What is ‘discombobulator’, the secret weapon Trump says US forces used during Venezuela raid

President Donald Trump has revealed that the US military used a new weapon system—the “Discombobulator”—during the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro from his residence in the capital Caracas earlier this month successfully without losing a single American life. “The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Trump told the New York Post during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office.

“I would love to,” the president added, before confirming its use in the stealth operation.

Trump claimed that the weapon “made [Venezuela’s] equipment not work,” suggesting that the new system was able to disable and disrupt the Venezuelan air defence and radar systems and allowed US forces to carry out the raid with near-impunity.

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‘They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and never got one off’

“They never got their rockets off. They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off. We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked. They were all set for us,” Trump told The New York Post.

The US president’s comments came after the press asked him about recent reports that the Biden administration had purchased a pulsed energy weapon suspected of being the type that caused “Havana Syndrome” and was presumably used in Caracas.

Not much is known about the weapon, but those reports followed on-the-ground accounts from Venezuela describing how Maduro’s gunmen were brought to their knees, “bleeding through the nose” and vomiting blood.

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‘Suddenly all our radar systems shut down without explanation’

One of Maduro’s former guards later revealed the sequence of events on the night of the US raid, and said, “Suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation.”

“The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react,” he said, saying that helicopters then appeared — “barely eight” — carrying about 20 US troops into the area.

“The Discombobulator” then was aimed directly at Maduro’s defenders.

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“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,” the witness said.

“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.”

Maduro, 63, is now locked up in a Brooklyn federal jail awaiting trial on narcoterrorism charges, while his former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, serves as Venezuela’s interim leader.

“We have a great relationship with the new president,” Trump said. “She’s been terrific.”