Remembering Project ACORN

Doolittle's spies in a joint concept of integrated operations

That squirrel may be watching you and tracking your movements. Or maybe not. Would you know for sure? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean everyone isn’t out to get you.

Back in July 2007, Iran’s official news agency declared that Iran captured 14 “spy squirrels.”¹ According to Turkish government media at the time,

Iranian police [have] captured 14 “spy squirrels” equipped with modern technology, including GPS units, cameras, and listening devices.

The report said that the squirrels that were trained for espionage and information-gathering are believed to be sent to Iran by Israel.

The squirrels, I suggested,² uplinked to pigeons loitering overhead, who relayed the data to a gopher in a command bunker, who tasked badgers, some of whom trained in Basra (headline from a different source that same month: “Brit troops release badger plague on Basra”).

A year later, another element of the modern secret squirrel network was revealed. Again, it was the Iranians but this time it spy pigeons, as reported by Wired.

Iranian security forces have apprehended a pair of "spy pigeons," not far from one of the country’s nuclear processing plants. If local media reports are to be believed, that is.

One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan, down the road from the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.  It had “a wired rod” and “invisible threads… fixed to its body,” an unnamed source tells the Etemad Melli newspaper. A second, black pigeon was nabbed earlier in the month. …

Rewind to 2007 after the first revelation of “Doolittle’s spies.” It was then Dave Dilegge, co-founder of Small Wars Journal, diagramed the joint concept for an integrated campaign: Project ACORN.

In the spirit of the satirical campaign, Birds Aren’t Real, you be the judge.

---

On a serious note, Lonnie Johnson wrote a considered response to my Fulbright post the other day. You can find that here. I followed up with a “brief” comment, but he – and the subject – deserves a more detailed response. I can’t commit to when I’ll post that, but I figure it will be Part II in the occasional series.

1. Back then, I spent a lot of time on the informational effects of unmanned (autonomous, semi-autonomous, or remotely controlled) land-based mobile combat systems in an increasingly transparent battlespace.

2. This was tongue-in-cheek, of course. I feel like today I need to make that clear.