The Special Forces Request
The US Special Forces' solicitation came in January 2002 as part of "Scientists Helping America", a cooperative effort between the Special Forces, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Playing heavily on the US reaction to the September 11th attacks,
"Scientists Helping America" asked researchers to show their patriotism by turning their talents to weapons, including bioweapons, specifically, genetically engineered bugs that eat materials and stealthy modified organisms (called "taggants") that can be used to invisibly "paint" a target so that it can be destroyed with other weapons later.
The Special Forces desire was initially identified in a short May 1999 document by its Future Technology Working Group. The document identifies the military appeal of "a bio-engineered organism [that] can become a weapon by acting as a corrosive agent after a certain period of time or by a remote command". The same document sets out the uses of a "bio-organism that can be placed on a building and then grow across that building to act as an illuminator for target identification, or precision attacks" (taggants). The document indicates that these bioweapons would be used covertly, stipulating that they "should be innocuous in appearance so that they can be carried and placed by Special Operations Forces without detection."
The US Special Forces' solicitation came in January 2002 as part of "Scientists Helping America", a cooperative effort between the Special Forces, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Playing heavily on the US reaction to the September 11th attacks,
"Scientists Helping America" asked researchers to show their patriotism by turning their talents to weapons, including bioweapons, specifically, genetically engineered bugs that eat materials and stealthy modified organisms (called "taggants") that can be used to invisibly "paint" a target so that it can be destroyed with other weapons later.
The Special Forces desire was initially identified in a short May 1999 document by its Future Technology Working Group. The document identifies the military appeal of "a bio-engineered organism [that] can become a weapon by acting as a corrosive agent after a certain period of time or by a remote command". The same document sets out the uses of a "bio-organism that can be placed on a building and then grow across that building to act as an illuminator for target identification, or precision attacks" (taggants). The document indicates that these bioweapons would be used covertly, stipulating that they "should be innocuous in appearance so that they can be carried and placed by Special Operations Forces without detection."