Air Force Wants Neuroweapons to Overwhelm Enemy Minds

November 4, 2010 | Source: Wired Danger Room

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 in the service of warfare.

One suggested research thrust is to use “external stimulant technology to enable the airman to maintain focus on aerospace tasks and to receive and process greater amounts of operationally relevant information.” Another asks scientists to look into “fus[ing] multiple human sensing modalities” to develop the “capability for Special Operations Forces to rapidly identify human-borne threats. …

“Conversely, the chemical pathway area could include methods to degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm enemy cognitive capabilities.”