If you are a frequent Zoom caller, you’ll know that the single most annoying and disruptive occurrence is the dreaded echo. Hearing your own voice played back to you with a slight delay is so viscerally irritating, it renders it impossible to talk coherently, and you end up shouting “can everyone mute their microphones please!” before you lose your entire train of thought.

The US Navy is clearly aware of this phenomenon and is apparently seeking to use it as a non-lethal weapon that makes it almost impossible to speak. A new device called the handheld acoustic hailing and disruption (AHAD) system uses a long-range microphone to record your voice before powerful speakers replay that speech on a slight delay back to the individual. The constant loop of speech makes it extremely difficult to continue conversations or relay messages, a vital tool in the military.

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Despite filing for the patent in 2019, it has only recently been granted to the Navy just this month.

To make it even more disruptive, the inventors suggest using a directional speaker, which can transmit sound precisely to a small area, to target individuals, so everyone can have a conversation with themselves. People in the vicinity would have no idea the other person is being targeted. Imagine trying to have a coherent conversation in an online meeting with everyone having terrible Internet and their microphones off mute – truly a nightmare.

Read more: iflscience