Rats With (Aviator) Wings
Posted by Shannon
Tags: military, pigeons, world war iiA study of missile guidance by pigeon pecking has been taken out from under wraps by the Navy. At the same time, perhaps to calm fears of guidance designers, the Navy made clear that the project has been discontinued.
Started during World War II, Project Orcon (for organic control) was a try-anything approach to solving some then-current problems. Guidance systems for homing missiles were being easily countermeasured and the Navy thought animals might have potential as a jam-proof control element. Pigeons were selected for trial because they were light, easily obtainable and adaptable. Their job was to ride inside a missile and peck at an image of a target picked up by a lens in the missile’s nose. The pigeon’s pecking of the target image was translated into an error signal that corrected the simulated missile’s simulated flight.
October 31st, 2007 at 2:11 pm
No doubt they had cute little ejection seats, to be activated at the last moment. No but seriously, this reminds me of the US Coast Guard using pigeons on helicopters to aid in search-and-rescue:
Pigeons can help with searches at sea