15 Wacky Military Plots Straight Out of Looney Tunes
Check out these military innovations that would feel more at home in the hands of Wile E. Coyote
Published 5 months ago in Funny
A great deal of technology starts out in the military before it makes its way to consumers. But some technology that the military uses is so goofy and harebrained that it never makes its way to market at all, which is probably for the best. F
From unlikely animal spies to slapdash contraptions, these military schemes and inventions should never have left the drawing board.
Check out these military innovations that would feel more at home in the hands of Wile E. Coyote than our nation’s grizzled soldiers.
1
Operation Gold
Operation Gold was a combined effort between the CIA and MI6 during the 1950s. They used an underground tunnel to listen in on the Soviets, with the intent of gathering nuclear intel. Over 900,000 recordings were made, with no meaningful information. Supposedly, the Soviets knew about the tunnel even as it was being built, and chose to just play along and play dumb for the recordings.
2
Project Pigeon
During World War II, a psychologist named B.F. Skinner received funding for a pigeon-guided missile. Skinner trained pigeons to peck certain images, for example an enemy battleship. Then he put them inside the nose cone of a missile, where they would peck at a screen that projected the missile’s flight path, steering it towards the target they were conditioned to select. It actually worked incredibly well, and only didn’t come to fruition because the military found the idea too outlandish.
3
Operation Pig Bristle
Operation Pig Bristle sounds like a euphemistic code name, but the name is actually incredibly straightforward. It was a military operation during the Chinese Civil War where the Royal Australian Air Force flew 25 tons of pig bristles from Chongqing to Hong Kong. These bristles were needed to make paintbrushes.
4
Project Iceworm
In 1958, the Army initiated the top-secret Project Iceworm, which involved hiding hundreds of missiles inside the ice caps of Greenland, to prepare for a potential nuclear strike against Russia. They built a prototype facility called Camp Century, but were forced to abandon their plans after only a few years when shifting ice rendered the subterranean tunnels structurally unsound.
5
U.S. Camel Corps
In the 1800s, horses were the Army’s primary form of transport, but horses weren’t enough for Secretary of War and future Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In 1856 he imported camels for use by the Army, as he believed their endurance and ability to conserve water would make them very useful in America’s new southwestern states. The Civil War put an end to the Camel Corps, and the remaining camels were auctioned off to circuses and other buyers.
6
Gay Bomb
In 1994, the Air Force looked into a project bearing the bizarre title of “Harassing, Annoying and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals.” What the project was supposed to do was even weirder than the name, though: they were attempting to develop a bomb that would release chemicals on detonation that would turn enemy combatants gay. This was supposed to render them unable to fight as they would immediately be all over each other, supposedly. The project was unsurprisingly denied funding and never reached fruition.
7
Peacekeeper Rail Garrison
In the late 1980s, concerns were raised that stationary missile silos were too easy of a target for the Soviets. So began a project that seems to have been dreamt up by Wile E. Coyote: the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison. It was a mobile nuclear arsenal in the form of a train containing nuclear missiles that could launch on the go by opening the roof of the train cars. It never made it past the prototype phase, as the end of the Cold War obviated the need for such a harebrained nuclear project.
8
The Liberator
In June and August of 1942, in an attempt to arm resistance fighters in countries occupied by the Axis powers, the US produced 1 million of a gun called the FP-45 Liberator. This was a cheap, single-shot pistol that was airdropped into enemy territory. The idea was that resistance fighters or citizens would pick up the gun, shoot their oppressors, and take their weapons. They were found to be very impractical, and though the US dropped over 100,000 Liberators into the Pacific Theater, they never saw widespread use.
9
Project Acoustic Kitty
Project Acoustic Kitty was part of a CIA effort in the 1960s to make use of non-human ‘agents’ for espionage. According to the former assistant to the director of the CIA, they “slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. They made a monstrosity.” This inhumane process was done to equip the cat with microphones and transmitters to listen in on covert conversations. On its first mission, the $20 million cat was hit by a car and killed before reaching its target.
10
Project 1794
In 1956, the Pentagon contracted a Canadian company to develop a vertical takeoff aircraft. They created a prototype flying saucer that looked very impressive and could hover above the ground as well as fly. The problem was that it could only hover about 3 feet above the ground, and fly at a top speed of around 35 miles per hour. Oh yeah, and it cost millions of dollars to produce.
11
The Edgewood Arsenal Drug Experiments
In the 1950s, soldiers at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland were experimented on without their knowledge. Over 5,000 soldiers were given marijuana, PCP, mescaline, and even sarin, while Army officials took notes on the effects. The program went on all the way until 1975, without producing any appreciable results besides ‘drugs affect people’.
12
Pain Ray
In the mid-2000s the Department of Defense developed a non-lethal directed-energy weapon called an ‘Active Denial System’. This was basically a heat ray that could cause pain in whoever it was pointed at, to be used as an anti-riot tool. One test badly burned an airman after only four seconds. Another test took place during inclement weather, and the rain transformed the ray from a painful heat to a pleasant and relaxing warmth.
13
Operation Tamarisk
Operation Tamarisk was a Cold War operation run by military intelligence of the U.S., U.K., and France that involved spies sorting through discarded paper in trash cans to retrieve military maneuvers and sensitive documents. What made Tamarisk really unique was the fact that Soviet soldiers were not issued toilet paper in the field, so they often wiped using the very documents that spies were tasked to retrieve.
14
Devil Eyes
Devil Eyes was a psychological warfare program undertaken in 2005 by the CIA. The CIA mass produced prototype action figures in the likeness of Osama Bin Laden that, when exposed to heat, would peel away revealing a demonic visage with red skin and green eyes. This was an attempt to influence public opinion of Bin Laden in South Asia. The CIA claims they curbed the project, but some anonymous sources say the figures were distributed.
15
Bat Bombs
In 1942, a dentist from Pennsylvania of all people had a plan to win World War II. His idea was to strap small bombs to an army of bats. In his plan, he wrote “Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped. Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life.” This somehow made it to the testing phase where a few of the bomb-carrying bats were released by accident, destroying a hangar and a general’s car.
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