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US Military Pondered Love Not War
The US military investigated building a "gay bomb", which would make enemy soldiers "sexually irresistible" to each other, government papers say.
Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath.
The US defense department considered various non-lethal chemicals meant to disrupt enemy discipline and morale.
The 1994 plans were for a six-year project costing $7.5m, but they were never pursued.
The US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals".
The plans were obtained under the US Freedom of Information by the Sunshine Project, a group which monitors research into chemical and biological weapons.
'Who? Me?'
The plan for a so-called "love bomb" envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among troops, causing what the military called a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.
Scientists also reportedly considered a "sting me/attack me" chemical weapon to attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats towards enemy troops.
A substance to make the skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight was also pondered.
Another idea was to develop a chemical causing "severe and lasting halitosis", so that enemy forces would be obvious even when they tried to blend in with civilians.
In a variation on that idea, researchers pondered a "Who? Me?" bomb, which would simulate flatulence in enemy ranks.
Indeed, a "Who? Me?" device had been under consideration since 1945, the government papers say.
However, researchers concluded that the premise for such a device was fatally flawed because "people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odour offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis".
Captain Dan McSweeney of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon said the defence department receives "literally hundreds" of project ideas, but that "none of the systems described in that [1994] proposal have been developed".
He told the BBC: "It's important to point out that only those proposals which are deemed appropriate, based on stringent human effects, legal, and international treaty reviews are considered for development or acquisition."
© BBC MMVII
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17 Comments so far
Show AllAt least our leaders are fools. If they had brains they might do a lot more damage.
It is getting pretty bad when a serious story sounds like it belongs in some supermarket tabloid instead of a serious news outlet.
Been there, saw the movie, read the book, won the war.
Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput. - Monty Python's World's Funniest Joke.
Why not just send them a few plane loads of Krispy Kreme Donuts and McDonald's Happy Meals and render them too fat and sick to move? No R&D budget, no waiting, and, anyone who has not already succumbed themselves can easily see we have more than enough of that stuff. Toss in a little lettuce for the burger that is contaminated with a strain of E. Coli that lives in the guts of cattle fed a cheap grain diet, yet is deadly to humans (as we have seen several times over the past year), and you've got yourself one heck of a secret weapon! Now, if we could just quit turning it on ourselves.
What's wrong with these people? Have they been eating a few too many mad cow contaminated burgers or is their nightly alcohol habit not just for dinner any more?
I forsee a lot of VERY friendly fire incidents...
I think they toyed with an LSD bomb but found that it would turn our own troops into pacifists.
Re: Ezeflyer
The LSD-bomb on its way to Viet Nam late 1966 was accidentally detonated over San Francisco - and the war was happily lost...
Is this "The Onion" or what? $7.5m would have done a lot of good helping people in New Orleans after katrina. I guess one needs to keep their priorities straight, like we need this sh*t right?
Does the aphrodisiac chemical in question actually exist? If so, can I get some OTC? I'd really like to slip some into my wife's drink.
Now I have to go listen to "Love Like a Bomb" by Oasis...
"distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow
I am always impressed when the Pentagon budget is presented as reasonable by straight faced government officials.
I am always amazed that the people listening to the Pentagon budget requests can restrain their laughter.
One of my favorites was the expensive testing done on the military effectiveness of Frisbees.
Results were that they were too affected by wind to be of military use.
The cost of a pony keg of beer to MIT students would have yielded the same results.
The Russians developed a chemical that could be put in the drinking water supply and cause mass stupidity the result of this experiment was the electoin and when the dosege was increased the subsequent reelection of Bush, the worship of Paris Hilton, and the popularity of Gansta Rap music.
Yeah it's a lot of money to spend on something so spurious. Jump up a couple of magnitudes and we're talking what's gone missing at the Pentagon. September 10, 2001: "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
They turned the poop gun into deep sea sonar I hear! It worked. The whales shit their brains out.
In the third grade the half of my class that failed was the fluoride half. We found that out when they released what the study was to our teachers. Very few of that class is out of jail and off drugs.
BOMB ME! PLEASE!
I read about this "gay bomb" years ago, yet it's still funny. I wonder, though, what if the stuff wafted over U.S. troops? Would "don't ask, don't tell" force the U.S. military to immediately discharge all those affected soldiers, right off the battlefield? Movies like "Dr. Strangelove" have nothing on the real life adventures of these people in the "defense" department.
What makes you think that this is really what happened. After all nothing else is at it seems . . . Or should I say, "As they say." What if they have a Gay, LSD, Aphrodisiac, Walk In Your Sleep Bomb that they are testing on us now? Couldn't that explain how Bush got elected two times??? I mean how else can you explain the last 6 years?