It sounds like something straight out of Call of Duty video game sequel, James Bond movie, or Batman comic. Troops call in an air strike, but instead of high explosives, the pilots employ a weapon that screws with the enemy’s electronics, disabling them or making them catch fire or even explode, becoming little bombs in of themselves. But it’s not a plot device from a Hollywood blockbuster or video game. It’s a detail passed along from a journalist in Syria – and what’s more, some part of the report might be true. We've seen at least one similar rumor emanating from a modern battlefield in the past. The new report emerged on July 7, 2017, when Jenan Moussa, a “roving reporter Arabic Al Aan TV,” an Arabic-language satellite television network with its headquarters in the United Arab Emirates, wrote on Twitter that members of the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces told her American warplanes sometimes dropped an “electricity bomb.” The SDF fighters added that when the weapon went off, anyone carrying metallic items would “burn.”

“They call it electricity bomb here bcz [because] they don't know real name,” Moussa wrote in a string of Tweets that included video and pictures from the city of Raqqa, ISIS’ de facto capital. “When plane wants to drop electricity bomb, we are told to drop anything metal that we carry. Otherwise we also burn like ISIS fighters.”

Right from the start it sound like a conspiracy theory and many are likely to quickly dismiss it as such. To be sure, the idea that a “bomb” would cause metal objects to become so hot as to burn anyone carrying them, or any similar effect sounds like an easy recipe for a civilian casualty nightmare with the potential for innocent people to get burned at the dinner table by their own silverware and children to get injured by their metal toys. But what if it wasn't a bomb or a missile, at least in the traditional sense? What if the weapon described by fighters to Moussa was actually focused microwave beam, highly localized electromagnetic pulse munition, or even some sort of pinpoint cyber attack? Maybe the SDF fighters saw the aftermath of any one of these types strikes and assumed the metal parts had burned up because they were the target of such weapon rather than just secondary effect from its use. Or maybe people's cell phones are catching fire or exploding and it isn't clear why, which is hardly an unheard of concept. The idea of a weapon that could fit on an unmanned aircraft and stop cars using a pulse of energy or ignite cellphones at the flip of a switch would definitely be a desirable new capability if engineers could get it to work. It is hardly the most outlandish concept the U.S. military or American intelligence agencies have ever pursued. What we do know is this sounds an awful lot like another strange report we'd heard of before and it seems possible, at least in part, based on weapons and other equipment that already exists, or that could potentially exist clandestinely, that some kernal of truth could be behind them. If anything else, these rumors can act as a jumping off point for us to brainstorm how the weapons of tomorrow could obtain such tactical effects, regardless of if they actually exist today or not.

USAF An airmen prepares to load a 2,000-pound class GBU-31/B onto a B-1 bomber ahead of a strike on targets in Libya in 2011.

An old rumor Moussa's report from Syria fits loosely with at least one other equally vague report dating back more than five years. The common theme between the two is the broad description of some sort of electronics-busting weapons that hamper enemy activities rather than necessarily killing them outright. In November 2011, the international wire service AFP ran a story about secret American teams guarding chemical weapons stockpiles in Libya. With the help of a NATO-led air campaign, rebels overran these sites as they overthrew the regime of long-time strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Fearing these weapons of mass destruction could fall into terrorist hands in the ensuing chaos, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. military, swooped in to guard the chemical-filled bunkers.

AP Commercial chemical containers sit out in the open in Libya in 2011.

“Stun bombs had also already been used against other fighters roaming on the site some days earlier, recalled Safi ad-Din,” according to AFP’s report. “All the curious ones risk an air strike if they get closer than 50 meters (yards) to the chemical bunkers.” It was unclear whether ad-Din, a Libyan chemical weapons “expert” who was working with the American personnel, was referring to an air-dropped weapon of some description or a more mundane weapon like a flashbang or stun-ball hand grenade. However, Ahmed Misrati, who AFP described simply as a “fighter,” separately added that an airstrike had previously “destroyed” a car with two occupants “without anybody even being hurt.”

This would have been quite a feat for a specialized high-explosive weapon like the BLU-129/B Very Low Collateral Damage Bomb or even an inert, concrete-filled type. Purpose-built designs like these are still very lethal, as we saw when something similar killed Abu Khayr al Masri, then Al Qaeda’s number two man, in Syria in February 2017. Instead, what ad-Din and and Misrati seemed to be describing was some sort of airborne or air-dropped less than lethal weapon that could stun personnel or cripple a car's operating electronics. As fanciful as that idea sounds, this would be in line with technology the U.S. military has been working on and demonstrated in laboratory settings since before the intervention in Libya.

USAF A truck-mounted Active Denial System "pain ray."