A Brief Primer on the Concept of the Neuroweapon for U.S. Military Medical Personnel

The malevolent application of neuroscience is an emerging threat to the U.S. military. At present, U.S. military medical personnel are not capable of adequately diagnosing or treating the injuries and illnesses that may result from exposure to potential neuroweapons. This fact was illustrated in 2016 when U.S. diplomats serving in Havana, Cuba reported hearing strange noises accompanied by a constellation of unexplained health effects. Similar incidents have been reported in China and Russia. Although various hypotheses have been put forward to explain these symptoms, none of them have been verified. The reported symptoms were analogous to the physiological responses that have been produced in the laboratory by exposing volunteers to pulsed microwave energy. However, these incidents of undetermined origin demonstrate that widespread neurological illness can be disruptive to U.S. government operations and that it is currently not possible to identify the cause, determine the correct treatment, or ascribe attribution to potential neuroweapon use in an overseas setting. Since it is likely that Special Operations medical personnel will be among the first to respond to neuroweapon attacks in the deployed environment, it is essential that they be made aware of this emerging threat and that efforts be made to incorporate potential directed energy neuroweapons and other neuroweapon configurations into future Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and high yield Explosives (CBRN-E) training modules. The intention of this article is to introduce the concept of the neuroweapon to military medical personnel and to provide a brief review of the relevant literature.