Four Uncommon Military Equipment You Might Not Have Heard Of
by SOFREP Dec 28, 2021
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The gear, equipment, and animals used by the armed forces all have essential purposes. The helmet is for head protection. Body armor to shield the body from bullets. A load of ammunition is self explanatory. In the military, there are dog companions that can help detect bombs or take down enemies like a missile made of hair. These are just some of the common things we all know the troops are equipped with. Here’s some of the stuff soldiers have brought with them into battle that you may not know about.
The Pigeon Guided Missile
Yep, you read it right. Pidgeons used to guide a missile. The experiences the Navy had with Japanese Kamikazes left a deep impression. A plane full of fuel, armed with a bomb and an intelligent, thinking guidance system(the suicide pilot) was basically the definition of a guided missile. And they were very effective. So in the 1940s, the National Defense Research Committee tried to train pigeons to recognize targets on the monitor screen through operant conditioning with the purpose of creating a pigeon-guided bomb. After a few years and $25,000 later, the project was canceled because “further prosecution of this project would seriously delay others which in the minds of the Division have a more immediate promise of combat application.” Maybe they were having a hard time getting the birds to volunteer once they caught on to the project’s goals. Pidgeons may be stupid, but they are not suicidal idiots. Presumably, we now have smart bombs at least as smart a Pidgeon now but they sure were willing to think outside the box in the early development stages, weren’t they?
Urban Combat Skateboard
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