US military wanted 'sex bomb'

[Amelia]

US military wanted 'sex bomb'

By Milanda Rout

January 14, 2005

A "SEX bomb" that would make enemy soldiers irresistible to each other was considered by the US military.

Declassified documents reveal the Pentagon toyed with the idea of an aphrodisiac chemical weapon in 1994.

The gas would have made enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. The weapon's developers said homosexual behaviour among troops would deal a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

The plans, unearthed from a US air force laboratory in Ohio, were published in New Scientist magazine.

Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons

15 January 2005

From issue 2482 of New Scientist magazine, 15 January 2005, page 4

THE Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused "severe and lasting halitosis", making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops' skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.

The proposals, from the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, date from 1994. The lab sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals". The plans have been posted online by the Sunshine Project, an organisation that exposes research into chemical and biological weapons.

Spokesman Edward Hammond says it was not known if the proposed $7.5 million, six-year research plan was ever pursued.

[Nicodema]

Hah, we want to boil them in oil here at home but create them temporarily abroad for our own advantage ... so typical ... and hypocritical ...

[Ron Lambert]

They could have used this "bomb" in the Dr. Strangelove movie. The whole idea sounds like a hoax.

Probably it is dignifying this nuttiness too much to analyze it, but would merely making soldiers be sexually attracted to each other necessarily render them impotent as a military force? (Sorry for the pun.) The same thing should already be true of mixed gender armies, where women serve in combat units with men. The Israelis have backed off a little from this, because they found the men tended to be overly protective of the women, and sometimes this led them to behave in a manner that was not tactically sound on the battlefield. This does not seem to be so much a problem in U.S. forces. But one can only try to imagine what might happen if every soldier regards every other soldier as a boyfriend to be protected. And then again, friends, comrades-in-arms, do that already, don't they?

Now if one of the effects of the bomb is to make soldiers obsessively conscious of what fashion statement their uniforms are making, that could debilitate an army. But it is probably a stereotype to assume that all homosexuals have good taste in clothing.

[Nicodema]

Quote:

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But it is probably a stereotype to assume that all homosexuals have good taste in clothing.

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Perhaps, but it is at least a flattering stereotype, and therefore, a reasonably acceptable one. Well, for the drag queens at least. LOL.