Britain Bringing Out 'Sonic Gun' For Olympics Security

skipkent writes with news that Britain is planning to use high-tech, non-lethal sonic weapons to provide security at the Olympics this summer. The Ministry of Defense says they intend to use the devices primarily as giant loudspeakers. But if they find themselves in need of a way to disperse crowds, the weapons can project sound up to 150 decibels, causing physical pain within a few hundred meters. "It has been successfully used aboard ships to repel Somali pirates." The maximum range for alarms and warnings is 3km. "Police and military planners say they are preparing for a range of security threats at the Olympics including protesters trying to disrupt events and attacks using hijacked airliners."

Comments

And what if this causes...

[Anonymous Coward]

someone to go deaf or partially deaf? Will the UK compensate someone for that life-long disability? I thought the government was suppose to protect the people, not harm them in the name of corporate interests. The more reason to boycott The Olympics this year. Thankfully I'm not in/from the UK.

I've used the LRAD...

[Crash24]

...while conducting detainee operations (prison guard) in Iraq. It's basically a five-hundred watt directional speaker shaped like a big flat disc that can play back a shrieking wave (sounds like a modulated sawtooth from what I can remember) that's so loud that you'll feel your bones rattle if it's pointed at you - even from a hundred meters away. While we usually used it as a big megaphone, the disruptive tone was really only effective in surprise or as a threat. In compounds where certain idiots used the LRAD repeatedly, the detainees eventually learned to ignore it.

Re:I've used the LRAD...

[Crash24]

Anything that loud can cause hearing damage. It won't fuck your eardrums up like an actual shock wave from an explosion or flashbang, but standing in the beam without earplugs (we never used it for more than 30s or so at a time) sure won't help your tinnitus - my ears rang briefly after someone in my compound accidentally pointed an LRAD in my direction, but there was no lasting hearing loss. It's annoyingly loud outside the beam, but in my experience not deafeningly loud like an rock concert.

the Olympics seems to be losing its purpose

[Trepidity]

The Olympics was supposed to be an event promoting amateur sports competition to solidify friendship and peace between nations.

Now we have:

1. Increasingly, highly paid professional athletes, not amateurs; and even the "amateurs" are often exceptionally well-funded and de-facto full-time athletes.

2. National pride of the host nation, where the Olympics is supposed to show off their greatness at least as much as promote any sort of friendship between nations (admittedly, this is an old trend, at least dating back to the 1936 Berlin Olympics).

3. Extensive commercialization of the entire event, with whole shady networks of construction/sponsorship/etc. deals, even extending to weird brand-exclusivity rules that would make it illegal for you to wear a shirt with the wrong logo.

4. Extensive security procedures and apparatus, which makes the event as a promotion of international friendship and peace fall a bit flat... peace under the watch of heavily militarized police is a pretty empty kind of peace.