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‘Project Jedi’ aimed to teach soldiers to use the Force when firing weapons
Picture a firing range where the goal is not just to hit the target, but to hit it faster, calmer, and with less overthinking. Now picture someone pitching the U.S. Army on a training method inspired by “Star Wars,” complete with “the Force,” and the idea of using a weapon blindfolded.
In April 1988, the Washington Post printed an article titled, “The Pentagon’s Twilight Zone.” Its subject was something just like that: the real-life Project Jedi, where soldiers were taught to use the Force, yes, that Force, when shooting a .45-caliber pistol.Now Read: Official CIA documents reported that a UFO turned a Soviet infantry unit to stoneThe original “Star Wars” trilogy was still fresh in the minds of Americans, and the Cold War’s “outside the box” thinking had a dedicated following inside the U.S. military. It was a bizarre, but seemingly harmless combination. At least, that’s the fun version of events. The how and why are a little more convoluted and a lot more strange.
The story’s rabbit hole starts with an actual hostage crisis. On Dec. 17, 1981, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. James L. Dozier was kidnapped in Verona, Italy, by the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist group that posed as plumbers to get into his home. He was rescued after six weeks in what was the largest manhunt to ever take place in Italy.
However, while Italian security and police forces scoured the country for Dozier, Uncle Sam was trying its own methods of rescue, which included a mix of psychics, seers, and “remote viewing.”
Using that technique, the psychics thought they could find Dozier in their minds and direct security forces to his location. One seer even arrived in Italy wearing long, flowing saffron-colored robes, and asked to be taken to the apartment where Dozier had been captured and beaten so he could get a better “reading.”Ultimately, the psychics didn’t help in the hunt, and it rankled U.S. intelligence agencies that had to operate with the psychics underfoot, but it opened a door: the Army was clearly willing to try unusual avenues to accomplish a difficult job. An internal memo shows the list of possibilities got weird fast, including accelerated learning, previsualization, psychokinetics, and more. The Army wanted to find out.
Enter Project Jedi, which launched in 1984.
The project was a five-month experiment named after “Star Wars’” Jedi knights. For those who’vebeen living under a rock for the past 30-50 years, these are galactic warriors, who could use “the Force” to pull off unusual feats, which include using a weapon blindfolded.
The Army tested whether neurolinguistic programming, or NLP, could teach recruits to shoot .45-caliber pistols more quickly than conventional instruction. Inside the project write-up, NLP was described as “a specific discipline developed to model human excellence,” but it’s basically a grab bag of methods for changing how you think and talk so you can change how you act.It’s also considered to be a pseudoscience.
And the movie that was made about it has nothing to do with “Star Wars.” (Overture Films)
No matter how anyone feels about it, Project Jedi tested whether soldiers could use NLP to use their weapons. In other words, could they “feel the Force” to shoot, including the idea of using a weapon blindfolded?
Training was modeled on the movements of three expert marksmen while shooting. Their physical moves on the pistol range were carefully documented, and they were heavily interviewed to discuss their thoughts as they shot and moved with a gun in their hand.One example found that the marksmen’s success was greatly diminished when they were required to hum “Mary Had a Little Lamb” while shooting. Next, an independent contractor built a training module with all that information.
A total of 23 recruits were brought into the program, with some taught the old-fashioned way and others using the Jedi method. The results showed that it took almost half as long to train recruits under the Jedi principles. Eight of 11 traditional recruits qualified in their pistol test, while all Jedi recruits passed.However, critics inside the Army pointed to important flaws, including different weather and lighting conditions for the two groups, and the use of different firing ranges and instructors, all of which could skew the results. And with groups that small, the difference was not deemed statistically significant.
In 1985, Jedi-style ideas were tested through foreign-language instruction among 40 junior enlisted recruits, who were randomly assigned to two groups to learn Russian. Half were taught the “normal” way. The others were taught in a Jedi manner called “Suggestopedia,” which included a pleasant living room-lounge setting and gentle, soothing music in the background.Class sessions also started with stretching, moved into relaxation and breathing techniques, and used guided imagery to enhance performance. However, this experiment was a bust. It neither accelerated learning nor produced more positive attitudes than the standard course.
Next, Jedi methods were tested through sports performance. Researchers looked at “peak performance” and concluded that teaching people to regulate certain brain chemicals could be helpful for soldiers. In particular, they sought ways to control levels of endorphins, the chemicals thought to produce the “runner’s high.”
Ultimately, however, the problem with Jedi testing, and with a lot of the Army’s interest in remote viewing, sleep learning, guided imagery, and other unconventional ways of enhancing human performance, is that the scientific proof has always been controversial and slippery.Critics argued that many studies had flaws, making the findings questionable at best, and that without an adequate theory for why these phenomena would exist, they would be impossible to truly understand.Proponents cited anecdotal evidence, and there was also the classic Cold War argument that the Soviets might be moving ahead.
To sort out the mess, the Army commissioned a two-year study from the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, to review everything from stress management and biofeedback to accelerated learning and paranormal claims such as psychokinesis, ESP, and remote viewing.The report concluded that most of these unconventional techniques were “scientifically unsupported,” while still finding that some approaches, like guided imagery, sleep learning, and certain “super learning” programs, could be useful for training.
Ultimately, the program did not become a standard way to train soldiers, and the “Jedi” framing stayed mostly where it belonged: in a headline. More data on the program were released years later, after it was deemed sufficiently dated for public release.
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The post ‘Project Jedi’ aimed to teach soldiers to use the Force when firing weapons appeared first on We Are The Mighty.
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