Recently unearthed documents from the Pentagon have confirmed that the United States (US) experimented with using swarms of “killer mosquitoes” as biological weapons.
According to a report by Daily Mail, the 69-page declassified document from 1977, currently available at the Defense Technical Information Center, reveals details of the secret US Army project called Project Bellweather.
The document also sheds light on several other secret projects involving insects, including Operation Drop Kick and Operation Big Buzz.
The Pentagon conducted real-world experiments between September and October 1959 to analyze how mosquitoes bite under different environmental conditions.
The purpose of the experiments was to evaluate how mosquito swarms would function as a biological weapon if released against enemy troops or other populated areas.
The human-biting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were used in these experiments. The species is known to cause several life-threatening diseases, including chikungunya, dengue fever, yellow fever and Zika.
The document reads: “The literature indicates that the deliberate use of infected arthropod vectors against hostile targets holds great strategic potential.”
Military researchers investigated the use of mosquitoes in war zones with these experiments.
The insects were not infected with disease-causing substances, instead the researchers analyzed how far the insects could travel, how long they could survive after being dispersed, and whether they would actively seek out and bite human hosts.
