13 June 2007

There’s nowt so queer as (enemy soldier) folk

Armed forces are ever on the look out for that weapon that will give them the edge in combat. The US military is of course no exception. In 1994 the US Air Force had a novel proposal for a non lethal battle field weapon – a “gay bomb”.


Documents released to a biological weapons watchdog in Austin, Texas confirm that the US military did investigate the idea. It was included in a CD-Rom produced by the US military in 2000 and submitted to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. The documents show that $7.5m was requested to develop the weapon. The documents were titled "Harassing, Annoying and Bad Guy Identifying Chemicals" includes several proposals for the military use of chemicals that could be sprayed on to enemy positions. "One distasteful but non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behaviour," says the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

The Pentagon did not deny that the proposal had been made.

It sounds pretty hare-brained to me but the idea of a weapons that don’t cause people to have their heads or guts splattered across a battlefield is not a bad idea (the idea of not having battle fields at all is of course far more attractive). It’s certainly no dafter than the First Earth Battalion. Coming back across the Atlantic our military has had plenty of its own crackpot schemes. The Panjandrum springs to mind



6 comments:

Shaz said...

Can I be rude here? Can I say that the American's homophobic beliefs appaul me? Ok said it!

jams o donnell said...

I wish we were free of homophobia ourselves Shaz!

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Steve Bates said...

Let me get this straight: soldiers in the heat of combat are supposed to have their thoughts forcibly diverted to another kind of heat? Right. Sure. Whatever.

This is crazy on so many levels I can barely believe it. But yes, the level of homophobia of a lot of Americans is such that I should not be surprised. Chagrined, but not surprised.

elasticwaistbandlady said...

I heard this on the Glenn Beck radio show the other day and it cracked me up......well, I was laughing until they dropped the real bomb which was the price tag attached to this crap project. 7 million?

jams o donnell said...

I ahd it marked down as hare brained but unremarkable in the world of crackpot military schemes Steve! On the othster hand surely when the bullets are flying over head and you are fighting or trying to save your skin, the very first thing any of us would do, gay or straight, wants to do is get it on with another guy!!