1857 · War Department The Camel Corps The Army’s camels in Texas 1892 · USDA (R. G. Dyrenforth) The Dynamite Rainmakers Dynamite blasts to make rain 1904 · USDA · Bureau of Chemistry The Poison Squad Clerks who ate borax for science 1910 · U.S. House The American Hippo Bill Hippos for Louisiana’s waterways 1917 · CIA Secret Writing World War I invisible ink 1942 · U.S. Army Air Forces / U.S. Navy The Bat Bomb Bats carrying tiny firebombs 1943 · OSS The Hitler Profile An OSS psychological profile of Hitler 1943 · Los Alamos (R. Serber) The Los Alamos Primer How to build an atomic bomb 1943 · FBI The Tesla File The FBI’s file on Nikola Tesla 1944 · OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual How to sabotage with meetings 1946 · Los Alamos (Konopinski, Marvin, Teller) Ignition of the Atmosphere Could the bomb ignite the sky? 1946 · U.S. Navy · NACA Langley The Flying Flapjack The Navy’s round fighter plane 1946 · U.S. Army Air Forces · Project RAND The World-Circling Spaceship RAND’s satellite, 11 years before Sputnik 1946 · OSRD · Tiffany Foundation The Yehudi Lights Lamps that hid bombers in the sky 1948 · Naval Research Laboratory Pigeon-Guided Missiles Missiles steered by pigeons 1949 · USAF · Air Materiel Command Project Sign The Air Force’s first UFO study 1950 · FBI The Hottel Memo The FBI’s most viewed UFO memo 1952 · U.S. Army / ONR · General Electric Project Cirrus Dry ice dropped into a hurricane 1952 · NACA Langley (R. Whitcomb) The Area Rule The Coke-bottle shape that cut drag 1953 · Federal Civil Defense Administration Operation Doorstep Mannequin families near an A-bomb 1953 · AEC · RAND Project Sunshine Collecting human bones to track fallout 1953 · CIA The Robertson Panel The CIA’s plan to debunk UFOs 1954 · NACA Langley The Pogo A fighter that landed on its tail 1955 · USAF · RAND A Million Random Digits A book of a million random digits 1955 · CIA Hitler in Colombia A CIA tip that Hitler was alive 1955 · NSA John Nash’s Letters to the NSA John Nash’s cipher proposal 1955 · Federal Civil Defense Administration Operation Cue A mannequin town beside an A-bomb 1955 · USAF · Battelle Project Blue Book 12,618 UFO reports, by the numbers 1956 · FDA / Federal Civil Defense Administration Beer at Ground Zero Beer and soda beside atomic blasts 1956 · USAF · Strategic Air Command SAC’s 1959 Target List SAC’s 1959 nuclear targets 1956 · ONR · Hiller Helicopters The Hiller Flying Platform A fan platform steered by leaning 1957 · NSA Gambler’s Ruin Tom Lehrer’s math paper for the NSA 1957 · ODM · Security Resources Panel The Gaither Report Fallout shelters for every American 1958 · USAF / U.S. Army · Avro Canada Avrocar A real flying saucer that barely flew 1958 · NACA Langley The Inflatable Airplane Goodyear’s inflatable airplane 1959 · USAF · Armour Research Foundation A Study of Lunar Research Flights A plan to nuke the Moon 1959 · U.S. Army Project Horizon An Army base on the Moon by 1966 1960 · AEC Project Chariot A harbor dug with nuclear blasts 1960 · NASA · Brookings Institution The Brookings Report Should NASA hide alien life? 1960 · ARPA / U.S. Army · General Electric The GE Walking Truck A four-legged truck driven by limbs 1960 · ONR · Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory The Mark I Perceptron Manual A Navy machine that learned shapes 1960 · USAF · Ballistic Missile Division The Military Lunar Base An Air Force spy base on the Moon 1961 · USAF · Systems Command LUNEX A 21-person military Moon base 1961 · NSF · National Research Council Project Mohole Drilling toward Earth’s mantle 1961 · USAF / AEC · Lawrence Radiation Laboratory Project Pluto A nuclear ramjet cruise missile 1961 · Defense Atomic Support Agency · Walter Reed The Atomic Pigs Pigs exposed to atomic tests 1961 · U.S. Army · Bell Aerosystems The Bell Rocket Belt A rocket belt for soldiers 1961 · U.S. Army · Waterways Experiment Station The Overland Train A 572-foot road-free cargo train 1962 · USAF · SRI (D. Engelbart) Augmenting Human Intellect The agenda behind the mouse 1962 · NASA Marshall · Ford Aeronutronic EMPIRE Crewed Mars flybys before Apollo 1962 · Joint Chiefs of Staff Operation Northwoods Staged attacks to justify war on Cuba 1962 · Defense Atomic Support Agency · EG&G Starfish Prime Artificial auroras from a nuclear test 1962 · ARPA The AR-15 Field Test The field test behind the M16 1962 · DoD / AEC (S. Glasstone) The Effects of Nuclear Weapons Blast, heat, and fallout explained 1963 · USAF · Aeronautical Systems Division Dyna-Soar An Air Force spaceplane, the X-20 1963 · NASA Flight Research Center Paresev A NASA glider behind the hang glider 1963 · AEC Project Carryall An interstate cut by nuclear blasts 1963 · NASA Marshall · Aerojet Sea Dragon A 500-foot rocket launched from the sea 1963 · MIT Lincoln Laboratory (I. Sutherland) Sketchpad The first interactive drawing program 1963 · ARPA (J. C. R. Licklider) The Intergalactic Computer Network An early outline of the internet 1963 · NASA The Mercury Chimpanzees Chimps who flew before astronauts 1963 · GAO The NB-36H Nuclear Bomber A bomber that flew with a live reactor 1964 · USAF · RAND (P. Baran) On Distributed Communications A network built to survive nuclear war 1964 · AEC · Lawrence Radiation Laboratory Project Gnome A walk-in cavern made by a nuke 1964 · NASA Marshall · General Atomic Project Orion A spaceship pushed by nuclear bombs 1964 · USAF · MIT Lincoln Laboratory Project West Ford Copper needles in orbit for radio 1964 · FBI The “Louie Louie” File The FBI decodes “Louie Louie” 1964 · U.S. Army · Weapons Command The Davy Crockett A nuclear gun for the front line 1964 · ARPA · Waterways Experiment Station The Marsh Screw Amphibian A vehicle that drove on giant screws 1964 · ARPA · RAND The RAND Tablet Handwriting into a computer in 1963 1965 · CIA Aquiline A CIA spy drone disguised as a bird 1965 · U.S. Army · CRREL Camp Century and Project Iceworm A nuclear base under Greenland’s ice 1965 · ONR Sealab I Eleven days at 193 feet down 1965 · President’s Science Advisory Committee The Carbon Dioxide Appendix An early climate warning to a president 1965 · NASA Flight Research Center The Flying Bedstead A jet frame for Moon landing practice 1965 · NASA Langley · SRI (Engelbart, English) The Mouse Trials The mouse wins a user test 1966 · ARPA · Johns Hopkins APL Project Pandora Did microwaves change behavior? 1966 · NSF · National Research Council The ALPAC Report The report that doubted machine translation 1966 · U.S. Navy · Naval Ordnance Test Station The Rock-Site Concept Navy bases inside the seafloor 1967 · CIA Acoustic Kitty Cats wired by the CIA to eavesdrop 1967 · NASA · Bellcomm Manned Venus Flyby A year-long crewed flyby of Venus 1967 · DoD · JASON Nuclear Weapons in Vietnam Should the U.S. nuke Vietnam? 1967 · State Department Operation Popeye Seeding clouds to flood a supply trail 1967 · U.S. Army · BRL / McGill Project HARP Naval guns firing at the upper sky 1967 · AEC / Columbia Gas Project Ketch A nuclear gas cavern under Pennsylvania 1967 · ONR Sealab II Seafloor living, mail by porpoise 1967 · CIA The Kidnaping of the Lunik The CIA borrows a Soviet spacecraft 1968 · NASA · Boeing Boeing’s Nuclear Mars Ship A nuclear Mars ship from six Saturn Vs 1968 · USAF · Pacific Air Forces Igloo White Sensors listening on the Ho Chi Minh Trail 1968 · AEC · Lawrence Radiation Laboratory Project Gasbuggy Fracking with a nuclear bomb 1968 · CIA The Berlin Tunnel A CIA tunnel to tap Soviet cables 1968 · AEC · John A. Blume & Associates The Nuclear Canal A second Panama Canal, dug by nukes 1968 · U.S. Army · Fort Detrick The Subway Germ Test A germ test in the New York subway 1968 · Naval Research Laboratory Timation I The clock satellite behind GPS 1968 · NSA UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions Preparing to survive real UFOs 1969 · NASA Manned Spacecraft Center Apollo 10’s Stray Turd A floating turd on Apollo 10 1969 · Sandia (P. F. Jones) Goldsboro Revisited One switch from an H-bomb blast 1969 · Nixon White House In Event of Moon Disaster Nixon’s speech if Apollo 11 failed 1969 · NSA Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages Codebreaking practice with alien messages 1969 · NASA · Bell Aerosystems One-Man Lunar Flying Vehicle A rocket platform for Moon hops 1969 · NASA · United Aircraft Research Labs The Nuclear Light Bulb A uranium plasma rocket in a bulb 1970 · NASA · North American Rockwell Lunar Escape Systems A bare rocket frame for lunar escape 1970 · NASA Lunar Receiving Laboratory Moon Dust vs. Earth Life Testing moon dust on live animals 1970 · ESSA / U.S. Navy Project Stormfury Seeding a hurricane to weaken it 1970 · U.S. Navy · Hazleton Laboratories Sanguine’s Test Animals Animals in a giant antenna’s field 1971 · NASA · Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Astronaut Light Flashes Cosmic rays seen with eyes shut 1971 · ONR · General Electric Hardiman An exoskeleton for 25× strength 1971 · NASA Ames · Stanford Project Cyclops 1,000 dishes listening for aliens 1971 · AEC · Los Alamos The Nuclear Subterrene A reactor that melts tunnels in rock 1971 · USAF · Foreign Technology Division The Stealth Equations The Soviet math behind stealth 1972 · DIA Controlled Offensive Behavior Soviet mind-control research 1972 · U.S. Navy · Naval Undersea Center Project Deep Ops Whales trained to recover torpedoes 1972 · NASA Surveyor 3, Returned Bacteria in a camera back from the Moon 1972 · NASA · AiResearch Tektite II Aquanauts living on the seafloor 1972 · NSA TEMPEST Cipher machines leaking their secrets 1973 · NASA Lewis Nuclear Waste into Space Launching nuclear waste into space 1973 · NASA Johnson / NASA Ames The Apollo 17 Pocket Mice Mice with brain sensors around the Moon 1973 · NIMH (J. B. Calhoun) Universe 25 A mouse utopia that died out 1973 · CIA · SRI Uri Geller at SRI Uri Geller tested in a shielded room 1974 · CIA Avian Delivery System Training ravens for delivery missions 1974 · DARPA · UCLA Biocybernetic Control An early brain-computer interface 1974 · Los Alamos PACER Steam power from repeated H-bombs 1974 · NASA Marshall Skylab’s Spiders Spiders spinning webs in orbit 1974 · USAF · Electronic Systems Division The Multics Penetration Test A compiler trap door, found early 1974 · AEC · Westinghouse The Plutonium Heart A plutonium-powered artificial heart 1975 · U.S. Senate · Church Committee Alleged Assassination Plots U.S. plots against foreign leaders 1975 · U.S. Army Dematerialization and Antigravity An Army theory of antigravity 1975 · NASA Ames · Stanford Space Settlements Spinning colonies for 10,000 people 1976 · NASA Ames On the Habitability of Mars NASA’s first terraforming study 1976 · FBI The FBI Bigfoot File The FBI tests Bigfoot hair 1977 · NASA JPL An Interstellar Precursor A probe 1,000 AU from the Sun 1977 · U.S. Senate Project MKULTRA The CIA’s mind-control drug program 1977 · U.S. Senate The Army’s Open-Air Germ Tests Open-air germ tests on U.S. cities 1977 · NASA Langley · Vought The Flying-Wing Freighter A cargo plane with freight in its wing 1978 · DOE / NASA · PRC Energy Analysis Company Solar Power Satellites as Weapons Solar power satellites as weapons 1978 · CIA Spy Pigeons Pigeons with cameras over Soviet shipyards 1978 · DOE / NASA The Satellite Power System Solar power beamed down from orbit 1978 · NSA The Voynich Manuscript The NSA studies the Voynich manuscript 1979 · Oak Ridge National Laboratory Nuclear War Survival Skills A DIY guide to surviving nuclear war 1980 · NASA · University of Santa Clara Advanced Automation for Space Missions A self-copying factory on the Moon 1980 · USAF · RAND Faster-than-Light Particles Faster-than-light particles 1980 · DARPA · Stanford AI Lab (H. Moravec) The Stanford Cart A self-driving cart, one meter at a time 1981 · DARPA · BBN A History of the ARPANET The ARPANET’s first official history 1982 · Defense Nuclear Agency Operation Argus Nuclear blasts to make radiation belts 1983 · DARPA Strategic Computing DARPA’s battlefield AI plan 1983 · U.S. Army · INSCOM (W. McDonnell) The Gateway Process Meditating beyond time and space 1984 · DARPA · SRI Shakey the Robot A robot that planned its own moves 1984 · DOE (T. Sebeok) The Atomic Priesthood A priesthood to guard nuclear waste 1985 · USAF (R. L. Forward) Antimatter Rockets Antimatter as rocket fuel 1985 · CIA Project Azorian Lifting a sunken Soviet submarine 1985 · NASA Ames-Dryden The Scissor-Wing Jet A jet with a pivoting wing 1988 · U.S. Army · National Research Council Enhancing Human Performance The Army weighs “new age” techniques 1988 · NASA · U.S. Naval Academy Project Longshot A fusion probe to Alpha Centauri 1988 · GAO The X-Ray Laser Audit Was the X-ray laser oversold? 1989 · SDIO · Lawrence Livermore Brilliant Pebbles Swarms of missile-ramming satellites 1989 · DOE · Energy Research Advisory Board The Cold Fusion Panel The panel that doubted cold fusion 1990 · SDIO · Los Alamos BEAR A particle beam fired in space 1990 · USAF · SRI Plasma Cloaking A plasma cloak against radar 1990 · USAF · SAIC The Electric Propulsion Study Antigravity and free-energy claims 1991 · NASA Marshall · Sverdrup Technology NERVA Nuclear rockets fired in Nevada 1992 · CIA The U-2 and OXCART Programs The CIA’s secret spy plane history 1993 · DOE · Sandia Not a Place of Honor Warnings meant to last 10,000 years 1994 · USAF · Wright Laboratory The “Gay Bomb” Proposal A chemical weapon to spark attraction 1994 · ARPA Wingship Investigation Giant craft skimming the sea 1995 · CIA CORONA Spy satellite film caught in midair 1995 · NASA Marshall Drugged Spider Webs Spider webs on drugs 1995 · Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Human Radiation Experiments Thirty years of radiation experiments 1995 · CIA Skyhook and Operation Coldfeet Snatching men off an ice station 1995 · CIA · American Institutes for Research Stargate Government-funded remote viewing 1996 · USAF · Air University Alternate Futures for 2025 Six possible worlds for 2025 1996 · USAF · Air University Owning the Weather in 2025 Weather control as a weapon 1996 · USAF · Air Command and Staff College Planetary Defense A military mission to stop asteroids 1997 · USAF Roswell: Case Closed The Roswell aliens were crash dummies 1998 · NASA Lewis Breakthrough Propulsion Physics NASA’s warp drive program 1998 · NASA Marshall The Gravity Shield Test Testing a gravity shield 2000 · Los Alamos A Review of Criticality Accidents Every accidental chain reaction 2000 · NSA SIGSALY A 55-ton encrypted phone line 2000 · NASA Marshall Space Elevators A cable from the ground to orbit 2002 · USAF · RAND Space Weapons, Earth Wars Tungsten rods dropped from orbit 2003 · DARPA Total Information Awareness DARPA’s mass data-mining program 2004 · USAF · Warp Drive Metrics (E. Davis) Teleportation Physics Study An Air Force survey of teleportation 2004 · NASA Glenn · Institute for Scientific Research The Lifter Tests Testing high-voltage “lifters” 2006 · DARPA Cyborg Insects Remote-controlled beetles and moths 2009 · Homeland Security Council After the Bomb The first days after a nuclear attack 2009 · DIA · Bigelow Aerospace The AAWSAP Papers DIA studies of wormholes and antigravity 2011 · GAO Climate Engineering Geoengineering, judged not ready 2011 · U.S. Strategic Command Counter-Zombie Dominance A military plan for a zombie attack 2011 · NASA Johnson (H. White) Warp Field Mechanics 101 The energy cost of a warp drive 2012 · CIA An Underwater Ice Station Zebra Spy film fished from 16,400 feet down 2012 · NSA Project GUNMAN Soviet bugs in embassy typewriters 2015 · NASA Langley HAVOC Airship cities in Venus’s clouds 2015 · NRO The Manned Orbiting Laboratory An Air Force spy space station 2015 · NASA NIAC · NASA Glenn Titan Submarine A submarine for Titan’s seas 2016 · NASA NIAC · UC Santa Barbara A Roadmap to the Stars Laser-pushed probes to the stars 2016 · NASA Johnson · Eagleworks The EmDrive Test Thrust from a sealed copper cavity 2017 · U.S. Special Operations Command The TALOS Suit The “Iron Man” suit 2018 · NASA NIAC · SpaceWorks Hibernating to Mars Hibernating crews on the way to Mars 2018 · State Department · JASON The Havana Sounds The Havana attacks were crickets 2018 · NASA NIAC · Space Studies Institute The Mach Effect Drive A propellant-free drive to Proxima b 2018 · NASA NIAC · NASA JPL The Solar Gravity Lens Using the Sun as a telescope lens 2021 · ODNI The 2021 UAP Assessment 144 military UFO sightings, one solved 2023 · NASA NIAC · NASA JPL Lunar Crater Radio Telescope A telescope in a far-side crater 2024 · NASA NIAC · NASA Ames Mycotecture Off Planet Habitats grown from fungus