Pigeons were once used not only to guide bombs (experimental work conducted by B.F. Skinner), but also to fly cameras on timers over foreign ramparts, earth works, gun placements, and bases.
Are they still being used today? Maybe.
The pictures, below, were found in Medieval texts and appear to involve rocket powered cats and pigeons. In fact, they are simply versions of the "Samson Fox" story told in the Bible.
Of course, using animals in warfare is not new. Sampson's fox (see Judges 15:4 in the Bible) were live foxes with torches tied to their tails to set enemy fields alight, while "plague cats" were thrown over castle walls in early germ warfare.
The Russians used dogs to carry bombs under tanks, while the US experimented with using live bats to fire bomb Japanese cities.
Are birds and other animals still used in war?
Aside from the occasional use of dogs, it's likely that dolphins, walruses and perhaps some smaller whales are used for surreptitiously placing and retrieving listening devices and locating deep water objects such as mines.
What about cats? After the putative creation and demise of "Operation Acoustic Kitty," in which the CIA wired up a cat as a listening device -- only to watch it be hit by a car almost immediately upon release -- that idea seems to have been shelved.
Today, of course, long-range and long-flying small drones are cheap, easy to fly, and increasingly becoming ubiquitous in modern warfare, as the war in Ukraine is making clear.
We have not yet made surveillance drone as small as a beetle, so far as we know, but that is surely coming. The terrific movie "Eye in the Sky" is less and less fiction every day.
We have not yet made surveillance drone as small as a beetle, so far as we know, but that is surely coming. The terrific movie "Eye in the Sky" is less and less fiction every day.
No comments:
Post a Comment