The US Military is hard at work looking for ways to detect roadside bombs. They’ve thrown billions of dollars at the problem and come up with aircraft, robots, hi-tech sensors. But ultimately they rely on dogs:

Pip the Arms and Explosives Search (AES) dog.

But in the war against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, no weapon is as effective as well-trained soldiers and their bomb-sniffing dogs, said Army Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, director of the Joint IED Defeat Organization.

“Dogs are the best detectors,” Oates said at an Oct. 20 news conference at JIEDDO headquarters in Arlington, Va.When dogs are teamed with small dismounted teams of U.S. and Afghan troops, they are capable of detecting 80 percent of IEDs, he said. “That combo presents the best detection system we currently have.”

[Via Technology Falls Short in the War Against IEDs - Blog.]

Try as we might, we still can’t match Nature.

Photo by Defence Images — http://flic.kr/p/8xvN79

In India, Cocker Spaniels are taking on some jobs that Labradors are just too big for. The National Security Guard (NSG) in India need to search aircraft for explosives, but the big Labs they used were causing problems:

Lucy, A Cocker Spaniel. Photo by Paxie.

“Pilots would often complain about the controls of the aircraft being disturbed by the wagging tail and long extremities of the Labradors during search operations. …

“We have also designed a carrying device called “the dog handle” so that the [Cocker Spaniels] can be carried like an instrument inside the aircraft and raised to cabin baggage and other high reaching inaccessible areas where a Labrador could not reach.

[Via : The Hindu : Front Page : NSG dog unit to replace Labradors with Cocker Spaniels.]