When you think about military power, images of strong armies and advanced technology often come to mind. Teddy Roosevelt once talked about carrying a “big stick,” and history shows this idea in action. Leaders usually try talking first, but having powerful weapons ready is always part of the plan. Times like World War II and the Cold War pushed the military to get extra creative.
In the race to have the best combat tech, military leaders have sometimes taken chances on some very odd ideas. Even with the smartest people and lots of money, these ten strange experiments just didn’t work out and were eventually stopped.
10 The U.S. Camel Corps
This wasn’t a strange plan to get enemy soldiers to smoke. Back in 1856, Jefferson Davis, who was the Secretary of War, brought dozens of camels from Africa and Turkey to the U.S. He called them “ships of the desert.” Davis believed camels would be better than horses and mules for traveling in the tough, dry lands of the American Southwest.
Believe it or not, some early tests showed he might be right. In 1855, Congress even gave $30,000 (which is over a million dollars today!) to buy these camels. They spent months training soldiers and civilians how to work with the animals.
By 1857, there were 70 camels in the Camel Corps. But by 1861, the American Civil War started, and Congress had bigger things to worry about. The camel experiment was forgotten. In 1864, the leftover camels were sold off for just $1,945.
9 Project Iceworm
During the Cold War, the fear of nuclear war was very real. The United States and the Soviet Union were always looking for an advantage. In 1958, the U.S. Army came up with a secret plan: store hundreds of ballistic missiles under the ice sheets in Greenland.
These missiles would be aimed at the Soviet Union, ready to launch if the Soviets attacked. This wasn’t just an idea on paper. The Army actually built a test ice base called “Camp Century.” It was a complex, nuclear-powered network of tunnels under the ice. It had labs, living areas for over 100 people, and even its own hospital and movie theater!
But even this amazing piece of engineering couldn’t beat nature. After just three years, the ice started to shift and the base became unstable. By 1964, the nuclear reactor was removed, and the whole project was officially ended in 1966.
8 The Edgewood Arsenal Drug Experiments
Here’s another strange military idea driven by the Cold War. For almost 20 years, the U.S. military used its own soldiers as test subjects for chemical weapons at a place called Edgewood Arsenal.
Edgewood was a hidden research lab near the Chesapeake Bay. Over two decades, more than 5,000 soldiers were exposed to various “non-lethal incapacitating agents.” These chemicals ranged from things like marijuana to a powerful substance called “BZ.” BZ was designed to mess with a person’s mind, affecting memory, problem-solving, and understanding. A high dose could make someone unable to perform any military duty.
These years of testing didn’t produce much useful information. The effects on the soldiers, however, were terrible. When the public found out about the Edgewood Arsenal experiments, Congress held hearings and stopped the cruel project in 1975.
7 The Peacekeeper Rail Garrison
The Peacekeeper Rail Garrison is another Cold War idea that never fully happened. It was 1986, and the threat of nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was still very much alive. President Ronald Reagan approved a plan to create a railway system that could carry and launch Peacekeeper ballistic missiles. Basically, he wanted to put nuclear missiles on trains.
Each train was supposed to have two engines, security cars, a launch control car, two missile launch cars, a maintenance car, and other support cars. Big contracts were given out to companies in 1988 to develop these special train cars. Westinghouse got $167 million for the missile launch car, and Rockwell International received $162 million for the control and security cars.
But as the Cold War started to wind down, the need for such a project faded. It was officially canceled in 1991. All that’s left of this nuke-train idea is a model car displayed at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
6 The “Gay Bomb”
This weapon wasn’t designed to attack gay people. Instead, the idea was to use a chemical to supposedly “turn” enemy soldiers gay. In 1994, a U.S. Air Force lab in Ohio, called Wright Laboratory, was looking into non-deadly weapons.
The project wasn’t officially called “The Gay Bomb.” Its title was “Harassing, Annoying and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals.” The main goal was to find chemicals that would make it harder for enemy soldiers to fight.
Wright Laboratory even asked the Pentagon for $7.5 million to research these chemicals. They wanted to study substances that could attract stinging insects, make enemy soldiers have uncontrollable gas and bad breath, or, as they put it, cause homosexual behavior through a “designer aphrodisiac.” The lab’s proposal said one “distasteful but non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”
When news of this project got out to the public, it caused a stir. The funding was denied, and the “Gay Bomb” idea was dropped.
5 The “Flying Saucer”
During the peak of the Cold War, the U.S. worried that Russian missiles could destroy American airfields, making U.S. air power useless. This fear pushed the Pentagon to develop an aircraft that could take off vertically.
In 1956, “Project 1794” got the go-ahead. The Pentagon hired a Canadian company, Avro Aircraft, to design this craft. Avro was very optimistic about what their machine could do. They claimed it could hover at 100,000 feet and fly at 2,600 miles per hour!
The good news? The Avro craft did hover… but only about 3 feet off the ground. And it did fly… but only around 35 miles per hour. All this came with a hefty price tag of $3,168,000 (which is like $26.6 million today).
The cost was too high for such poor performance, so the project was canceled in 1961. Avro Aircraft closed down a year later. One of the Avrocar prototypes is now at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, and another is at the U.S. Army Transportation Museum in Virginia.
4 Bat Bombs
On January 12, 1942, a dentist from Pennsylvania named Lytle S. Adams sent a wild idea to the White House. He thought he knew how to help America win World War II. Adams suggested strapping tiny bombs to bats! His plan stated: “Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped. Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life.”
Like many ambitious plans, the bat bomb project had some problems. During one test, some bats carrying bombs were accidentally set loose. They ended up destroying a hangar and a general’s car!
After that accident, the U.S. Marine Corps took over the program in December 1943. They spent $2 million and conducted 30 tests, but eventually, the project was dropped. Lytle Adams didn’t give up on inventing, though. He later tried to create vending machines that sold fried chicken. Those didn’t take off either.
3 “Pain Rays”
This is a more recent idea. In the mid-2000s, the Department of Defense developed something called an “Active Denial System,” or ADS. It was a “non-lethal directed-energy weapon.” Basically, it was a heat ray designed to shoot a beam of energy about the size of a person, up to a distance of over 3,000 feet.
The idea was to cause instant pain and make unruly crowds break up. However, testing the device gave mixed results. In 2007, an airman was burned when he was hit by an ADS blast for four seconds. In another demonstration for reporters, things went differently. Because it was raining, the pain ray just felt like a pleasant, warm sensation.
The ADS was suggested for use in prisons, at the U.S./Mexico border, and in the war in Afghanistan. But each time, the idea was turned down.
2 Project Stargate
This isn’t about the popular sci-fi movies or TV show. This real-life Project Stargate might be even stranger. During the Cold War, the CIA started researching if extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (moving objects with your mind) could be used for spying.
In 1972, a secret report claimed that the Soviet Union was spending a lot of money researching psychic powers for military use. The CIA didn’t want to fall behind, so they started funding their own psychic research. The Stanford Research Institute in California became the main center for this study, which was named “Project Stargate.”
One of the psychics, called a “remote viewer,” was reportedly used in 450 missions for the CIA. They even brought in Uri Geller, a famous self-proclaimed psychic known for bending spoons with his mind. However, a later report by the American Institutes for Research concluded that remote viewing hadn’t been proven to work through psychic means and shouldn’t be used for real operations. This report ended Project Stargate.
1 “Kitty Spies”
“Operation Acoustic Kitty” sounds like a cool band name, but it was actually a CIA project in the 1960s. They tried to use animals, specifically cats, for spying. Thinking that cats would cooperate might have been their first mistake.
It’s not surprising that Acoustic Kitty was a secret, unofficial project. According to Victor Marchetti, who used to be an assistant to the CIA’s director, the process was cruel to the cats. He said, “They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. They made a monstrosity.”
The first “Acoustic Kitty” cost around $20 million to create. On its very first mission, the cat was hit and killed by a car before it even reached its target. By 1967, the project was added to the long list of failed CIA ideas. Jeffrey Richelson, an NSA employee, summed up the program’s grim outlook: “I’m not sure for how long after the operation the cat would have survived even if it hadn’t been run over.”
These examples show that even with serious goals, the path to military innovation can sometimes lead to some truly strange and unsuccessful places. The quest for an edge has certainly produced some memorable, if not functional, ideas.
What do you think is the most bizarre military experiment on this list? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
