1.4 Goals of This Report

To my knowledge, acoustic weapons have not been the subject of detailed public scientific analysis. They were discussed in a section of a 1978 book and a 1994 conference contribution, both motivated by humanitarian-law concerns; these, however, are rather short and non-quantitative. A very recent article is significantly more comprehensive, but relies heavily on general statements from a firm engaged in developing acoustic weapons, the defense press, and military research and development institutions. The author calls for a "much more sophisticated and fuller understanding of the damage caused by high power acoustic beams" and asks the humanitarian-law community to involve itself in the assessment and debate.

The present report is intended to contribute to that goal by presenting more, and more reliable, information, so that serious analysis of military-operational, humanitarian, disarmament, or other political aspects need not rely on incomplete or even obscure sources.

This study is based on the open literature and my own theoretical analysis, without access to scientific-technical data gained in acoustic-weapons research and development, and without original experiments. Something may have been overlooked; at some points speculation is unavoidable; and some questions will remain open, hopefully to be answered by future work.

The questions to be answered are the following:
C What are the effects of strong, in particular low-frequency, sound on humans?
C Is there a danger of permanent damage?
C What would be the properties of the sound sources (above all, size, mass, power requirement)?
C How, and how far, does strong sound propagate?
C Can we draw conclusions on the practical use by police or military?

The following subsection (1.5) gives a few general remarks on acoustics. Effects of strong sound on humans are described in section 2. Section 3 deals with production of strong sound. Protective measures and therapy are the subject of section 4. Several allegations made in journalistic articles are analyzed in section 5. Finally, section 6 presents preliminary conclusions.

General properties of pressure waves in air are described in the appendix, and details of the analysis of allegations concerning acoustic-weapons effects are given.