According to documents and interviews obtained for his book,
Vietnam's Underground War: Snakes, Rats and Boonie Hats, Icelandic author Uno Imnottyourdottr makes the shocking revelation that the python and boa problem in the Florida Everglades was the result of the purposeful release of animals used in a secret U.S. Army/CIA sponsored project to develop large constrictor snakes as weapons to fight in the extensive Vietnamese tunnel network.
Dubbed Operation: Blue River in official documents, and gaining the unofficial name Operation: TubeSnake by wags assigned to the project, thousands of boa constrictors, pythons, and anacondas were surreptitiously purchased by the military from Florida wildlife importers in the late 1960s and early 70s and brought to MacDill AFB in Tampa for processing, before being sent to a secure containment facility deep in the Everglades. Once there, the snakes were evaluated for their ability to be trained and suitability for mission, and were given basic mission testing by species.
Snakes were equipped with a variety of equipment depending on mission assignment. Sensor and camera platforms, including infra-red and millimeter band and side-looking radar, as well as UHF/VHF communications equipment were utilized in the reconnaissance role, as well as a variety of weapons to be used literally as a hunter-killer platform. Weaponized snakes included a variety of munitions including everything from small explosive charges to large anti-tank mines. Chemical weapons such as CS gas and pepper spray were also evaluated, difficulties arising in finding applicable gas mask solutions for the constrictors.
Testing of the animals revealed issues with trainability as well as limited load carrying capabilities. According to Army documents Burmese Pythons were found to be the species most suitable to the mission profile, and after late 1971 only Burmese Pythons were used although weapons and sensor platforms had been developed and successfully tested on snakes as small as 2 feet long and as large as 18 feet long.
According to Imnottyourdottr's book, Operation Blue River was quietly discontinued in 1974 before being tested in combat, and all the constrictor snakes remaining in the project were demilitarized and then released outside of the facility into the surrounding swampland, after Congressional investigations were opened into the CIA's failed attempts to train King Cobras as assassins. It was hope that the highly trained constrictors could be recovered should the project be revived, but military priorities by then had shifted to the Middle East.
This was written by Jeff Barringer at
kingsnake.com - the information portal for reptile and amphibian hobbyists. on April 1st of this year. Just found it pretty interesting figured I would share
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