Putin revelation of weapons based on 'new physical principles' catches world interest

Directed energy weapons (laser, accelerator, microwave and infrasonic-based arms designed to destroy or disable enemy manpower, equipment, or hardened facilities and infrastructure). “All types of directed energy weapons are practically inertia-free, and with the exception of infrasonic weapons, are instantaneous […] The greatest successes” in this direction “have been achieved in improving laser weapons,” according to the MoD.

Electromagnetic weapons (ultra-high frequency and laser-based), whose destructive properties are achieved through the use of a "powerful, usually pulsed stream of electromagnetic coherent optical radiation [featured in some types of lasers, ed.], or incoherent optical radiation."

Non-lethal weapons, designed to disable weapons, equipment, materiel, and personnel without inflicting irreparable losses on the latter. The Russian military divides these into anti-personnel, anti-equipment/materiel, and combined anti-personnel/anti-equipment/anti-materiel systems. These include various weapons designed to replace existing tools used by domestic security services, such as teargas, rubber bullets, psychotropic devices, infrasonic weapons, and electronic suppression, as well as military-grade biological and chemical agents which can decompose or otherwise render useless fuels, insulation and rubber products, and ultra-high frequency systems meant to disable radio-electronic components of enemy weapons and equipment.

Geophysical weapons (seismic, climate, ozone, environmental), collectively defined by the MoD as "means to deliberately influence the environment to use the forces of nature for military purposes." These hypothetical weapons are designed to act against the solid, liquid, and gaseous properties of the planet and its atmosphere, and can include using powerful explosives to cause earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding, and other catastrophes, as well as altering the weather or climate in certain parts of the planet, resulting in droughts, floods, storms, etc. Ozone weapons are designed to create holes in the ozone layer, causing widespread damage using ultraviolet radiation from space across vast geographic areas. Finally, environmental weapons are categorized as those designed to target forests, crops, water, air, or soil resources, possibly through the use of chemical or biological agents.

Radiological weapons include arms whose destructive effect "is based on the use of radioactive substances capable of poisoning manpower with ionizing radiation without a nuclear explosion," with radiation-spewing materials obtained from the leftovers of nuclear fuel, or by exposing chemical elements to neutron fluxes to produce radioactive isotopes. These arms can be fitted inside shells, air-droppable bombs, missile warheads, and other conventional munitions, and are designed to contaminate the environment for tens if not hundreds of years.

Finally, genetic weapons are defined as "a type of weapon capable of damaging the genetic (hereditary) apparatus of human beings," including through the use of viruses with mutagenic properties, as well as "mutations derived from natural sources by chemical synthesis or biotechnological methods, to cause damage or changes to DNA. This type of prospective weaponry is considered particularly dangerous in light of "the unpredictability of the consequences" of their use, in the Russian military’s estimation.