EDITORIAL - LRDA Weapon

According to the Philippine Coast Guard, the China Coast Guard (CCG) used a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) to harass Philippine vessels in the West Philippine Sea recently.

An LRAD weapon can produce high-decibel sound levels to cause pain and discomfort to targets; it is usually used to deter a target from staying in one area and to force it to move to another.

Despite its non-lethal nature, it can also be potentially damaging to hearing.

“For the first time, CCG-3103 deployed an LRAD to harass the Philippine Coast Guard vessel, attempting to deter proximity,” PCG spokesman for the West Philippine Sea Commodore Jay Tarriela said in a statement.

Our sailors also had audio to send back to the CCG, but only in the form of radio challenges.

Aside from the regular water cannon attacks, this was not the first time that the CCG used a non-lethal yet potentially damaging weapon on our vessels and sailors. Remember that in February of 2023 they used a military-grade laser against PCG ships, causing temporary blindness in some of our servicemen?

What’s to stop them from trying out other kinds of non-lethal yet potentially harmful weapons on our ships and on our servicemen? It would seem they have an inexhaustible supply of unwilling guinea pigs by that we mean our ships and our sailors for whatever weapon they may want to use.

How many more indignities must our servicemen suffer in our own waters?

Don’t get us wrong, we are not advocating for violence here. That is the last thing we want. We don’t ever want to fire the first shot that gets us into a shooting war with a country that is likely to smoke us.

But when push comes to shove, more must be done to protect our ships and sailors from such unconventional yet still possibly injurious attacks, or to deter China from using such weapons on them.