Politico: Sonic weapon tested in Serbia

Politico said that Serbian government documents it had access to confirm that the authorities carried out experiments with high-powered loudspeakers colloquially known as sound cannons, two weeks after an anti-government demonstration in Belgrade was disrupted by what protesters described as a crippling sonic blast.

“The joint testing of sonic weapons on animals highlights the depth of security cooperation between Russia and Serbia,” it added.

The Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD) devices are marketed for long-distance communication, but when used at close range, they can risk hearing damage. They have also been reported to cause headaches, dizziness and nausea. The government has denied deploying sound cannons on demonstrators, the article said.

Protesters and civil rights organizations reported the use of a sonic weapon during a mass protest in the Serbian capital on March 15, 2025 with large numbers of people requiring medial treatment.

Claims of the use of sonic weapon were denied by the authorities but they did acknowledge possession of one type of sound weapon. “A month after the protest, Serbia’s intelligence agency, the BIA, published a report that they had commissioned from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) asserting that the high-decibel devices were “not used during the protests,” and concluding there had been no mass “psychological, moral and physical impact on people”, Politico said.

It said the documents, produced by the BIA and a ministry, showed that the animal tests were conducted as part of the post-protest inquiry. The intention was to assess whether the symptoms described by protesters were consistent with the effects of sound cannons, which Serbian officials had previously acknowledged the police possess. “About two weeks after the protest, Serbian and Russian intelligence specialists gathered a group of dogs at a BIA testing site to evaluate the “effect of the emitters on biological objects.” Dogs were chosen as the test subjects because of their high sensitivity to acoustic effects,” the portal said. It specified that the dogs were blasted with two LRAD models — LRAD 100X MAG-HS and LRAD 450XL — made by the California-based company Genasys, at “ranges of 200, 150, 100, 50 and 25 meters,” according to the documents.

“In their report about the canine experiments, the FSB insisted: “When transmitting the basic and test signals, biological objects (dogs) did not feel discomfort (changes in behavior) at the distance under investigation. The dogs were checked 3 days after the tests and did not show any changes in their condition,” Politico said.