by Richard Dawkins
A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in, say, on the heat of a jet plane’s exhaust. A great improvement on a simple ballistic shell, it still cannot discriminate particular targets. It could not zero in on a designated New York skyscraper if launched from as far away as Boston. That is precisely what a modern “smart missile” can do. Computer miniaturisation has advanced to the point where one of today’s smart missiles could be programmed with an image of the Manhattan skyline together with instructions to home in on the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Smart missiles of this sophistication are possessed by the United States, as we learned in the Gulf War, but they are economically beyond ordinary terrorists and scientifically beyond theocratic governments. Might there be a cheaper and easier alternative?
In the Second World War, before electronics became cheap and miniature, the psychologist B. F. Skinner did some research on pigeon-guided missiles. The pigeon was to sit in a tiny cockpit, having previously been trained to peck keys in such a way as to keep a designated target in the centre of a screen. In the missile, the target would be for real. The principle worked, although it was never put into practice by the US authorities. Even factoring in the costs of training them, pigeons are cheaper and lighter than computers of comparable effectiveness. Their feats in Skinner boxes suggest that a pigeon, after a regimen of training with color slides, really could guide a missile to a distinctive landmark at the southern end of Manhattan Island.
The above article is from the upcoming Winter 2001-2 issue of Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 22, Number 1.