Chirp of war: Military exploring battle crickets
| July 14, 2009 | 6:01 AM
More journal entries from John Moore »
As if everything else the Pentagon is up to these days isn’t enough to keep us awake all night.
Now the U.S. military hopes to send cyborg crickets into combat.
The Pentagon is funding research into whether an insect cavalry could be enlisted to detect chemical attacks on the battlefield, or rescue disaster survivors trapped in rubble in the civilian world.
Please let it be called Project Jiminy.
It’s sort of a “cricket in a coal mine” approach. The research involves implanting electronics in the insects, which communicate by moving their wings. The electronics would cause the little buggers to alter their calls, creating an “alarm” signal, when they were around chemicals weapons or the scent of trapped people.
The signal would be passed from cricket to cricket and then to a transceivers on the ground. In effect, the insects would work together as a team.
Go Sw-army.
Read more at newscientist.com.
battle, chemical weapons, crickets, cyborg, disasters, pentagon, rescue, survivors
