Military researchers have pour blood , lather , tear and taxpayer dollar into all sort of wacky experiments . There are pile of reasons that they are willing to take a take a opportunity on just about anything .
Some may feel that we need to invest in wild task to keep an edge over our adversaries . Others may look at unusual project as a way of raising money for their own personal crusades .
Bat Bombs
Toward the end of World War II , the Air Force was looking for a better way to incinerate Japanese cities to the ground . A dental surgeon reach out to the White House , and suggestedstrapping pocket-size inflammatory twist to at-bat , loading them into cages influence like bombshells and drop them over a all-encompassing surface area .
According to the plan , millions of bats would miss from the bombshells as they parachuted toward earth , and the fly mammalian would find their way into the attics of barns and factory , where they would rest until the flush they were deport exploded . In the other forties , a test with some armed bats went awry , and they set fire to a small Air Force base in Carlsbad , New Mexico .
After that accident , the project was turned over to the Navy , which continued it for more than a class . During that time , the Marines conducted a successful proof of construct at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah , where they free bats over a mock - up of a Japanese city . The critters were able to start quite a few fire .
pic : Furryscaly / Flickr
Alaskan Area 51
A few years ago , Todd Pedersen , an Air Force physicist , sat in the snow and watch as cockcrow – alike to the celebrated northern light – begin to glow above his infrastructure in the Alaska wilderness . But these luminous forms were n’t created by nature . Pedersen had made them himself , with the helper of an tremendous array of antennas that can hurl several megawatts of radio wave into the upper atmosphere , create brainy light shows in the sky .
The facility is known asHAARP , or the gamey - frequency Active Auroral Research Program , and it is meant to answer some intriguing questions about the ionosphere . But it hasraised even more questionsamong conspiracy theorists . Over the age , it ’s been called a conditions - control machine , a superweapon and the ultimate secret espy automobile . As if create artificial aurora borealis was n’t freaky enough .
Photo : João Canziani
Nuke Test , Too Close for Comfort
When a atomic load detonates , you do n’t want to be anywhere nearby . And you by all odds do n’t require to be taking cover song just a dyad of knot away . But during the Cold War , a handful of soldiers were quick to start a nuke fight , justly up - secretive and personal , using portable launchers and low - yield bomb .
In the sixties , the Army had more than two thousand guns mean for launching belittled nukes , each with a maximum range of only 2.5 miles . The Armylit one of those cracker in the Nevada desertduring the summer of 1962 while Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy watched . It exploded only 1.7 miles from where it was launched , and was the lastabove - earth nuclear explosionconducted by the United States .
Photos : U.S. Army ( left ) , Mark Pellegrini ( right )
Goo Guns
Squirting jihadists with viscous froth may seem like a silly plan , but the Army did explore theoption of using goo gunson foe combatants , if only briefly . Since then , the government has awarded a contract to Adherent Technologies , a materials - research firm . That firm aims to develop an adhesive polymer that could stop vehicles in their caterpillar track , without harming its resident .
As the nature of warfare changes , favoring urban combat and regional conflicts rather than conventional combat , the military is gaining a great slew of interest in less - lethal weapons . It ’s candidly interested in keep civilian casualties to a minimum , for practical reasons . Every metre an innocent gets killed , it stokes the fires of freedom fighter and looks awful at plate .
Many units are equip with dazzlers , extremely bright laser pointer that can be used in lieu of a admonition shot , or as a mean value of blinding hostiles . And some have the long - mountain range acoustic gimmick , a sound cannon that can be used to emerge verbal warnings , or deafen anyone who stand up in its path .
Photo : Corbis
Extreme Skydiving
In 1960 , Captain Joe Kittinger cod a balloon up into the stratosphere – 20 miles above the Earth – and then jumped out of it . He hurled toward the ground at 714 mile per hour , quicker than the speed of sound , and land safely in the sands of the New Mexico desert .
His venturous leap was part ofProject Excelsior , an attempt to explore the safety military issue that pilot film would confront while handling high - flying aircraft . Kittinger ’s test prove that an experimental chute , designed by Francis Beaupre , would hold up under the most extreme precondition .
To escort , nobody has brokenKittinger ’s height record . But a privately funded team , punt by the shaper of Red Bull , istrying to do it .
photograph : U.S. Air Force
Deadly Dolphins
In the early nineties , a Russian military officer allegedly trained several dolphin to attack opposition ships . He conducted tests to show that they could recognize different watercraft by the sounds of their propellers . In possibility , the mammals could be used to sweep up explosives up to enemy ships , while go away friendly boats unharmed .
Years later , when he could not afford to give care for the beast , hesold them to Iran . Their fate is still nescient . And rumors run of even - Samuel Wilder war machine dolphin programme – marine mammal taught to kill enemy swimmer .
Photo : U.S. Navy
Pain Rays – Not Always That Painful
Tests of theActive Denial System , a ray gun that fritter painful millimetre waves , have set out from terrorize to laughable . The Air Force released a cautiously censored report card in 2007 , after an airman was burn by an remarkably strong beam . He was playing the role of an enemy lookout man during an exercise that was have in mind to evaluate the arm , and gotblasted at full mightiness for four second .
In a demonstration for reporters ( includingDanger Room ’s own Sharon Weinberger ) , the people - zapper had the opposite effect . It was raining , and the warmth of the ray of light was middling fresh .
Credit : U.S. Army
Psychic SWAT Team . Sorta
Terrorists disguised as pipe fitter kidnappedGeneral James Dozierfrom his home in Verona , Italy , in 1981 and held him surety in a secret placement . During the first days of the state of affairs , the Italian administration would not harmonise to collaborate with an probe or rescue elbow grease .
dire to obtain Dozier , the armed forces rick to psychic who were working as part of theGrill Flameprogram , an experiment in which psychics were rigorously evaluate and then ask to collect reliable intelligence information .
One of the psychic claim that the general was held in a brick construction with a red roof , and another guessed that the hostage was being arrest in Padua , a little city in the Frederick North . Days subsequently , Dozier was rescue by an Italian SWAT squad , after a tout led them to his fix .
slews of academic scientist , and private contractors , transmit more scientific experiments . Boeing researchers call for volunteers in the sixties to assure a random - bit generator with mind power . Volunteers would attempt to control the outcome with whatever supernatural forces they could bring to bear on the job .
And according to a document written by the researchers , it operate , sometimes . But not very consistently .
Photo : Gen. James L. DozierBob Daughtery / AP
Acid Guinea Pigs
The CIA amassed enough LSD During the Cold War to supply every hole isthmus concert in the world for a dozen genesis . An motley of defense and intelligence agencies quiz the acid on soldier and civilians , and some investigator determine to judge it on themselves .
In hismemoirs , Army head-shrinker James Ketchum secern the account of a colleague who used himself as a guinea hog . The researcher was wind around in his underwear with a concave piece of glass taped to his branch . Under the glassful was a mixture of LSD and ethylene dihydric alcohol . He wanted to know if the psychedelic formula could penetrate the skin , and nervelessly said that it was n’t working .
In another , darker tale , an Army research worker may have been whacked after a botched LSD experimentation . While attend an out-of-door retirement , Frank Olsonsipped a glass of Cointreau , which was entwine with LSD , and had an awing response . He imperil to resign .
And days later on , the biologic weapon investigator supposedlyhurled himself through the tenth story windowof a New York hotel . CIA representatives enjoin that he had become abruptly depressed . But when his body was disinter , and study years later , it seemed that his header had been nail before the drop .
Photo : Ohio State Highway Patrol
Ride the Lightning
lately last class , Darpa launchedlightning shank that could smite enemy bombswith crackle clap of electrical energy . After a serial of scandals , the companychanged its name to Applied Energetics , and decided to repackage its questionable engineering as a mean of invalid vehicle or destruct improvised explosive devices .
But the prototypes had a range of only 15 meters , which is too skinny for quilt when you ’re trying to stop a car grinder or explode mine . Another company , Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems , aim to revolutionize armed combat with “ organize - tuned lightning technology . ” That is , when XADS chief Pete Bitar is n’t working onflying machine .
Photo : Longhorndave / Flickr
Raccoon Vision
Navy research worker tried to originate a tablet that would allow troop to see in the dark , or at leastmake out flashes of infraredthat could be used to send secret content .
Some brute have pigment in their centre that grant them to see those wavelength , which are longer than visible light . But the human retina does not normally bring forth those atom .
To give human volunteer raccoon imaginativeness , researchers fed them a chemical similar to vitamin A , with the hope that it would plough into the night vision paint .
Wired.com has been expanding the hive mind with technology , scientific discipline and eccentric civilization news program since 1995 .
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