Over the years, the U.S. defense apparatus has attempted to build an astonishing number of bizarre weapons. The Cold War was a time when it seemed like the Department of Defense and the CIA would try almost anything to get the edge over the Soviet Union.

From turning cats into listening devices to a plane that would drop nuclear waste forever, it was a real field day for the American military.

Read: The 6 Strangest Super Weapons of the Cold War

In 1973, the Army and the CIA, wanting to take advantage of Americans’ love for sports, created a literal explosive football designed to bust Soviet tanks. If a soldier could throw a spiral, they could help win World War III, giving a literal meaning to the term “long bomb.”

At the start of the Cold War, NATO planners envisioned as many as 175 Soviet divisions advancing across Western Europe. In their mind, NATO troops would find themselves fighting the Red Army’s new T-62 tanks in cities and towns, populated areas where the collateral damage from anti-tank missiles could kill civilians.

NATO needed something that could fight armored vehicles effectively but was smaller and could be used by a single soldier at short ranges. They also wanted a weapon that would not reveal a soldier’s location and leave them vulnerable to the enemy while being fired.

The Soviets had already developed the RKG-3 anti-tank grenade, which featured a shaped charge with a two-meter kill radius that was…