The Air Force Wants Neuroweapons to Overwhelm Enemy Minds [Weapons]

It feels like something a wild-eyed basement-dweller would give you, after adjusting the fit of his tinfoil hat. But military bureaucrats really are asking scientists to aid them ” degrade enemy performance” by attacking the brain’s ” chemical pathway[s].”

Late last month, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing revamped a call for research proposals examining ” Advances in Bioscience for Airmen Performance .” It’s a six-year, $49 million effort to deploy extreme neuroscience and biotechnology within the service of warfare.

One suggested research thrust: using ” external stimulant technology to enable the airman to keep up give attention to aerospace tasks and to receive and process greater amounts of operationally relevant information.” (Something as opposed to modafinil , I assume.) Another asks scientists to search into ” fus[ing] multiple human sensing modalities” to develop the ” capability for Special Operations Forces to rapidly identify human-borne threats.” No, this can be not a page from The boys Who Stare at Goats .

But perhaps the oddest, and most annoying, of the program’s many suggested directions is the person who notes: ” Conversely, the chemical pathway area could include how you can degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm enemy cognitive capabilities.” That’s right: the Air Force wants how to fry foes’ minds – or no less than make ‘em a bit dumber.

It’s the type of official statement that’s seized on by anyone who is bound that the CIA planted a microchip in his head, or thinks that the Air Force is controlling minds with an antenna array in Alaska . An analogous might be said concerning the 711th’s call to ” develo[p] technologies to anticipate, find, fix, track, identify, characterize human intent and physiological status anywhere and at anytime.”

The ideas may sound wild. They’re wild. But the notions aren’t completely out of the military-industrial mainstream. For years, military and intelligence community researchers have toyed with ways of manipulating minds. Through the Cold War, the CIA and the military allegedly plied the unwitting with dozens of psychoactive drugs , in a sequence of zany (and often dangerous) mind-control experiments.  More recently, the Pentagon’s most revered scientific advisory board warned in 2008 that adversaries could develop enhancements to their ” cognitive capabilities… and thus create a threat to national security .” The National Research Council and Defense Intelligence Agency followed suit, pushing for pharma-based tactics to weaken enemy forces. In recent months, the Pentagon has funded projects to optimize troop’s minds , prevent injuries , preemptively assess vulnerability to traumatic stress, and even conduct ” remote control of brain activity using ultrasound .”

The Air Force is warning potential researchers that this project ” may require top secret clearance.” They’ll also want a high tolerance for seemingly-loony theories-sparked by the military itself.

Photo: U.S. Army

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This post is tagged: cognitive capabilities, force research laboratory, human performance, performance wing, physiological status, research proposals, special operations forces