The US military’s heat weapon is real and painful. Here’s what it does.

The article speaks to both the heat weapon and a sound weapon.
The Active Denial System
Then there’s the ADS—the heat weapon. It works, according to the Joint Intermediate Force Capabilities Office’s FAQ page on the weapon, by producing radio waves. It creates a “focused beam of millimeter waves at a frequency of 95 gigahertz”; that beam is “only physically capable of reaching a skin depth of about 1/64 of an inch.” The same page describes the process through which they tested the weapon on volunteers, as well as two burn injuries from it, one in 1999 and the other in 2007.

Cancian says that he has seen the ADS work, but has not personally experienced it. He notes that it doesn’t employ an infrared beam, but instead uses shallow, pain-producing millimeter waves. “What you are feeling is not your skin cooking, but you’re feeling a sensation of pain,”

he says. “If you get out of the line of fire, you don’t have a red spot.” Those who have experienced it comment that “it feels like your skin is on fire,” he says.
The Long Range Acoustic Device
While the ADS was designed as a non-lethal weapon, the LRAD is a communications system. It came about after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole made it clear that giving the military a way to clearly speak to people from afar could be helpful, according to David Schnell, a vice president at Genasys, the company that makes it. The devices create a 30-degree beam of sound that, depending on the model, can reach as far away as 250 yards, or even more than 1,500 yards. Each branch of the military uses it as well as the National Guard; the Navy employs one on each ship, he says.

Schnell also notes that LRADs are used by civilians, like with police departments or lifeguards. The “operators’ manuals and training emphasize the responsible, safe use of these systems,” he says via email.