By using a sonic weapon in the mission to capture Nicolás Maduro, as Donald Trump appears to have confirmed, Delta Force commandos not only triggered a paradigm shift in warfare, but served poetic justice. When asked whether such a weapon had been used, the President replied: “It’s probably good not to talk about it.” But then added: “Nobody else has it, we have some amazing weapons that nobody knows about.” The following morning, at Davos, Trump said: “They weren’t able to fire a single shot at us. They said, ‘What happened?’ Everything was discombobulated.”
An unsubstantiated interview with a Venezuelan guard, who claimed he had been targeted with a sonic weapon during the operation, was first given a credibility boost by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. She retweeted it, adding: “Stop what you are doing and read this.”
Were other secret technologies such as AI-powered ‘super soldier’ helmets also used that night?
The guard said that on the night of the raid on the Fuerte Tiuna military base, radar systems suddenly went down, drones appeared and then so did helicopters, from which about 20 US soldiers descended. A “massacre” ensued. “At one point, they launched something, I don’t know how to describe it… it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon or whatever it was.”
A sonic weapon being used would help to make sense of the raid. Fuerte Tiuna is Venezuela’s largest military base, it is heavily fortified and defended and is built into a mountainside in the south of the capital, Caracas. Authorities have admitted that Delta killed 32 Cubans and 24 Venezuelans. Other reports put the death toll at 100. On the US side, seven soldiers were injured, including the pilot of a Chinook helicopter which was hit on the way in. A good night’s work even by the standards of the world’s best Tier One special forces marksmen.
The guard also spoke of superhuman soldiers. “They were technologically very advanced. They didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before. We were hundreds, but we had no chance. They were shooting with such precision and speed, it felt like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute.” Were other secret military technologies – such as AI-powered “super soldier” helmets that are being developed to fuse sensor data, thermal and night vision, live maps and drone control with a soldier’s vision – also used that night? In a remarkable coincidence, the day after the interview was circulated CNN broke the news that the US has acquired a device that could be behind Havana Syndrome – the disputed and mysterious illness that first emerged in 2016 when US diplomats in the Cuban capital reported symptoms consistent with head trauma. The device, which was bought for an eight-figure sum in 2024, contains Russian components and fits inside a backpack.
If the device used, or one modeled on it, was the sonic gun used during the Maduro raid, the karmic justice of disabling and killing his Cuban bodyguards will not have been lost on planners in US military and intelligence. However, by admitting the weapon’s existence, the US is edging closer to a public admission that Havana Syndrome – which it has always denied – is real, and having to face up to compensation claims and political fallout. The US military has previously been open about producing nonlethal directed energy weapons. One, dubbed the “pain ray,” is a large vehicle-mounted system that fires an energy beam at targets and makes them feel as if their skin is burning. Although deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, it was never used.
Until 1996, the British military classified bagpipes as a weapon of war. Since the first recorded battles, sound has rallied and spurred troops with battlefields ringing to the noise of drums, trumpets and horns. The closest thing to a sonic weapon previously deployed by US forces is a speaker system and sound energy weapon called the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD). It amplifies sound over greater distances and with more precision than an ordinary loudspeaker. Police used it at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City and against Black Lives Matter protesters in Ferguson and New York. It can cause prolonged ringing in the ears, headaches, nausea, sweating, vertigo and loss of balance. Dr. Thomas Withington, a research associate at the Royal United Services Institute specializing in electronic warfare, describes what it was like to be shot with an LRAD at a defense exhibition. “It’s like the most unpleasant car alarm sounds, but at a level of decibels one would usually associate with [the band] Motörhead,” says Withington.
Withington believes that it is very much within “the realm of possibility” that the defense industry has developed such a weapon and packaged it “into a system that can be used by dismounted troops for operations such as that to capture Maduro.” He adds: “What will be interesting in the coming months is if we see some kind of admission from the US military that they’ve got this capability. If this thing does exist, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the special forces, certainly in NATO and allied countries, already have that kind of kit or are looking at it.”
It was only after examination of US helicopter wreckage at the site of the last high-profile US special forces raid – when SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 – that the world learned about the stealth Black Hawk. One of the secret helicopters crashed in the terror leader’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and, despite being blown up by SEALs in a bid to destroy its classified technology, it was revealed by its distinctive, angular wreckage.
It would be no surprise then – much more a racing certainty – if the Delta operators had brought with them all the most advanced military kit available to optimize for success in their dangerous and ultimately high-stakes mission to seize Maduro. The real question is not about what type of sonic weapon they used, but precisely how much advanced technology they were kitted out with. And, perhaps more importantly, we must ask: is America ahead of or behind its enemies in the modern technological arms race?
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2, 2026 World edition.
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