People have been trying to kill each other since time immemorial, and have developed many clever and downright stupid ways to achieve this goal. We present to your attention a list of the most ridiculous and strange military weapons in the world.
10. Robot dog
Dogs are commonly used in war to find mines, guard, sabotage, tracing the wounded, and many other tasks. They also inspired the US military to build the Big Dog, a robotic creature created by Boston Dynamics engineers. As conceived by the creators, this massive robot was supposed to save the strongest army from the need to carry equipment (up to 110 kg) manually in those areas where conventional transport cannot be used.
However, in 2015, the military scrapped the robot dog project, explaining that its size and the noise generated when walking would give out the soldiers' positions.
9. Laser plasmagan
Thor is probably in sorrow - the military stole his thunder and lightning. New Jersey-based Picatinny Arsenal engineers figured out a way to harness the energy of lightning and designed a weapon that shoots lightning along laser beams. This weapon is called "laser-induced plasma channel." However, the military preferred a shorter and more capacious definition - "laser plasmagun".
A high-intensity, high-energy laser beam rips electrons off air molecules and focuses lightning along a straight and narrow path. This way it can be precisely directed towards the target. So far, such a plasma channel remains stable for only a short time, and there is a danger that the energy may infect those who use it.
8. Bomb with pigeon guidance
A research project called Project Pigeon involved the creation of a "pigeon bomb". American behavioral psychologist BF Skinner taught birds to peck at a target on a screen in front of them. Thus, they directed the rocket to the desired object.
The program was revised in 1944 and then revived in 1948 as Project Orcon, but in the end, the new electronic guidance systems proved to be more valuable than live birds. So now only an exhibition in the American Museum of History in Washington reminds of this strange and unusual weapon.
7. Bat bomb
During World War II, the US Marine Corps had an ambitious idea: to use bats as kamikaze bombers. How to do it? It's simple: attach explosives to bats and train them to use echolocation to find a target. The military used thousands of bats in experiments, but ultimately abandoned the idea as the atomic bomb seemed like a much more promising project.
6. Battle dolphins
It would seem, how can such adorable marine mammals get into the top 10 of the most unusual weapons? However, humans have adapted intelligent and easily trained dolphins for various military tasks, such as finding underwater mines, enemy submariners and sunken objects. This was done both in the USSR, in the research center in Sevastopol, and in the USA, in San Diego.
Trained dolphins and sea lions were used by the Americans during the Gulf War, and in Russia, the combat dolphin training program was phased out in the 90s. However, in 2014, the Russian Navy took on the ration of the Crimean dolphins - the former Ukrainian "legacy". And in 2016, an order for the purchase of 5 dolphins for the Russian Ministry of Defense appeared on the public procurement website. So, perhaps, while you are reading this article, fighting dolphins are cruising the Black Sea.
5. Chicken nukes
At the height of the Cold War, the British developed a 7-ton nuclear weapon called the Blue Peacock. It was a huge steel cylinder with a plutonium core and chemical detonating explosives inside. Also in the bomb there was a very advanced electronic filling for that time.
A dozen of such massive underground nuclear charges were planned to be placed in Germany and detonated if the USSR decided to invade from the east. One problem: the ground freezes in winter, so the electronic equipment needed to launch the Blue Peacock can malfunction. To overcome this difficulty, various ideas were put forward, including the most awkward ones: from wrapping a bomb in fiberglass "blankets" to placing live chickens in a bomb with a supply of food and water necessary to survive for a week. The heat generated by the chicks will prevent the electronics from freezing. Fortunately, the British decided to revise their plan due to the risk of radioactive fallout, and thus saved many chickens from an unenviable fate.
4. Hallucinogenic bomb
Weapons don't always injure the body; sometimes it can affect the mind. In 1950, the US Central Intelligence Agency investigated the combat use of psychoactive substances such as LSD. One type of "non-lethal" weapon developed by the CIA was a cluster bomb filled with the hallucinogen Bi-Zet (quinuclidyl-3-benzylate). People who have experimented with this substance have reported strange dreams, prolonged visual and emotional hallucinations, unexplained feelings of anxiety, and headaches. However, the effect of the B-Zet on the psyche was not predictable and reliable, and the program for its use was curtailed.
3. Iceberg aircraft carrier
During World War II, the British did not have enough steel to build ships. And the adventurous Britons plotted to create an ice killing machine: a massive aircraft carrier that was essentially a fortified iceberg. Initially, it was planned to "cut down" the tip of the iceberg, attach engines, communication systems to it and send it to the place of hostilities with several aircraft on board.
Then the project, called "Habakkuk", transformed into something more. It was decided to take a small amount of wood pulp, mix it with water ice, to get a structure that would melt not for days, but for months, had a resistance similar to concrete and was not too fragile. This material was created by the English engineer Jeffrey Pike and was called pikerite. It was proposed to create an aircraft carrier from pykerite with a length of 610 m, a width of 92 m and a displacement of 1.8 million tons. It could receive up to 200 aircraft.
The British and the Canadians who joined the project created a prototype ship from pykerite, and its tests were successful. However, then the military calculated the monetary and labor costs of creating a full-fledged aircraft carrier, and the Habakkuk was done away with. Otherwise, almost all of Canada's forests would be consumed with sawdust for giant ships.
2. Gay bomb
In 2005, the Pentagon confirmed that the US military was once interested in creating chemical weapons that could make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible ... to each other. In 1994, a US Air Force laboratory received $ 7.5 million to develop a weapon that contained a hormone naturally present in the body (in small quantities).If enemy soldiers breathed it in, they would feel an irresistible attraction to men. In general, the slogan "make love, not war" could have been realized on the battlefield if the tests had not shown that not all soldiers lose their heads from desire. And gay activists were outraged by the idea that homosexuals have less fighting capacity than heterosexuals.
1. Rays of pain
In the first place in the rating of the most amazing weapons is a tool that does not kill, but can hurt you, very painful. The US military has developed a non-lethal weapon called the Active Knockback System. These are powerful rays of heat that heat the tissues of the human body, creating a painful burn. The purpose of creating such a heat gun is to keep suspicious people away from military bases or other important objects, as well as disperse crowds of people. So far, the installation for the "rays of pain" is mounted only on vehicles, but the military said they hope to reduce their "brainchild".