Leave it to the Air Force to come up with this concept. Usually this site’s posts will be of a more serious and historical nature, but this was just too good to pass up.
Imagine you are fighting in a battle against a large enemy force. The force is so large that you decide to call in air support. The aircraft flies over and drops its ordinance. Suddenly, the force that was attacking you is now making out in various ways, exhibiting homosexual tendencies and leaving themselves exposed to your fire and eventual defeat. Sounds like something out of a odd science fiction thriller, right? Not exactly.
According to an article posted on FoxNews.com, the Air Force has confirmed a report that in 1994 a researcher requested $7.5 million to develop a non-lethal bomb that would alter brain chemistry, causing the affected to make love. Gives a whole new meaning to “make love, not war.”
The request was denied and no money was spent on this project. The idea was part of the military’s effort to develop non-lethal weapons. Other ideas mentioned in the article included using chemicals to draw creatures like stinging bugs to the enemy position, as well as make them more aggressive.
The report was exposed via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by the Sunshine Project, which is a watchdog group that tracks military spending.
This article raises serious questions regarding the development and use of non-lethal weapons for the battlefield. In today’s era of UAVs and other vehicles that are un-manned, it is interesting to see such a dubious proposal for a non-lethal weapon. One wonders if such a weapon was possible (perhaps this is why the request was denied). In addition, what other crazy non-lethal and lethal weapons were proposed but never acted on that are waiting for FOIA requests to uncover?
While the idea of defeating enemies without killing them is noble, we must remember that “war is hell.” In order to effectively defeat an enemy that is trying to destroy you, that enemy must be destroyed, or you will wind up in a box six feet under. Thank you to the researcher for coming up with such a unique idea for a weapon and for giving this blog a humorous post. This leads to the creation of the Military History Blog Humor Award. The researcher who proposed the “gay bomb” is given this honor in recognition of their ability to incorporate humor into recent military history, and for the conception of such a dubious idea.
Slowly but surely information has been coming forward about United States and American-sponsored reconnaissance missions against the Soviet Union and China during the early years of the Cold War. In this study, Curtis Peebles, a freelance aerospace historian, examines the American reconnaissance effort from the late 1940s to Operation Grand Slam in 1960. The author is well-known for his studies including The Moby Dick Project: Reconnaissance Balloons over Russia (1991), The Corona Project: America’s First Spy Satellites (1997), and Twilight Warriors: Covert Air Operations against the USSR (2005).
Peebles depicts the rise of Cold War reconnaissance from the first U.S. Far East Air Forces RF-80 covert overflight of the Soviet Far East during the Berlin Crisis (1948-1949) to the Soviet shootdown of a Central Intelligence Agency U-2 mission in…
Military History 