I heard on youtube were with high pitched sound, not a "whoosh" as witnesses experienced last night in Belgrade. Can these devices play any kind of sound?
What is described by victims, and what can be heard on some recordings from last nights, sounds more like Vortex Cannon:
elaus
Even without knowing the background of those protests: It is heartbreaking to see a crowd of peaceful people (seemingly during a moment of silence) being attacked by their own country and fleeing in panic and pain.
martin_a
Here's some background: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2g8v32q30o
stefantalpalaru
[dead]
crooked-v
I've seen some theories that it was actually an ADS (basically a low-power microwave beam, immensely painful but tuned to be just under the threshold to actually cause visible burns), since there haven't been any reported cases of permanent deafness yet.
The student organizers in the crowd did an incredible job clearing people out of there before the police could escalate further and cause more mob-crowding panic deaths.
boppo1
>cases of permanent deafness
Ah so these sonic weapons are indeed seriously harmful. I was wondering if hearing loss was a result.
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impossiblefork
It really isn't smart to do this kind of thing.
Once an organization actually attacks you, it's very easy to decide that any legitimacy they view themselves as having is irrelevant and to come back next Monday with mortars and machine guns.
crooked-v
Estimates are that something like 300,000+ people were out actively protesting just in Belgrade... in a country of 6.6 million people.
impossiblefork
Yes, but polarization is a possibility. You can't know you're the majority, so until violence is used against you, you don't necessarily have a reason to turn the thing into a civil war.
Tadpole9181
Something like 1.6 million people across Serbia were protesting across the country, last I heard. They're the majority.
cantrecallmypwd
You're using whataboutism to conflate the Serbian government with an imaginary counter faction. Civil war requires 2+ factions that cannot or will not express their grievances through political means. This simply isn't the case.
captainkrtek
Reminds me of the escalation seen in the Ukrainian Maidan, went from some heavy handed policing to non-lethal rounds (eg: teargas / beanbags) to BBs to snipers and live firing on crowds.
impossiblefork
Yes, although that was exceptionally irrational, to the point where I don't really feel I understand the events.
tpm
It would be rational if you would think killing a few (or a lot of) protesters will intimidate the rest of the country into submission. It didn't, but it could have.
timeon
Unfortunately, it worked in Belarus.
tbrownaw
> any legitimacy they view themselves as having
I'm pretty sure that's not actually how power or legitimacy work anyway.
impossiblefork
Once they're shooting at you, or going after you in some other way, that legitimacy etc. is irrelevant, simply because they're going after you.
The solution is then always an organized military response. This applies whether it's your government or somebody else's.
aznumeric
Another video, from a different angle:
https://www.reddit.com/r/serbia/comments/1jchks6/novi_snimci...
Please take into account that this occurred during the fifteen-minute silence observed by the protesters in memory of the fifteen victims of the accident, which the protesters blame on the government corruption and which was the very reason for the start of the protests.
nullorempty
Better that than Maidan.
chinathrow
These LRADs have always been planned to be used against mass protests, from day one.
RickS
Planned? Perhaps. Destined? Certainly.
The imperial boomerang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
hayst4ck
This strikes at the core of the idea of solidarity.
If you see injustice but do nothing, you invite the same injustice on yourself.
Injustice at it's core is an arbitrary execution of power, so suffering injustice anywhere is to let power stay unchecked which communicates that there are no consequences for abuses of power, which only invites more abuses of power.
If there aren't consequences for power being used against others, there won't be consequences for power being used against you.
anthk
The Basque Country has been a huge sandbox against the later leftist groups in the rest of Spain.
cantrecallmypwd
Weapons of war used by colonizers to oppress others inevitably turn these to crush dissent at home. And also journalism about atrocities such as what happened to Julian Assange or objection to military adventurism as the NYT turned on Chris Hedges.
tptacek
LRADs have been used against protesters in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, France, and Germany.
sega_sai
I don't necessarily dispute that claim, but do you have evidence to support it ?
rtkwe
It's extensively covered on the wikipedia page alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device#Uni...
Also if you just google "LRAD use in [country]" there are source for any country you're actually wondering about...
CAP_NET_ADMIN
If you actually read the page that you've linked, you'll see that many European countries were just using it to deliver COVID notifications
Abimelex
that's not necessarely the weapon LRAD, Long Range Acoustic Devices may also be used for communication. I would be really alerted if this kind of weapon would be used in Germany.
> In the first half of 2020, Bad Homburg's fire brigade and city police used an LRAD 100X system more than 60 times to deliver COVID-19 information.
untitaker_
that's the problem, those claims are not substantiated for at least germany and france. It's like that HN commenter just skimmed the Wikipedia article's headings and started posting based on those.
photodeveloper
I assume it was used to disperse riots, in Serbia it was used as people were standing peacefully, observing 15 minutes of silence.
luckylion
A lot of the uses in Western countries weren't even to disperse anyone, they were used as giant speakers to broadcast messages, e.g. during Covid in Germany.
It's crazy to compare that to what seems to have happened in Serbia. It's like saying "Carter has used a hammer, too" when commenting on a murder, and leaving out that Carter used the hammer to build houses with Habitat for Humanity.
mmooss
Very important to know, though could you share a source where we can read about it?
neilv
I wonder how the engineers and scientists who contributed to that less-lethal weapon feel about it.
Jach
Probably enjoyed working on cool sci-fi shit. Invisible weapons are pretty cool -- though I think conceptually the heat ray class (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System?useskin=v...) is cooler than the LRAD class. How they're used or should be used? An unimportant question in the face of coolness. Then there's just basic pride in good engineering or craftsmanship that can help spark joy in whatever one is working on, from weapons to some hairy enterprise legacy ball of mud you're slowly making improvements to. A silly quote I've always liked, from Nathaniel Borenstein: "It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a "DestroyBaghdad" procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a "DestroyCity" procedure, to which "Baghdad" could be given as a parameter."
gessha
Reminds me of a meme about how as an aerospace graduate, after a year and a thousand rejections, you just need to “live, laugh, Lockheed Martin”
avaika
This has to be about people who pushes the button. Not about the people who invents the technology. Otherwise you might want to stop all the kitchen knifes production, cause people occasionally use those to kill each other.
kubectl_h
It should be about the entity who brings something like this to a market and profits off it. In this case a corporation.
ncallaway
Okay, but if the tool is a weapon and is designed specifically to inflict harm on humans, then I think that analogy completely breaks down.
giraffe_lady
No there is a very clear difference of responsibility between creating an instrument that can be turned towards harm and one that is designed to cause it. Someone designed, engineered, and built these tools knowing this is what they were to be used for.
2OEH8eoCRo0
I've worked on lethal weapons. I feel great!
neilv
(Just to be clear, I think weapons in general can be used for good, as well as for bad.)
From your perspective, can you guess how you'd feel building a less-lethal weapons system like is the subject of this post, given what you think the typical uses of it would be?
perching_aix
@2OEH8eoCRo0
> I've worked on lethal weapons. I feel great!
Assuming that "I feel great" was with respect to having worked on lethal weapons, can you elaborate a bit? Do you consider your work to be supporting good cause(s) and feel it was well motivated for you to work on them, or do you just have no moral grievances working on lethal weapons (for whatever psychological reason)?
codedokode
"Well I am not breaking any laws so this won't be used against me. And I need money anyway"
aaomidi
Same way Google engineers feel about their AI models being used to target Palestinians.
neilv
There are "dual-use" systems, and there are systems that are only weapons.
There's also technologies and basic research, but those are different matters.
I'm first interested in the more straightforward situation of the people who worked on a less-lethal weapon system, which they might've anticipated would be used in exactly this way. What do they think about that?
g-b-r
> I'm first interested in the more straightforward situation of the people who worked on a less-lethal weapon system, which they might've anticipated would be used in exactly this way. What do they think about that?
It seems easy to justify it as "it will take the place of lethal weapons", as with tazers
tonyhart7
their first thought was maybe that used again riot or violence in the first place not necessarily to attack people
I mean its just moral Highground at this point, same can be said for Oppenheimer if he didn't do it maybe war that more costly would occur
heraldgeezer
I stand with Israel btw.
hettygreen
Is there any counter measure for this?
Hardcore hearing protection?
Noise cancelling headphones?
Handheld sound insulation "shield"?
zozbot234
Use some thick metal plate as a shield and let it reflect the sound back towards the source, most likely. Or something foamy, like mattresses or the like, to just attenuate it. But I don't think any of that would protect you if you're facing 160 dB (though it would indeed be useful if you're farther from the source); the appropriate tactic then is indeed to disperse uniformly over a larger area and make it infeasible for your adversary to launch a concentrated attack. (After all, this is how actual present-day military tactics copes with the existence of much older "area denial" weapons, such as machine guns, tanks etc.) Your protests should then become more "hit and run" in style, relying on highly visible gimmicks rather than mere physical presence to demonstrate continued support.
lor_louis
That's the exact same circumstances that lead to the development of guerilla warfare. I don't know how you'd go around creating a "highly visible gimmick" that has any lasting impact though.
amatecha
Dunno, ask Tesla owners how they're feeling about driving their vehicle and parking it, lately. On that note, ask Musk how he feels about the trending direction of his stock value. The highly visible gimmick of swastikas spraypainted on cars, torched charging stations & Cybertrucks, etc. seems to have an effect. Probably a lasting one, though that remains to be seen of course.
zozbot234
The point is to simply demonstrate mass support by any means available. You can do it by gathering as a large crowd, but when that becomes a vulnerability your tactics must evolve somehow.
impossiblefork
Once there's violence targeting you, the solution is to bring real weapons and resolve it using ordinary military tactics, that is, you kill the operator.
mmooss
That sounds bold and exciting, but it's clearly false and terrible advice.
Violence, like warfare, is politics by other means. Every expert knows that law of warfare - the first law of warfare, in a sense - that it ends when and only when there is political agreement. Even in warfare, violence just buys time and changes your political position.
In countries with rule-of-law, you can use the political / legal system to stop the violence and hold accountable the perpetrators. In countries without, the only solution is political.
It's also well-established that non-violence and other tactics can be quite effective. While if you attack back and injure others, your credibility and legality is gone - nobody will listen to you or pay much attention to 'they started it' (which the other side will dispute anyway).
impossiblefork
Once there's violence targeting you, the politics is over and a different kind of problem solving begins.
If someone has attacked you and there has been no apology or attempt to solve the situation, he must be eliminated. Once he's done it, he may well try again, in which case you might die. Better then to get rid of him.
rasz
>And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrest, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. What about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs [Soviet state institutions] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If…if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! … We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago
seabass-labrax
"Attack is the best form of defence" is a well-grounded doctrine, but it's not mutually exclusive with protecting yourself. Armies use armoured vehicles even though armour-piercing shells exist, for example.
It's also not always necessary; actively using force against the authorities would essentially be the start of a civil war, and personally I don't think starting a civil war is more likely to result in change than peaceful protest. For instance, Serbia is to some extent reliant on the EU, and has expressed an interest in joining. That should force the current government to reconsider and crack down on corruption much better than an attempted coup would.
Full disclosure: I have never been to Serbia and this is just my personal feeling. But for expressly peaceful protests to seamlessly turn into a full-blown revolution, and a successful one at that, seems incredibly unlikely to me.
impossiblefork
Yes, but these kinds of systems are not actually very good as military weapons. They are easily countered by simply shooting the operators.
6r17
Defensive measure are also enjoyable as they give an increased tactical field - as to put it, they increase the luck area.
impossiblefork
Yes, but presumably dealing with just a couple of systems like this has to be a quick matter. These things are probably off right now, so it's just a matter of finding them, shooting the people guarding them and either destroying or taking them.
ta1243
Operator is typically thousands of kilometres away
impossiblefork
No, he's probably just around the corner, having just set up the speakers and put on his hearing protection.
malfist
The report I read said it relied on bone conduction, so hearing protection wouldn't do a whole lot. Only things that can attenuate low frequency sounds before it gets to the ear. So muff style headphones might work, or mass
wl
It's not so much that LRAD relies on bone conduction to inflict pain (and sensorineural hearing loss!), but that the sound levels are so high that even if you block the air conduction route with earplugs, the bone conduction route (approximately 30 dB of attenuation compared with air) still might deliver enough sound to the inner ear to cause pain and hearing loss.
This kind of thing is a problem on aircraft carriers, where people working on the flight deck are so close to loud jets that no amount of conventional hearing protection will adequately conserve hearing. Creare has been working for the last decade and a half on special helmets for the US Navy to overcome this issue, resulting in the HGU-99/P Hearing Protection Helmet.
darepublic
Can you have a device which upon detecting the frequency emits some kind of counter vibration that cancels out th attack?
d1sxeyes
This is how active noise cancellation works in headphones. You stick little microphones on the outside of the headphones, then play back what’s picked up through the headphones themselves but with a very slight delay so all the peaks and troughs match up. The problem is that you need to put out sounds at least as loud, and that’s a pretty bad thing to get even slightly wrong if the energy levels are that high.
XorNot
It's not theoretically impossible but it is completely impractical to engineer such a thing - destructive interference has to be precisely matched to cancel out a sound, and if it's not you just get "beats" as the phases overlap.
And that match depends on matching frequency and distance - or having a very fast tuning system, and then you've got to do all this in a device that's not just another LRAD (at which point you're back to "the best defense is a good offense").
gizajob
Ear muffs aren’t going to do much against 160dB
1970-01-01
For all we know, certain types of deafness may be immune.
rasz
FPV drone blowing up the LRAD. Total cost below $1000.
pclmulqdq
At that point, you should realize that a round of 7.62 is under $1 and equally effective.
vvchvb
[dead]
aquir
The protesters described the noise it was like something huge was flying past over them, looking at the reaction it must’ve been terrifying
Serbia had the LRAD systems on hand, after buying them in 2022, most likely from Genasys, but possibly from HyperSpike.
https://genasys.com/lrad-products/
It's a legal gray area in Serbia where the use against civilians isn't explicitly forbidden, so they're playing fast and loose and moving fast to crush opposition. It's better than troops just gunning people down, but for a modern, supposedly civilized country it's horrible to see.
The people in power are the type of people that use their power in these ways. The US shouldn't be supplying them. We're not the world police, we don't need to enforce global norms, and we shouldn't be selling hyperoffensive mass crowd control technology. They should be limited to Temu LRAD, or their LRAD at home; we shouldn't be providing them S-Tier dystopian authoritarian kits for DIY oppression.
The people that profited off of this are a special kind of evil. We shouldn't be outfitting dictators, gangsters, or warlords.
But, greed is good. The dollar is king. This is what happens when incentives and principles don't align.