(It's amazing what you remember when you routinely forget what you had for lunch.)
(You have to be Gen X or older to get this one. He's just laughing at you. Just f-in laughing.)
from CNN (H/T T)
President Donald Trump said the US used a weapon he referred
to as a “discombobulator” to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás
Maduro this month, but a senior US official said he’s likely conflating
tools used by the US military.
“The discombobulator, I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Trump told the New York Post in an interview that published Saturday but added that it “made [enemy] equipment not work” during the capture.
The president may be conflating several capabilities into a
single weapon that doesn’t exist, a senior US official told CNN. US
forces did use cyber tools to disable early warning and other Venezuelan
defense systems during the operation, it also utilized existing
acoustic systems to disorient personnel on the ground.
The US military also for years has had a heat ray weapon, called the Active Denial System, which uses directed, pulsed energy. It’s not clear whether that was used as well.
CNN has previously reported that the ADS, according to the
US military, is a nonlethal weapon that shoots an invisible beam of
electromagnetic waves that can reach a little more than half a mile
away. It penetrates human skin and creates a heating sensation that
causes people to move away from the beam.
A few days after Maduro’s capture, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reposted comments
purportedly from a Venezuelan security guard who claimed the US
“launched something” during the operation that “was like a very intense
sound wave.”
“Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the
inside,” the security guard added. “We all started bleeding from the
nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.”
That account hasn’t been verified by CNN...
read more here
