page_title: Entomological warfare
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Entomological warfare / Cold War / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: The yellowfever mosquito Aedes aegypti. Note the marking on the thorax in the form of a lyre.
context_page_description: Entomological warfare is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to interrupt supply lines by damaging crops, or direct harm to enemy combatants and civilian populations. There have been several programs which have attempted to institute this methodology; however, there has been limited application of entomological warfare against military or civilian targets, Japan being the only state known to have verifiably implemented the method against another state, namely the Chinese during World War 2. However, EW was used more widely in antiquity, in order to repel sieges or cause economic harm to states. Research into EW was conducted during both the Cold war and World War 2 by numerous states such as the Soviet union, United States, Germany and Canada. There have also been suggestions that it could be implemented by non-state actors in a form of bioterrorism. Under the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention of 1972, use of insects to administer agents or toxins for hostile purposes is deemed to be against international law.
context_section_description: The United States seriously researched the potential of entomological warfare during the Cold War. The United States military developed plans for an entomological warfare facility, designed to produce 100 million yellow fever-infected mosquitoes per month. A U.S. Army report titled "Entomological Warfare Target Analysis" listed vulnerable sites within the Soviet Union that the U.S. could attack using entomological vectors. The military also tested the mosquito biting capacity by dropping uninfected mosquitoes over U.S. cities.
  North Korean and Chinese officials leveled accusations that during the Korean War the United States engaged in biological warfare, including EW, in North Korea. The claim is dated to the period of the war, and has been thoroughly denied by the U.S. In 1998, Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman claimed that the accusations were true in their book, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea The book received mixed reviews, some called it "bad history" and "appalling", while other praised the case the authors made. Other historians have revived the claim in recent decades as well. The same year Endicotts' book was published Kathryn Weathersby and Milton Leitenberg of the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington released a cache of Soviet and Chinese documents which revealed the North Korean claim was an elaborate disinformation campaign.
  During the 1950s the United States conducted a series of field tests using entomological weapons. Operation Big Itch, in 1954, was designed to test munitions loaded with uninfected fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis). Big Itch went awry when some of the fleas escaped into the plane and bit all three members of the air crew. In May 1955 over 300,000 uninfected mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) were dropped over parts of the U.S. state of Georgia to determine if the air-dropped mosquitoes could survive to take meals from humans. The mosquito tests were known as Operation Big Buzz. Operation Magic Sword was a 1965 U.S. military operation designed to test the effectiveness of the sea-borne release of insect vectors for biological agents.  The U.S. engaged in at least two other EW testing programs, Operation Drop Kick and Operation May Day. A 1981 Army report outlined these tests as well as multiple cost-associated issues that occurred with EW. The report is partially declassified—some information is blacked out, including everything concerning "Drop Kick"—and included "cost per death" calculations. The cost per death, according to the report, for a vector-borne biological agent achieving a 50% mortality rate in an attack on a city was $0.29 in 1976 dollars. Such an attack was estimated to result in 625,000 deaths.
  At Kadena Air Force Base, an Entomology Branch of the U.S. Army Preventive Medicine Activity, U.S. Army Medical Center was used to grow "medically important" arthropods, including many strains of mosquitoes in a study of disease vector efficiency.  The program reportedly supported a research program studying taxonomic and ecological data surveys for the Smithsonian Institution."
  The Smithsonian Institution and The National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council administered special research projects in the Pacific.  The Far East Section of the Office of the Foreign Secretary administered two such projects which focused "on the flora of Okinawa" and "trapping of airborne insects and arthropods for the study of the natural dispersal of insects and arthropods over the ocean." The motivation for civilian research programs of this nature was questioned when it was learned that such international research was in fact funded by and provided to the U.S. Army as requirement related to the U.S. military's biological warfare research.
  The United States has also applied entomological warfare research and tactics in non-combat situations. In 1990 the U.S. funded a $6.5 million program designed to research, breed and drop caterpillars. The caterpillars were to be dropped in Peru on coca fields as par
caption: The U.S. dropped over 300,000 uninfected mosquitoes on its own population.
exif: {}