Battlefield Illusion: DARPA working towards better “human-sensory battlefield deception”

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

In the Defense Advance Research Project Agency’s (DARPA’s) new budget, which was just recently unveiled, some startling technologies have been included for increased research and development.

The most glaring of these is the $4 million to be spent on technologies which will supposedly “manage the adversary’s sensory perception” in an attempt to “confuse, delay, inhibit, or misdirect [the target’s] actions.”

While the idea is quite creative and seemingly the stuff of science fiction, the name chosen is a bit more straight forward: “Battlefield Illusion.”

In elucidating the goals of the project, DARPA writes, “The current operational art of human-sensory battlefield deception is largely an ad-hoc practice,” leading the agency to attempt to better grasp “how humans use their brains to process sensory inputs,” in order to create multi-sensory hallucinations which could “provide tactical advantage to our forces,” according to Danger Room.

DARPA’s budget request for the Fiscal Year of 2013 includes a whopping $2.82 billion in spending – all of which we don’t have, and thus will just serve to sink the United States further into the black hole of debt – and even includes increased spending on the Collaborative Hypersonic Research (CHR) program which is intended to demonstrate the capability of a boost-glide vehicle as the predecessor to a tactical strike weapon capable of long-range attacks from a 21-inch or larger booster.

The American military establishment’s love affair with so-called “psychotronic weaponry” has been a long and complicated one, largely hidden from public scrutiny.

Some of the most infamous examples of these types of projects are the so-called “Voice of God” weapon, which was designed in an attempt to transmit what might be confused with the voice of God into the heads of insurgents in order to make them choose to lay down arms.

The information on this project has been quite thin, and many claim it never left the laboratory, although the fact that this technology has been in development since the 1990s makes me think that this might actually be more advanced than we are being told.

For those unfamiliar with this type of technology, I highly recommend doing your own research before jumping to any conclusions as to the capabilities (or lack of capabilities) inherent in this type of psychotronic weaponry.

A good resource which covers many different incarnations of this technology across both declassified government and commercial applications can be found here and other resources on psychotronic weaponry can be found here.

One project we know about is the Army’s Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio, or MEDUSA. This project utilized microwaves to make the target believe that the projected audio was actually coming from inside their own head.

As New Scientist reported in 2008, the technology is actually capable of projecting a microwave beam which creates sound so “loud” that it actually can incapacitate the target or cause severe discomfort.

Furthermore, since the sound does not actually enter through the eardrums like normal auditory stimuli, there are no “audio safety limits” as there would be normally.

Lev Sadovnik of the United States’ Sierra Nevada Corporation worked on the system and said, “The repel effect is a combination of loudness and the irritation factor. You can’t block it out.”

The Phase I summary report released by the U.S. Navy indicated that the program was indeed successful, but for some reason Noah Schachtman writes for Danger Room, “Neither program [referring to the MEDUSA and the “Voice of God” program], as far as I know, ever left the laboratory.”

However, I must point out that it is quite arrogant and ignorant of Schachtman to think that his lack of knowledge concerning the projects being used in the field says anything about if the devices were or are going to be used.

As I discussed in the first episode of End the Lie Radio, during which we explored some excerpts from Nick Begich’s “Earth Rising: the Revolution, Toward a Thousand Years of Peace,” this technology is not something which has just cropped up in the last few years; indeed it has been in the works for over a decade. You can listen to the episode via YouTube below:

What the public knows in regards to classified, highly advanced military technology is minimal at best. For evidence of this, all we have to do is look at projects like the Manhattan Project, Project MKULTRA (about which we still know very little), and the SR-71 “Blackbird” which was first used in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s.

“Battlefield Illusion” is not alone among the mind-bending projects DARPA is spending our money on. Indeed they have several new programs intended to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum for military purposes including the $3.5 million “Electro-Optical Warfare” project which will attempt to find ways to disrupt laser-based communications and sensors.

The American public (which is obviously footing the bill for these projects) is often never even made aware of their existence for decades after their inception. I, for one, find this to be quite troubling and frustrating, seeing as our government thinks we do not have a right to know where our money is going, especially when the technology can be used against us.

Given the government of the United States’ propensity for repurposing military technology for use domestically against civilians, I see no reason to believe that technology like these “battlefield illusions” would not be used against us.

All we can do is hope that the costs for these technologies remain sufficiently prohibitive in order to keep the government from widely using this technology, as they’re going to be able to do with the $50 spy computer known as the F-BOMB, also funded by DARPA.

I just find it somewhat insane to think that with the total lack of funds available and the disastrous state of the economy in the United States and around the globe, our government is spending money on mind control instead of housing and feeding impoverished Americans.

Unless the American people stand up and start demanding that our needs be met with the immense amount of money we pour into the government (most of which ends up in the hands of the criminal banksters and war profiteers), we can expect to see this type of frivolous spending continue indefinitely.

This article first appeared at EndtheLie.com. Read other contributed articles by Madison Ruppert here.

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on Orion Talk Radio from 8 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at [email protected]