Pentagon plans telepathic troops that can read each others' minds

London, Apr 9 (ANI): The U.S. Army is dedicating millions of research dollars into discovering building helmets that will allow soldiers to telepathically communicate with one another on the battlefield.

The technology, which seems like something out of a science fiction novel, would use electrodes to pick up code words that soldiers were thinking.

Those codewords would then be transmitted back to a computer where the soldier's position and message telling, for instance, that it is safe to progress towards a target, which would be transmitted to their peers in the field.

Rumours that army intelligence was determined to use mind control technology to their advantage have been milling around for decades, and have been shrouded in a mix of truth and fiction.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958 and was dedicated to expanding the Department of Defense' technology usage, some of which included state-of-the-art, and top secret, research into the mind.

Delving more into the fiction side of things was the book, and later George Clooney movie, called 'The Men Who Stare At Goats' which depicts the use of New Age concepts, like mind control, used during interrogation exercises in the last three decades.

Now, new details are emerging about the very real 4 million dollars research project being conducted across the country on the Pentagon's dime.

Based largely out of University of California-Irvine, in conjunction with labs in Philadelphia and Maryland, scientists are trying to improve so-called "synthetic telepathy" so that it could be used in a battlefield.

At this point, they have set their sights on 2017 as the year when their plan may turn into silent action.

So far, 45 percent of the commands that are transmitted from one volunteer to another like "call in helicopter" or "enemy ahead" are correct. That statistic is expected to improve.

According to a soldier quoted in Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, many of those people who will be the ones utilizing the technology are on board.

"These days we learn warfare through video games and shoot with plastic weapons," the Daily Mail quoted the soldier as saying.

"One week it's science fiction the next it's on the front line. If it means I don't have to listen to my sergeant's voice one more day, then bring it on," the soldier said.

Others, including civil rights activists, take the opposite view, bringing up concerns about a possible infringement on civil liberties if the technology were to be misused. (ANI)