10 Strangest Modern Era Weapons

1. Gay bombs: Strong aphrodisiacs to cause "homosexual behavior"

In both of the documents, the possibility was canvassed that a strong aphrodisiac could be dropped on enemy troops, ideally one which would also cause "homosexual behavior". The documents described the aphrodisiac weapon as "distasteful but completely non-lethal". The "New Discoveries Needed" section of one of the documents implicitly acknowledges that no such chemicals are actually known. The reports also include many other off-beat ideas, such as spraying enemy troops with bee pheromones and then hiding numerous beehives in the combat area, and a chemical weapon that would give the enemy bad breath.

2. Bat bombs: Incendiary bombs attached to bats

Bat bombs were bomb-shaped casings with numerous compartments, each containing a Mexican Free-tailed Bat with a small timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats which would then roost in eaves and attics. The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper construction of the Japanese cities that were the weapon's intended target. Developed by the United States during World War II, four biological factors gave promise to this plan. First, bats occur in large numbers (four caves in Texas are each occupied by several million bats). Second, bats can carry more than their own weight in flight (females carry their young — sometimes twins). Third, bats hibernate, and while dormant they do not require food or maintenance. Fourth, bats fly in darkness, then find secluded places (often in buildings) to hide during daylight.

The plan was to release bat bombs over Japanese cities having widely-dispersed industrial targets. The bats would spread far from the point of release due to the relatively high altitude of their release, then at dawn they would hide in buildings across the city. Shortly thereafter built-in timers would ignite the bombs, causing widespread fires and chaos. The bat bomb idea was conceived by dental surgeon Lytle S. Adams, who submitted it to the White House in January, 1942, where it was subsequently approved by President Roosevelt. Adams was recruited to research and obtain a suitable supply of bats. Project details By March 1943 a suitable species had been selected. The project was considered serious enough that Louis Fieser, the inventor of military napalm, designed 0.6 ounce (17 g) and one ounce (28 g) incendiary devices to be carried by the bats. A bat carrier similar to a bomb casing was designed that included 26 stacked trays, each containing compartments for 40 bats. The carriers would be dropped from 5,000 feet (1,525 m). Then the trays would separate but remain connected to a parachute that would deploy at 1,000 feet (305 m). It was envisioned that ten B-24 bombers flying from Alaska, each carrying a hundred shells packed with bomb-carrying bats could release 1,040,000 bat bombs over the target — the industrial cities of Osaka Bay. A series of tests to answer various operational questions were conducted. In one incident the Auxiliary Army Air Base in Carlsbad, New Mexico, was set on fire when armed bats were accidentally released. The bats incinerated the test range and roosted under a fuel tank. Following this setback, the project was relegated to the Navy in August 1943, who renamed it Project X-Ray, and then passed it to the Marine Corps that December. The Marine Corps moved operations to the Marine Corps Air Station at El Centro, California. After several experiments and operational adjustments, the definitive test was carried out on a mockup of a Japanese city built by the Chemical Warfare Service at their Dugway Proving Grounds test site in Utah.



3. Who, Me?: A bad odor weapon to humiliate the enemy

Almost sixty years ago, the US developed a nauseating 'bathroom odor' chemical for use as a weapon. But according to the Army, the old malodorant will not work outside of the US and Western Europe, because "it was found that people in many areas of the world do not find 'fecal odor' to be offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis." Therefore, according to the Army, new agents are needed for overseas missions. These new malodorants are to be specifically adapted for their victims. According to a 1998 document: "The objective of this work is the development of a comprehensive set of [malodorants] that can be applied against any population set around the world to influence their behavior."

The documents describe the Army research procedure. A group of subjects selected "based on a diversity of geographic origins and cultural heritage" is systematically exposed to candidate malodorants to develop "culture-response data" based on ethnic categories. That data is aggregated into "odor response profiles" that suggest the types and quantities of malodorants necessary to "elicit a favorable behavioral response" (i.e. incapacitation, panic, or flight) when used for crowd control on a particular ethnic group.

Malodorants themselves generally do not cause serious injury or death; but their physical and psychological effects can be very powerful. They can be loaded in shells, grenades, mortar rounds, and other devices. Malodorants can be used to control civil unrest (e.g. to halt protests), and in combination with lethal weapons as a 'force multiplier' in counterinsurgency and close combat in urban and enclosed areas.


4. Anti-tank dogs: Hungry dogs with explosives

Anti-tank dogs, or Hundminen as they were known by the Germans, were dogs taught to carry explosives under tanks and armoured vehicles where they would detonate and inflict the most damage upon the vehicle.

The most concerted effort to use dogs as anti-tank weapons came during World War II when the Soviet Union used them against German tanks. When training the dogs, the Soviets kept them hungry in order to teach them to find food beneath tanks. On the battlefield a dog was fitted with an explosives-packed box and then released before oncoming German tanks. When the dog dove under a tank, a wooden lever sticking up from the top of box was tripped which detonated the charge. Because the chassis was the most vulnerable area of these vehicles, it was hoped the explosion would gut the vehicle.

Among the plan's failings was the Soviet use of their own diesel tanks to train the dogs rather than German tanks, which had petrol engines. On the battlefield this resulted in the dogs tending to seek food under and thus destroying the Russian tanks with which they were familiar instead of the strange German tanks. This was not always an issue, however, as the dogs were sometimes spooked by the noise and vibration of the tank engines and fled the field immediately upon release.

Despite these problems the anti-tank dogs were said to have been successful at the Battle of Kursk, the Soviets claiming 12 German tanks destroyed by 16 dogs. As such the Germans were compelled to take measures against them. An armored vehicle's top-mounted machine gun proved ineffective due to the relatively small size of the attackers, the fact that they were low to the ground, their speed and the difficulty in spotting them. Consequently orders were dispatched that commanded every German soldier to shoot any dogs seen on sight as they might be rabid. Eventually the Germans found tank-mounted flame-throwers to be much more successful in warding off the attacks.

5. Fire balloons: Incendiary hydrogen balloons

A fire balloon or balloon bomb was an experimental weapon launched by Japan during World War II. A hydrogen balloon with a load varying from a 12 kg (26 lb) incendiary to one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices attached, they were designed as a cheap weapon intended to make use of the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc on Canadian and American cities, forests, and farmland.

The balloons were relatively ineffective as weapons, and were used in one of the few attacks on North America during World War II.

Between November 1944 and April 1945 Japan launched over 9,000 fire balloons. About 300 balloon bombs were found or observed in North America, causing six deaths and a small amount of damage.

6. Exploding rats: Rat carcasses filled with plastic explosives

Exploding rats were a weapon developed by the British Special Operations Executive in World War II for use against Germany. Rat carcasses were filled with plastic explosives. The idea was that when what seemed to be a dead rat was discovered in the boiler room of a factory, the stoker tending the boiler would likely dispose of the unpleasant discovery by shoveling it into the furnace. The dummy rat would explode, causing significant damage. However, the first shipment of carcasses was intercepted by the Germans, and the plan was dropped. The Germans exhibited the rats at top military schools, and conducted searches for further exploding rats.

7. Killer Dolphins: To seek and destroy submarines using kamikaze methods

Due to the secrecy of such practice, rumors of military dolphins include training them to lay underwater mines, to locate enemy combatants, or to seek and destroy submarines using kamikaze methods. There has even been speculation about the potential development of sophisticated equipment, such as poison darts, sonar jamming devices, and so on for dolphins, and about combat between cetaceans of both superpowers. The U.S. Navy denies ever having trained its marine mammals to harm or injure humans in any fashion or to carry weapons to destroy ships.

8. Project Pigeon: A pigeon-guided missile

During World War II, Project Pigeon (or Project Orcon, for "organic control") was American behaviorist B. F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile.

The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognize the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile's flight controls, cause the missile to change course. Three pigeons were to control the bomb's direction by majority rule.

Although skeptical of the idea, the National Defense Research Committee nevertheless contributed $25,000 to the research. However, Skinner's plans to use pigeons in Pelican missiles was considered too eccentric and impractical; although he had some success with the training, he could not get his idea taken seriously. The program was cancelled on October 8, 1944, because the military believed that "further prosecution of this project would seriously delay others which in the minds of the Division have more immediate promise of combat application."

Project Orcon was revived by the Navy in 1948 and was cancelled in 1953.

9. Cat Bombs: To sink German ships

The United States' OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA) needed a way to guide bombs to sink German ships. Somebody hit upon the inspiration that since cats have such a strong disdain of getting wet and always land on their feet that if you attached a cat to a bomb and drop it in the vicinity of a ship, the cat's instinct to avoid the water would force it to guide the bomb to the enemy's deck.It is unclear how the cat was supposed to actually guide a bomb attached to it as it fell from the sky but the plan never got past the testing stages since the cats had a bad habit of becoming unconscious mid-drop.

10. The Goliath Tracked Mine

After recovering a prototype of a miniature-tracked vehicle developed by the French vehicle designer Adolphe Kégresse, Germany's Wehrmacht's ordnance office instructed the Borgward automotive company to make something similar. The purpose of the vehicle was ro carry a minimum of 50 kg of explosives. Eventually the company developed the SdKfz. 302 ( Sonderkraftfahrzeug, 'special-purpose vehicle'), called the Leichter Ladungsträger ('light demolitions carrier'), or Goliath, which carried 60 kg of explosives. The highlight was that Goliath could be steered remotely via a joystick control box. The control box was attached to the Goliath by a triple-strand telephone cable connected to the rear of the vehicle.