{"id":14795,"date":"2016-04-26T17:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T22:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=14795"},"modified":"2016-04-26T17:00:29","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T22:00:29","slug":"military-history-the-saga-of-the-six-legged-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/26\/military-history-the-saga-of-the-six-legged-soldiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Military History: The Saga of the Six-Legged Soldiers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"graf--h3 graf-after--figure\" style=\"text-align:center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-14796\" src=\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/04\/nam1.jpeg?w=620\" alt=\"Nam1\" width=\"620\" height=\"344\" \/><\/h3>\n<h3 id=\"90ed\" class=\"graf--h3 graf-after--figure\" style=\"text-align:center;\">The U.S. Army Wanted to Conscript Insects to Fight the Viet-Cong\u00a0But the six-legged soldiers weren\u2019t terribly reliable!<\/h3>\n<p id=\"91f7\" class=\"graf--p graf-after--p\">Mao Tse-Tung famously wrote in <em class=\"markup--em markup--p-em\">On Guerrilla Warfare <\/em>that guerrillas are proverbial fish who have to swim in the water of the people in order to win their struggle against powerful governments.<\/p>\n<p id=\"b8f9\" class=\"graf--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote graf-after--p\">\u201cIt is only undisciplined troops who make the people their enemies and who, like the fish out of its native element, cannot live,\u201d Mao explained.<\/p>\n<p id=\"e2aa\" class=\"graf--p graf-after--p\">But what if a government could turn the actual wildlife in <em class=\"markup--em markup--p-em\">rebel<\/em> areas into loyal <em class=\"markup--em markup--p-em\">regime<\/em> soldiers?<\/p>\n<p id=\"9d1c\" class=\"graf--p graf-after--p\">In 1963, the U.S. Army tried to do just that. Facing swelling Communist insurgencies across Southeast Asia, the ground combat branch hoped to conscript insects to fight rebels alongside human troops.<\/p>\n<p id=\"2a36\" class=\"graf--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote graf-after--p\">\u201cWasps, bees and ants are abundant in many environments, especially in<br \/>\ntropical regions,\u201d researchers working for the Army\u2019s Limited War Laboratory wrote. \u201cThese insects are excited to a high level of aggressive behavior by the presence of minute amounts of alarm substances which provoke the insects to make fierce attacks on any invaders of the area.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"c12d\" class=\"graf--p graf-after--p\">Unfortunately, the six-legged reinforcements just weren\u2019t reliable enough for combat duties.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"graf--p graf-after--p\">Read the Remainder at <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/warisboring.com\/the-u-s-army-wanted-to-conscript-insects-to-fight-the-viet-cong-ba74105bd0a2?mc_cid=1b07fa62af&amp;mc_eid=1149a36069#.5hdnbkt0f\">War is Boring<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Army Wanted to Conscript Insects to Fight the Viet-Cong\u00a0But the six-legged soldiers weren\u2019t terribly reliable! Mao Tse-Tung famously wrote in On Guerrilla Warfare that guerrillas are proverbial fish who have to swim in the water of the people in order to win their struggle against powerful governments. \u201cIt is only undisciplined troops who&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2004,1286,6051,4827,5660,5016,1898],"tags":[11400,11401,11402,3913],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}