Nothing Sniffs Out Roadside Bombs Like a Dog's Nose

In the war on roadside bombs, the Pentagon has spent billions on everything from radio-signal jammers to robots, but there's one tool that's beaten them all -- dogs.

Now, instead of trying to come up with a technology that's better than dogs, Navy scientists are focusing on how to make the bomb-sniffing dogs work better.

Bomb sniffer dog Corporal Ace seaches for explosives near a US Marine from 1st Battalion, 6th regiment, Charlie company during a patrol around Huskers camp in the outskirts of Marjah in central Helmand on January 26, 2010.

Christophe Simon, AFP / Getty Images

Bomb-sniffing dog Corporal Ace searches for explosives near a U.S. Marine from 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment, Charlie Company during a patrol around Huskers camp in the outskirts of Marjah in Afghanistan's Helmand province on Jan. 26, 2010.

"There's been a lot of money spent trying to replicate dogs' noses through technology, trying to make a great piece of equipment that will work as well as a dog's nose," Lisa Albuquerque, a program manager with the Office of Naval Research, told reporters.

Scientists are working with the Marine Corps on what's called the Naval Expeditionary Dogs Science and Technology Program, trying to make better use of a dog's unique ability to sniff out explosives. "There really hasn't been that much scientific work done [on bomb-sniffing dogs], really since Vietnam," Albuquerque said.

The Pentagon continues to spend billions of dollars a year to battle improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which remain the leading killer of U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. The military also has tried any number of high-tech novelties, including exotic lasers. But in Afghanistan, where the bombs are decidedly low tech, many of these measures have proved too cumbersome or simply ineffective.

In many cases, the Pentagon is looking at low-tech but effective tools. For example, the military recently expressed interest in buying launched grapnel hooks, essentially a rifle-launched hook attacked to a cord that allows soldiers to dredge for potential trip wires.

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Dogs, however, are still regarded by the military as the best tool for fighting IEDs.

But bomb-sniffing dogs, while effective, have not traditionally been trained for use by the infantry in a war zone. So the Navy has been looking at new ways of selecting, raising and training dogs for bomb sniffing, even looking at how hunting dogs and guide dogs are trained. The result was the deployment in 2007 of what was called a "prototype" -- a dog trained specifically for deployment with the Marines to hunt IEDs.

"Yeah, it's a dog and it's a Labrador retriever," Albuquerque said, "but the process that created that dog has created something that's totally different from anyone else's dog anywhere."