UFO and psychological warfare

"Recent information has surfaced that both the U.S. and Soviet governments fancied an interest in faking an alien invasion as a means to induce mass-hysteria in the enemy à la Orson Welles' chaotic War of the Worlds broadcast from 1938.

At least one inter-agency communication from the early 1950s acknowledges the potential disruptive power of a faked alien invasion in both "offensive and defensive" contexts (keeping in mind, the Roswell UFO incident occurred only a few years prior and was followed by a flurry of "flying saucer" sightings around the world).

The following memo was sent from then-director of the CIA, Walter Bedell Smith to the unnamed director of the "Psychological Strategy Board."

I am today transmitting to the National Security Council a proposal… in which it is concluded that the problems connected with unidentified flying objects appear to have implications for psychological warfare as well as for intelligence and operations…

I suggest that we discuss at an early board meeting the possible offensive or defensive utilization of these phenomena for psychological warfare purposes."

More: http://dvice.com/archives/2011/09/investigating-t-1.php

How to use your Invisibility Cloak?

"British defense company BAE Systems has developed an “invisibility cloak” that can effectively hide vehicles from view in the infra-red spectrum.

The patented system — called Adaptiv — uses a matrix of hexagonal “pixels” that can change their temperature very rapidly. On-board cameras sweep the area to pick up the background scenery and display that infra-red signature on the vehicle.

This allows even moving tanks to be effectively invisible in the infra-red spectrum, or mimic other objects. “The tank skin essentially becomes a big infra red TV,” BAE Head of External Communications Mike Sweeney told Wired.co.uk. “You can display anything you want on it — including a cow — while the rest of the vehicle blends into the background.”"

From: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/invisibility-cloak-tanks-cows/

I can see using the idea, somewhat tweeked, in thrillers / suspense novels: an invisible spy, or the most obvious - a bank robber...

Jack London's vision of future warfare

100 years ago Jack London was convinced that future wars will not be possible, for the simple fact that they will be too costly for any population to sustain...

"This leads to the economic aspect of future warfare. The maintenance of modern armies means enormous expenditure of money. The expenditure of life would correspond should they be unwise enough to even venture partial attacks in isolated portions of the field. Therefore, the question arises: How long will the working populations which are represented by these armies be able and willing to feed them, to furnish them with the munitions of war, and to replete the ranks of the soldiers from the ranks of the producers? It is inevitable, supposing the home political situation to remain unchanged, that the nation with the greater and more available resources, coupled with the tougher and more tenacious population, will be the victor. Famine, not force, will decide the issue. [...]

The civil population will decide the future war by its capacity for enduring all the privations consequent upon a state of semi-famine when the whole industrial system is thrown out of joint, and by its power and willingness to fill the mouths of the million non-producing soldiers and to furnish them with the sinews of war. At the front will be the chess-game; at home the workers feeding the players. All will depend upon the stamina of the civil population.

In the event of such a war, securities, which are now held largely by the middle classes, would go tumbling and crashing, rending it difficult for the government to float loans on a disrupted and frightened market. The disastrous effect to-day of of a war rumor on any seat of exchange, is common knowledge. If paper money were issued under such conditions, its depreciation would be instant and great. The rise of the necessaries of life will tend to do this and to set into motion the remorseless pendulum of action and reaction. The countries in which more live by trade than by agriculture—the wheat-importing countries—will feel the pinch of famine quickly and bitterly. [...] The very fear of this, on the sensitive capitalistic system, even with danger afar off, is bound to make the market panicky and to send prices skyward. And under such circumstances speculation is sure to exact its exorbitant penalty. The ravages of the commercial crisis in time of peace are too well known to make necessary further comment on what they would be in time of war.

The interruption of the operation of the productive forces, and the difficulty in satisfying the vital needs of the population, lead up to the political aspect of future warfare. Are the peoples, especially of the European countries, homogeneous enough in their political beliefs to stand in the strain? Labor troubles, bread riots, and rebellion are factors, subversive all, which must be taken into account. The mobilization of a whole working population may lead to unpleasant results, conscription to revolution. There are strong tendencies threatening the present social order which cannot be lightly passed over. Also, a strong anti-military propaganda has grown up. The small protesting voices of the past have merged into the roar of the peoples. The world has lifted itself to a higher morality. The aim of the human is to alleviate the ills of the human. Among all classes the opposition to war is keen and growing."

Is it?

Jack London, The Impossibility of War.

Marijuana, the secret weapon

Readers of espionage novels may find some thrills in the recently released Department of War documents on psychological warfare, including the use of hallucinogens (see also LSD experiments gone bad)

"Take the origins of MK-ULTRA, the notorious CIA program that dosed thousands of unwitting participants with hallucinogenic drugs.

Initially funded by the Navy, the project set out to study the effects of brain concussion. Soon after, scientists noted that a blow to the head prompted amnesia, leading to the pursuit of a drug-based technique to “induce brain concussion … without physical trauma.” Shortly thereafter, the project was transferred entirely to the CIA, because it involved “human experiments … not easily justifiable on medical-therapeutic grounds.”

Other programs, described briefly focused on mind control. MK-NAOMI was after “severely incapacitating and lethal materials … [and] gadgetry for their dissemination,” and MK-CHICKWIT was designed to “identify new drug developments in Europe and Asia,” and then “obtain samples.”

Another program, MK-OFTEN, started as a study on dopamine. But the scope was soon expanded to evaluate ibogaine, a hallucinogen, and then several more drugs, in hopes of creating “new pharmacologically active drugs affecting the central nervous system [to] modify men’s behavior.”

And the Navy is reported to have “obtain[ed] heroin and marijuana” in an effort to develop speech-inducing drugs for use on defectors and prisoners of war. The drugs were eventually tested on 14 people: six volunteer research assistants, and eight unwitting Soviet defectors." source

DOWNLOAD THE PDF DOCUMENT