Welcome back to another rousing Tuned into Technology blog. I’ve written about robots, particle acceleration and last week, I focused in on the final frontier. After stumbling around on the Internet, trying to find something different, I found an article focusing on strange weaponry once pondered by the US government.

I am talking really strange weaponry meant to lower enemy soldiers morale during combat. In a 2005 BBC news article, the author highlights some of the strangest military ideas that have ever come out of the United States. One, tried to make enemy soldiers have really bad breath.

Another tried to quite literally turn enemy soldiers homosexual. Military researchers at an Ohio Air Force base cooked up this idea in 1994.

In the document labeled Harassing, Annoying, and “Bad Guy” Identifying Chemicals, the researcher said, although it was distasteful, the “gay bomb” would create lust in soldiers, thus making them incapable of combat.

Just like the flatulence bomb, this idea never got off the ground. When the “gay bomb” would explode, a powerful aphrodisiac would enter the air, thus making the soldiers irresistible to each other.  Just the simple fact that this was an honest attempt at a military idea tells me that our world has a long way to go when it comes to accepting everyone. Plus, I am pretty sure that the military overlooked one tiny detail. There are people in the military that would not be susceptible to the “gay bomb.” There are people who are already gay in the military. Plan foiled!

The Sunshine Project, an NGO dedicated to exposing biological weaponry, shone light on the 1994 proposal document. As part of the BBC article, the writer spoke to Captain Dan McSweeney of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon. He said, “None of the systems described in that [1994] proposal have been developed.”

In a 2008 article on the Popular Science website, a sound gallery depicts the wackiest, wonkiest military ideas. Plans were hatched to attach bombs to bats during WWII, to control minds using LSD during the Korean War, to control spy robotic moths and even to make someone vomit by shining a special flashlight at them.

I have to hand it to the researchers. After seeing the robotic Frisbee, credit must be given to the people who hatched these wacky schemes. Napoleon Bonaparte, who once thought to fly over England with an army of balloons, would have been proud of these truly wacky schemes.

If you are interested, take a gander through the list and read about them. They will make you proud of the creativity and stupidity that drives some of these devices and military schemes.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/gallery/2008-05/worlds-spookiest-weapons

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4174519.stm

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