Weapon X
Weapon X was the codename of a joint program between United States government and Canada's Department H, designed to create enhanced soldiers for various military operations. It would later become the operational name for a covert group of agents control by Colonel William Stryker for his own agenda. The full information about the project is currently known only to a handful of people; what is known through classified government and military records is only that its operatives were used in various covert operations through the 1980s and 1990s.
Weapon X began as part of the WEAPON series of projects; a group of joint initiatives between the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and various domestic and foreign groups exploring the potential effects and applications of mutant powers. At the time, mutants were considered as an element of biological warfare, which required most of the WEAPON projects to be conducted secretly. It is believed that a total of 24 WEAPON projects were funded between the early 80s and into the mid-90s, before they were all shut down and research into mutants passed from USAMRIID into regular military channels. Noted geneticist Dr. Nathaniel Essex was part of WEAPON IX, XIV, and XIX.
WEAPON X was initially designed to see how technology and genetics could be used to augment existing mutants, to better adapt their powers to covert operations. Department H, the Canadian agency in charge of mutant research in that country paired with USAMRIID on the project, and they attracted noted scientists like Kenji Oyama.
The project was overseen by Colonel William Stryker, a former decorated Vietnam helicopter pilot, who had moved into covert operations for the US military. Stryker had already been assembling and using mutant operatives for his own missions, not all of which were known to the US military. Stryker saw great potential in the program, but did not want to see it co-opted out from under his control. As a result, he pushed through an aggressive series of experiments using his own operatives as subjects.
One of Stryker's operatives, Wolverine, escaped the Alkali Lake facility not long after his experimental treatments were completed. The backlash from the security breach killed the funding to WEAPON X, and it was officially shut down. However, Stryker had been planning for this very opportunity, putting himself put in charge of securing the remaining assets of the WEAPON X project and making sure the project never became public knowledge. Department H severed ties with the program at this point, believing it to be a failure and that it would be rendered defunct by the US government. Department H currently holds what is believed to be the only surviving official records of the project prior to its termination, secretly archived by Director Malcolm Colcord. It is unknown whether or not Colcord is aware that Logan was a WEAPON X subject.
Stryker successfully blackmailed Senator Graydon Creed into keeping his funding going, and co-opted the name Weapon X as the title of his personal black-operations squad. In the mid 90s, Stryker would reduce his operations in favour of new programs linked closer to his growing obsession of the mutant threat. Many of his older operatives such as David North found themselves put under deep cover, or quietly retired or eliminated.
Stryker relocated all his facilities to Alkali Lake, believed to be completely closed down by the government. His new initiatives involved the SHIVA program, a failsafe in case any of the old operatives were to go public with their knowledge of Weapon X, or endanger his program in some way. There was also considerable research into a second generation of Weapon X operatives, ones more closely controlled and secretly tied to Stryker. Following Stryker's death after the events of X2, the remnants of the Weapon X project passed to Daniel Lyman, Stryker's long time lieutenant. While Lyman held control of most of Weapon X's assets, much of the research and data on the various experiments and agents were lost with Stryker's death.
