Logistics of military experiments

Sep 11, 2012 20:20

I'm writing a cyberpunk-thriller that's set mostly in the present time (a few years in the future, but not much), so society is basically the same as we know it.

I know that the government every once in a while experiments with soldiers. And I don't necessarily mean in a secret conspiracy-way, but like legal, public experiments.

My question is: How would that go?
Let's say the government wanted a new kind of technology tested on human volunteers, namely soldiers. Something secret and potentially dangerous, so they would want to keep it under wraps. How would that go? Who would be in charge? Who would be involved? How far would politics be involved or play a role? And where would the money come from?
What kind of civilians would be involved - I assume the scientists who developed it and some of their assistants, or maybe even medicals in case something goes wrong? Anybody else? And more importantly - which military organization would be in charge? And who would choose the soldiers? Would they be from special forces, like the green berets or SAS or something like that or would you rather not risk those? And would they most likely all be from the same unit or more randomly assigned, like two marines here and three paratroopers there and so on?
In my story the experiments would go on for weeks or even months, so obviously they need to stay somewhere, preferably secure and secluded. What kind of base or facility would the army use for something like that? How would communications go, e.g. who would be allowed to receive or pass on information, contact the outside world etc.? And who would be in charge there?
Also - would it be possible to stage an experiment like that... international? I ask because my main characters are from the USA and England and the scientists are mainly from Germany. And if yes, how would that work out?

I searched mostly via google, but it's been pretty unhelpful so far, since I'm mostly interested in the logistics of it all and all I find are tons of (really interesting, but not really useful) conspiracy theories. ^^*
I searched using the following terms: "military experiments", "experiments on soldiers", "technology experiments military", "military funded research", "international military research", "international military experiments".
I'm also a psychologist which means I've read my fair share of experimental studies, including military funded research and experiments with soldiers as subjects, and I own a ton of books, but none of them mentions any of these things.

Interesting things I found during my search: For example this is a legitimate experiment where the army funded the research and the subjects where all army volunteers who were paralyzed with curare(!).
The Edgewood Arsenal experiments where German scientists seemed to have worked at Edgewood and for the CIA, so cross-national experiments seem to be possible?
Science, Technology, and Military Experimentation, Editorial which was helpful, but not helpful enough.
And a Wiki article about the History of military technology which was also interesting but didn't say much about the logistics of it all.

So if anybody knows anything at all about stuff like that, I would be really grateful for any and all information regarding the military research and experiments on soldiers.
Obviously I could simply make shit up, since it's Cyberpunk and everything, but I love to have some actual insight in how things work before I decide to ignore them or rewrite them for my purposes.

usa: military (misc), ~technology (misc), uk: military (misc), ~science (misc)

Previous post Next post
Up