40 Interesting Government and Military Operations

Operation Looking Glass was a 24-hour a day, continuously airborne command center capable of directing all of the United States' nuclear assets as a backup, should SAC's ground facilities be destroyed. Taking turns, the airplanes stayed continuously staffed for 29 years.

In 1953 CIA launched Operation Ajax which was a plot to overthrow Iran's democratically elected government. As part of the mission, CIA agents bombed the house of a prominent Muslim while posing as pro-government supporters. Iran’s democratically elected leader was successfully overthrown and about 200-300 people were killed.

Winston Churchill had a plan called "Operation Unthinkable" to invade the Soviet Union in a surprise attack immediately after the end of World War 2. His plan was finally shot down when it was learned that the Soviet troops remaining outnumbered allied troops 3:1.

In 2003, the U.S. military planned to attach caged chickens to the top of their Hum-Vees as they entered Iraq, to act as an early warning system to any dangerous chemicals or nerve agents. The operation was dubbed Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken (KFC).

Operation INFEKTION was a disinformation campaign run by the KGB in the 1980s to spread information that the United States invented HIV/AIDS as part of a biological weapons research project at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night was a 1945 plan developed by Japanese army medical officer Shirō Ishii to wage biological warfare upon civilian population centers in Southern California in the United States during the final months of World War 2, using plague fleas from unit 731.

In 1962 the US Government proposed Operation Northwoods, a plan to commit acts of 'false flag' terrorism on American soil, for which Cuba would be blamed, in an effort to gain public support for a US invasion of Cuba. The plan was rejected by the Kennedy Administration.

British intelligence once executed "Operation Cupcake" to hack an online al-Qaeda magazine, replacing bomb-making instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.

Operation Christmas Drop is an air force training exercise where the US Air Force drops presents and supplies in Micronesia. This is the longest running humanitarian airlift in the world. Supplies and presents have been dropped every Christmas since 1952.

Operation Wetback was a 1954 operation by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to remove illegal immigrants, mostly Mexican nationals from the southwestern United States.