vietnam era u.s. military black project : radioactive flies!

[tom d. friedman]

my buddy related this story to me tonight.... while he was a u.s. army air traffic controller at fort polk in 1966 he was privy to details of an experimental army black project. radioactive flies........ yes, flies, live bugs!!! they were in little trays for care. the premise of the project was as follows.... the govt. used radioactive material to cover the bugs, they would then glow. they would then use an army mohawk aircraft & fly over enemy areas releasing the glowing bugs from canisters. once released, the flies, which were human flesh eaters would find the enemy & attach themselves to them. meanwhile, onboard the mohawk the crew would use some sort of night vision gear & see the glowing specks on the ground, & thus zap the enemy with what ever ordinance they were carrying!!! it was pretty heady stuff, as my buddy said the glow bugs were escorted to their final destination by f-4 phantoms. he said the aircraft transporting the flies was a goodyear owned dc-3. those f-4's must have been flying near stall speed escorting that goony. was this project utilized?? no clue!! can somebody shed some non radioactive light beyond this???

[Matt Gunsch]

sounds as about as effective as the bat bomb idea from WWII, at least that did burn down a hangar, albit on of ours and not the Japanese.

[Randy Haskin]

I always thought we should develop a "kudzu bomb"...you know, that annoying weed that grows a foot or two per day.

We could have any potential adversary's country COVERED in less time than it's taken in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would completely immobilize the country...no road would be travelable, no airfield would be clearable, no house liveable. The enemy country would have to spend so much time on defoliation that they couldn't possibly keep up a battle on two fronts.

Wanna destroy all those narco-crops in Columbia? Kudzu.

Stop the opium trade in Afghanistan? Kudzu.

Flesh insurgents out of Sadyr City? Kudzu's your huckleberry.

Stop the genocide in Darfur? You guessed it....Kudzu.

[PhantomAce08]

I always thought we should develop a "kudzu bomb"...you know, that annoying weed that grows a foot or two per day.

We could have any potential adversary's country COVERED in less time than it's taken in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would completely immobilize the country...no road would be travelable, no airfield would be clearable, no house liveable. The enemy country would have to spend so much time on defoliation that they couldn't possibly keep up a battle on two fronts.

Wanna destroy all those narco-crops in Columbia? Kudzu.

Stop the opium trade in Afghanistan? Kudzu.

Flesh insurgents out of Sadyr City? Kudzu's your huckleberry.

Stop the genocide in Darfur? You guessed it....Kudzu.

Interesting... very interesting.

This could be the results....

http://www.jjanthony.com/kudzoo/index.html

[Tulio]

Always a proponent of a good, solid back-up plan, just in case, I would like to suggest that the tactical applications of Kazoos should be explored, I mean, in case the Kudzu deal doesn't work as advertised.


Saludos,


Tulio

[King]

The only thing close to this, that I can relate was in the late 60s and early to mid 70s we had what was called the Screw Worm Iradication program in this area. Screw worms were destroying the cattle market here and in Mexico.

So they took screw worm fly males and zapped them with radiation to make them steril and dropped them by the hundreds in little paper boxes out of aircraft. The box would hit the ground and break open and the flies would scatter. Guess they went looking for a hot female to mate with. Needless to say after several years, the screw worms were gone.

All the aircraft were painted the same and had the radioactive symbol with a fly in the middle as thier logo. They used everything from the Cessna 206 to the DC-3.

[Tulio]

There is an ongoing program in Southern Mexico and Central America, to eradicate the Mediterranean Fruit Fly; the procedure is the same as you indicate; flies are irradiated and then loaded onto paper bags, which are automatically opened when the airplane releases them.

I saw and photographed an Helio Courier in mexican civilian markings, assigned to this program; this was back in the late 1990s in Guatemala City.

Saludos,


Tulio