("Chief"), in service with the
United States Army, patrolling with his handler SP4 Bealock during the
Vietnam War, 1960s Dogs have been used for many different purposes. Different
breeds were used for different tasks, but always met the demands of the
handlers. Many roles for dogs in war are obsolete and no longer practiced, but the concept of the war dog still remains alive and well in modern warfare.
Fighting , in service with the
United States military, undergoing escalation-of-force training during the
War in Afghanistan, 25 February 2005 In ancient times, dogs, often large mastiff-type breeds, would be strapped with armour or spiked collars and sent into battle to attack the enemy. This strategy was used by various civilizations, such as the Romans and the
Greeks. While not as common as in previous centuries, modern militaries continue to employ dogs in an attack role.
Special Operations forces of the US military still use dogs in raids for apprehending fleeing enemies or prisoners, or for searching areas too difficult or dangerous for human soldiers (such as crawl spaces). Another program attempted during World War II was suggested by a Swiss citizen living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. William A. Prestre proposed using large dogs to kill Japanese soldiers. He persuaded the military to lease an entire island in the Mississippi to house the training facilities. There, the army hoped to train as many as two million dogs. The idea was to begin island invasions with landing craft releasing thousands of dogs against the Japanese defenders, then followed up by troops as the Japanese defenders scattered in confusion. One of the biggest problems encountered was getting Japanese soldiers with whom to train the dogs, because few Japanese soldiers were being captured. Eventually, Japanese-American soldiers volunteered for the training. Another large problem was with the dogs; either they were too docile, did not properly respond to their beach-crossing training, or were terrified by shellfire. After millions of dollars were spent with inconclusive results, the program was abandoned. The Soviet Union used dogs for
antitank purposes beginning in the 1930s. Earlier antitank dogs were fitted with tilt-rod mines and trained to run beneath enemy tanks, which would detonate the mines automatically. However, the dogs were trained with stationary Russian tanks and very seldom ran under the moving tanks; instead, they were shot as they ran beside the moving tanks. When both Russian and German tanks were present, the dogs would preferentially run towards the familiar Russian tanks.
Logistics and communication s of the
Belgian Army walking with dog-drawn machine gun carts in the
Battle of the Frontiers during
World War I, 20 August 1914 , in
France during
World War I, 1 January 1918 About the time
World War I broke out, many European communities used dogs to pull small carts for milk deliveries and similar purposes. A Yorkshire terrier named
Smoky was used to run a telegraph wire through a , pipe to ensure communication without moving troops into the line of fire.
Mascots Dogs were often used as unit
mascots for military units. The dog in question might be an officer's dog, an animal that the unit chose to adopt, or one of their canines employed in another role as a working dog. Some naval dogs such as
Sinbad and
Judy were themselves enlisted service members. Some units also chose to employ a particular breed of dog as their standard mascot, with new dogs replacing the old when it died or was retired. The presence of a mascot was designed to lift
morale, and many were used to this effect in the trenches of World War I. An example of this would be
Sergeant Stubby for the US Army.
Vietnam The plight of the MWDs in Vietnam led to much campaigning by veterans and animal organizations. The campaigning finally led to the following alteration in the way military dogs are treated by law: President Bill Clinton made it a law that all military dogs were considered veterans, which allowed them to come home after service. The Vietnam War provided invaluable service from military working dogs, but also highlighted the failure in their post-service welfare. The initial policies leading to the abandonment and euthanasia of these loyal animals led to record activism that culminated in historic legislative reform. MWDs are now revered and admired for their service and are assured of the care and dignity they rightly deserve in retirement.
Medical research In World War II, dogs took on a new role in medical experimentation, as the primary animals chosen for
medical research. The animal experimentation allowed doctors to test new medicines without risking human lives, though these practices came under more scrutiny after the war. The United States' government responded by proclaiming these dogs as heroes. The
Cold War sparked a heated debate over the ethics of animal experimentation in the U.S., particularly aimed at how canines were treated in World War II.
Detection and tracking Many dogs were used to locate
mines. They did not prove to be very effective under combat conditions. Marine mine detecting dogs were trained using bare electric wires beneath the ground surface. The wires shocked the dogs, teaching them that danger lurked under the soil. Once the dog's focus was properly directed, dummy mines were planted and the dogs were trained to signal their presence. While the dogs effectively found the mines, the task proved so stressful for the dogs they were only able to work between 20 and 30 minutes at a time. The mine-detecting war dogs anticipated random shocks from the heretofore friendly earth, making them extremely nervous. The useful service life of the dogs was not long. Experiments with laboratory rats show that this trend can be very extreme; in some tests, rats even huddled in the corner to the point of starvation to avoid electric shock. Dogs have historically also been used in many cases to track fugitives and enemy troops, overlapping partly into the duties of a scout dog, but use their olfactory skill in tracking a scent, rather than warning a handler at the initial presentation of a scent.
Scouts , walking with their handlers to the frontline against the
Imperial Japanese Army during the
Bougainville campaign of
World War II, November/December 1943. All scout dogs must be taught the difference between human and animal scent. Some dogs are trained to silently locate booby traps and concealed enemies such as snipers. The dog's keen senses of smell and hearing would make them far more effective at detecting these dangers than humans. The best scout dogs are described as having a disposition intermediate to docile tracking dogs and aggressive attack dogs. Scout dogs were used in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam by the United States to detect ambushes, weapon caches, or enemy fighters hiding under water, with only reed breathing straws showing above the waterline. The US operated a number of scout-dog platoons (assigned on a handler-and-dog team basis to individual patrols) and had a dedicated dog-training school in
Fort Benning, Georgia.
Sentries One of the earliest military-related uses, sentry dogs were used to defend camps or other priority areas at night and sometimes during the day. They would bark or growl to alert guards of a stranger's presence. During the Cold War, the American military used sentry dog teams outside of nuclear weapons storage areas. A test program was conducted in Vietnam to test sentry dogs, launched two days after a successful
Vietcong attack on
Da Nang Air Base (July 1, 1965). Forty dog teams were deployed to Vietnam for a four-month test period, with teams placed on the perimeter in front of machine gun towers/bunkers. The detection of intruders resulted in a rapid deployment of reinforcements. The test was successful, so the handlers returned to the US while the dogs were reassigned to new handlers. The Air Force immediately started to ship dog teams to all the bases in Vietnam and Thailand. The buildup of American forces in Vietnam created large dog sections at USAF Southeast Asia (SEA) bases; 467 dogs were eventually assigned to
Bien Hoa,
Binh Thuy,
Cam Ranh Bay, Da Nang,
Nha Trang,
Tuy Hoa,
Phù Cát,
Phan Rang,
Tan Son Nhut, and
Pleiku Air Bases. Within a year of deployment, attacks on several bases had been stopped when the enemy forces were detected by dog teams. Captured Vietcong told of the fear and respect that they had for the dogs. The Vietcong even placed a bounty on lives of handlers and dogs. The success of sentry dogs was determined by the lack of successful penetrations of bases in Vietnam and Thailand. The United States War Dogs Association estimated that war dogs saved over 10,000 U.S. lives in Vietnam. Sentry Dogs were also used by the Army, Navy, and Marines to protect the perimeter of a large bases.
Modern uses , in service with the
United States Army, searches rubble outside of a target building in
Al-Rusafa, Baghdad, during the
Iraq War, 28 February 2009 Contemporary dogs in military roles are also often referred to as
police dogs, or in the United States and United Kingdom as a military working dog (MWD), or K-9. Their roles are nearly as varied as those of their ancient relatives, though they tend to be more rarely used in front-line formations. As of 2011, 600 U.S. MWDs were actively participating in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Traditionally, the most common breed for these police-type operations has been the
German Shepherd; in recent years, a shift has been made to smaller dogs with keener senses of smell for detection work, and more resilient breeds such as the
Belgian Malinois and
Dutch Shepherd for patrolling and law enforcement. All MWDs in use today are paired with a single individual after their training. This person is called a handler. While a handler usually does not stay with one dog for the length of either's career, usually a handler stays partnered with a dog for at least a year, and sometimes much longer. However, the length of the time with the dog and handler is very important. There must be trust between the two for things to work properly and smoothly. The handler must trust the dogs instincts to find a specific scent. The latest canine tactical vests are outfitted with cameras and durable microphones that allow dogs to relay audio and visual information to their handlers. In the 1970s, the US Air Force used over 1,600 dogs worldwide. Today, personnel cutbacks have reduced USAF dog teams to around 530, stationed throughout the world. Many dogs that operate in these roles are trained at
Lackland Air Force Base, the only United States facility that currently trains dogs for military use. the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia; the
Alfred M. Gray Marine Corps Research Center in
Quantico, Virginia;
Drug and explosives detection Both MWDs and their civilian counterparts provide service in drug detection, sniffing out a broad range of
psychoactive substances despite efforts at concealment. Provided they have been trained to detect it, MWDs can smell small traces of nearly any substance, even if it is in a sealed container. Dogs trained in drug detection are normally used at ports of embarkation such as
airports, checkpoints, and other places where security and a need for anti-
contraband measures exist. MWDs can also be trained to detect
explosives. As with narcotics, trained MWDs can detect minuscule amounts of a wide range of explosives, making them useful for searching entry points, patrolling within secure installations, and at
checkpoints. These dogs are capable of achieving over a 98% success rate in bomb detection.
Intimidation during the
2003 invasion of Iraq The use of MWDs on prisoners by the United States during recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been controversial. Dog ownership in the Middle East is relatively uncommon, as many Muslims
consider dogs unclean.
Iraq War: The United States has used dogs to intimidate prisoners in Iraqi prisons. In court testimony following the revelations of
Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, it was stated that Colonel
Thomas M. Pappas approved the use of dogs for interrogations. Private
Ivan L. Frederick testified that interrogators were authorized to use dogs and that a civilian contract interrogator left him lists of the cells he wanted dog handlers to visit. "They were allowed to use them to ... intimidate inmates", Frederick stated. Two soldiers, Sergeant
Santos A. Cardona and Sergeant Michael J. Smith, were then charged with maltreatment of detainees, for allegedly encouraging and permitting unmuzzled working dogs to threaten and attack them. Prosecutors have focused on an incident caught in published photographs, when the two men allegedly cornered a naked detainee and allowed the dogs to bite him on each thigh as he cowered in fear. The use of dogs on prisoners by regular U.S. forces in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base was prohibited by
Donald Rumsfeld in April 2003. A few months later, revelations of abuses at
Abu Ghraib prison were aired, including use of dogs to terrify naked prisoners; Rumsfeld then issued a further order prohibiting their use by the regular U.S. forces in Iraq.
Retirement Traditionally, as in
World War II, US MWDs were returned home after the war, to their former owners or new adoptive ones. The
Vietnam War was different in that U.S. war dogs were designated as expendable equipment and were either euthanized or turned over to an allied army prior to the U.S. departure from
South Vietnam. Due to lobbying efforts by veteran dog handlers from the Vietnam War,
Congress approved a bill allowing veteran U.S. MWDs to be adopted after their military service. In 2000, President
Bill Clinton signed a law that allowed these dogs to be adopted, making the Vietnam War the only American war in which U.S. war dogs never came home. Now it is something any K-9 owner can do in the workforce after the dog retires. The same goes for police dogs that were in the service as well.
Other roles Military working dogs continue to serve as sentries, trackers,
search and rescue, scouts, and mascots. Retired MWDs are often adopted as pets or
therapy dogs. ==Gallery==