Thread: Could we use dogs as "bunker busters"?

How well do you think it would work to send some really aggressive dogs down into a cave or a bunker to try and clear out all the bad guys down there? Do you think they could be trained to be selective about who they attack, avoiding women and children by smell? Maybe send them in to break up human shields too?

What if instead of just using their teeth, we mounted tazers on their heads, so when they went to bite someone, they got tazed? Are there any other weapons we could give them instead?

Since the dog's gonna die anyway, better plant a pipe bomb in it. Arguably this is more humane. Certainly more effective.

they already have, now they just need to use cats.

Originally Posted by Pong

Since the dog's gonna die anyway, better plant a pipe bomb in it. Arguably this is more humane. Certainly more effective.

I've been wondering if concerns over the humane-ness would be a principle reason why we don't use dogs for this purpose. Kind of ironic to think that getting one of our soldiers shot seems more humane to some people than getting a dog shot, but I guess we'd be a little less careful with the dog's life as well, in this scenario. Maybe it balances out.

So, you think it would be a good idea to use dogs (or some other animal) as a sort of underground missile? Maybe there are some kinds of animals that could be conditioned to chase down the nearest human smell and then blow up when they reach them?

Normally we bust bunkers by creating an opening. Then throw or fire explosives through the opening. Soldiers then occupy that cleared space, and, if necessary create further openings and so forth. A dog's no better than a grenade in this procedure.

Police use dogs because dogs cause little collateral damage. The police dog doesn't blow grandma's leg off or set the crib on fire. Soldiers often simply "clear" a house... that may be as ugly as you imagine.

A dog can't penetrate a building that is guarded at all entrances. Even where there's just one gunman, he's typically backed into a closet and aiming at the one doorway into the room. So he'll just shoot the dog. Anyway unless you put a camera on the dog you can't know what effect it has/had, so can't follow up any differently.

So I'm thinking... what we sent a massive brood of them? We know full well the guy in the closet will shoot a few of them, but the others will probably keep going and get him. So, it's kind of an "acceptable casualties" type situation, but y'know... they're just dogs. It's not like we're actually losing soldiers.

Besides, after the first few times we do this, the bad guys will probably realize that that "back into a closet and shoot them" approach is not a viable survival strategy, and start looking for ways to escape or something instead. Most people aren't willing to die just to deprive us of a few dogs.

I was gonna argue dogs are a lot of work to train, house, and handle in a conflict. But yeah I guess they occupy some middle values between hardware and human life.

I think dogs could effectively disorganize a defence.

Originally Posted by Pong

I was gonna argue dogs are a lot of work to train, house, and handle in a conflict. But yeah I guess they occupy some middle values between hardware and human life.

I wonder if people would feel too sentimental about it? Also, I have to agree that you're right: if they cost a lot to train and handle, then maybe we can't afford to send them in sufficient numbers to overwhelm an enemy?

To be honest, I kind of pulled this idea from playing "Red Alert 3". It's a massively funny game with some over the top military units. (And I'm pretty sure it's intended to be funny, not accidental.)

I'm sure even the soldiers would be too sentimental. A few years ago some Canadian soldiers witnessed an Afghan man cruelly beating his donkey. So they liberated the donkey... kept it in the base as mascot. To Afghans that is equivalent to liberating a tractor 'cause its owner kicks the engine, but such is industrialized morality.

I watched a police show wherein a dog sent into warehouse got stabbed with a pen while tugging at the burglar's limbs. The dog cop was so sobby and indignant that the "coward" would hurt a dog.

Maybe better use animals that nobody loves. Swarms of hornets?

as for today, dogs really wouldn't be useful for combat becuase they would easily be killed with a spray of a machine gun, but they are useful for stealth, and for the rednecks who value there dog more then themselves, tells you there not much more than a dog, we already use them for police, and military, but useing them for open field combat is not a good ideal.

Dogs utilized in military action and law enforcement have limited ability in subduing humans. They are primarily used to distract an individual while armed soldiers or police capture the combatant. They are not used in a direct action as the sole attacker. A dog cannot get up into the rocky mountains of Afghanistan, and would have little utility if so.

Likewise, dogs are not suitable for room clearing. Vital elements for clearing a house are surprise or distraction devices. Sending dogs into a house give away the intent and focus attention on the doorway, the "fatal funnel". As they are easily dispatched and cannot open doors, they are not capable distraction devices.

Good point Kruki, but they can bite, and they can scare, but they are only good for stealth.

Originally Posted by Kukhri

. As they are easily dispatched and cannot open doors, they are not capable distraction devices.

I totally forgot about the opening doors part. It's just really funny to think of this snarling Mastiff or Rottweiler getting stopped because they can't open a door, ... but it's true. They're completely helpless in that situation, aren't they?

And the worst part is the door doesn't even have to be locked.

Originally Posted by JoshuaCarter

they are only good for stealth.

You've said that twice now. What do you mean, good for stealth?

There no point in sending dogs now that we have remote controlled robots armed with whatever we can imagine. All we need now is mechanical teeth to bite enemies with.

Originally Posted by kojax

Besides, after the first few times we do this, the bad guys will probably realize that that "back into a closet and shoot them" approach is not a viable survival strategy.

It isn't anyway; not since the invention of the hand grenade.

One of the F'n stupidest ideas put forth on this forum, if you want a bunker cleared out YOU do it , leave the dogs out of it.

I suppose that depends on how valuable you consider a dog's life to be. If the dogs are capable of accomplishing the task, then you're talking about a situation where you have a guarantee of zero human casualties (on our side, at least.)

Maybe I should have asked about the possibility of using other animals we feel less sympathetic about. Maybe stampeding a herd of rabid pigs with bombs strapped to their flanks would be a better approach?

kojax, you play too much Call of Duty: World at War. Really though, do you play?

Originally Posted by kojax

Maybe I should have asked about the possibility of using other animals we feel less sympathetic about. Maybe stampeding a herd of rabid pigs with bombs strapped to their flanks would be a better approach?

What if your stampeding herd of rabid pigs, decide to go back to where your forces are ?, instead of going to the enemies bunker.

I have to admit I originally got the idea from Red Alert. The weapons they use in that game are just too funny.

Of anyone who has posted so far, I think Kukri's objections are the most on point. In all practicality, you need distraction and confusion in order to clear a building. Even playing a silly game like Counterstrike, you become aware of that. A flashbang is the only way I'd ever go around a corner if I didn't have "hitpoints" to absorb a few enemy bullets with. Now, if US forces were taking the kind of casualties that are seen as acceptible by players in Counterstrike games....... I'm sure the war effort would have failed a long time ago.

I wasn't objecting to the idea, but I could of been a bit off topic. I was just asking because I play COD:WaW and in the game you get a pack of vicious dogs that run around and get kills for you if you get seven kills in a row. Here is a video clip of what i'm talking about, this player get's chased down by an opposing players dogs . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHaC6BqN-M

I would value the dogs life more than the OPs

One thing I've learned playing chess is that the only way to defeat an opponent who relies heavily on their pawns is to use my own pawns against theirs. Any strategy that relies heavily on the use of bishops, knights, and rooks or the queen will fail against a pawn strategy.

We've lost the will to put our soldiers through meat grinders like Omaha Beach, and I don't think I'd be very happy seeing us go back to doing that kind of thing, so I'm just looking for someone or something else we can turn to and use as pawns.

Join the Army. Kojax

Originally Posted by fizzlooney

Join the Army. Kojax

Can't. I got turned down for asthma and orthopedic problems. So, I don't have formal training. I'd have gone in if I could. The Air Force Academy in Utah sent me some literature based on my academics, but I didn't want to go in if I couldn't be a pilot.

I'm almost glad I don't have formal training, because I think half the things they taught me would have been incorrect anyway. We're failing to change with the times. Tactical truth is not a majority vote. Like if 90% of the people in the armed forces decide to believe in something together, is the universe is going to reconfigure itself to make it true for them?

We're having the same problem the British had in the revolutionary war: too many professional soldiers idealistically committed to an outdated fighting style. Of course, the British were really good and disciplined at doing things in their quaint, already outdated way, and that still counts for something, but the winner was the side that had the most up to date tactics.

The rules of warfare no longer favor close in, soldier to soldier combat. IED's are supplanting sniper warfare, because you can use an IED from even further away, and with less exposure. Cheap munitions are better than expensive ones that are more technically advanced, because dollar ratios matter more than casualty ratios in the long run and the enemy doesn't have any expensive equipment for us to blow up. But the cheap stuff they do have is essential to their continued resistance, especially food. We're far more likely to win an economic war than a war of attrition, if we were using tactics that allowed for it.

One of my friends in the Marines had a missile launcher in their unit that supposedly cost $200,000 to replace if they fired it. They were only supposed to fire it if an extremely appropriate situation came up. For the most part, all the value they got out of it was that it had a thermal imaging scope. (What are the odds that any target worth $200,000.00 will ever be sitting there in front of them?) - If that's what official training teaches us to do, then you can keep your training. I don't want it.

Originally Posted by kojax

I'm almost glad I don't have formal training, because I think half the things they taught me would have been incorrect anyway. We're failing to change with the times. Tactical truth is not a majority vote. Like if 90% of the people in the armed forces decide to believe in something together, is the universe is going to reconfigure itself to make it true for them?

Tactical doctrine is written as a result of trial and error. Experienced leaders teach based on personal observations of success and failure. When for example, a new weapon is encountered such as the recently prolific Explosively Formed Projectile, the US armed forces often recieve briefings explaining the dangers and ways to counter it. Lack of formal training or experience is in no way advantageous. Fictional depictions in film or video games do not in any way offer a better perspective of war than real warriors have.

Originally Posted by kojax

We're having the same problem the British had in the revolutionary war: too many professional soldiers idealistically committed to an outdated fighting style. Of course, the British were really good and disciplined at doing things in their quaint, already outdated way, and that still counts for something, but the winner was the side that had the most up to date tactics.

Assuming by "we" you mean the US military, tactics adapt constantly to the reality of combat. British revolutionary war tactics were not at all outdated, though some shallow accounts remember them so. This topic is discussed in more detail elsewhere on the forum.

Originally Posted by kojax

The rules of warfare no longer favor close in, soldier to soldier combat. IED's are supplanting sniper warfare, because you can use an IED from even further away, and with less exposure.

False on all counts.

Originally Posted by kojax

Cheap munitions are better than expensive ones that are more technically advanced, because dollar ratios matter more than casualty ratios in the long run and the enemy doesn't have any expensive equipment for us to blow up.

Dollars can be more easily expended than experienced operators. The price of war is hardly the only relevant factor and the intention of the US military is clearly not to expend the enemy's money.

Originally Posted by Kukhri

Dollars can be more easily expended than experienced operators.

On one side, yes.

IMHO cutting costs i.e. cancelling contracts, laying-off workers, hurting shareholders, discharging Kukhri; is not a goal here. Rather the opposite, IMHO.

Theists/Christians often jokingly ask whether God can create a rock so heavy that he wouldn't be able to lift it, but it's a little bit less funny when we're talking about a country powerful enough that it can make a list of objectives too long for even its own tremendous might to obtain. ]My point is: when the real world squares off against the imagination, the imagination always wins. It's no great accomplishment for a dreamer to imagine an objective that a doer won't be able to do.

When people say the current wars in Iraq/Afghanistan are being run by politics, I think what some of them mean is that the dreamers are winning. Someone keeps telling the American people that it's possible to deliver this crazy image of a pristine utopian Iraq/Afghanistan, without harming so much as a fly.
http://www.salejeansmart.com/

Why use dogs when in these days of modern and advanced warfare we have UAVs etc to take out the bunker with extreme firepower?

Dogs would just be a nuisance that would never work, they can't open doors and don't have a controlled method of offense- they would all be shot dead by a high ROF machine gun in a few seconds...

Originally Posted by Kukhri

Originally Posted by kojax

I'm almost glad I don't have formal training, because I think half the things they taught me would have been incorrect anyway. We're failing to change with the times. Tactical truth is not a majority vote. Like if 90% of the people in the armed forces decide to believe in something together, is the universe is going to reconfigure itself to make it true for them?

Tactical doctrine is written as a result of trial and error. Experienced leaders teach based on personal observations of success and failure. When for example, a new weapon is encountered such as the recently prolific Explosively Formed Projectile, the US armed forces often recieve briefings explaining the dangers and ways to counter it. Lack of formal training or experience is in no way advantageous. Fictional depictions in film or video games do not in any way offer a better perspective of war than real warriors have.

From what I've seen, the main difference is that the enemy is willing to try radically different approaches, and the US military is just willing to fine tune, or tweak existing tactics. That's hard to do with an experience-focused mindset. If you want to win (at anything), sometimes you've just got to throw your entire plan out the window, and start from scratch.

Instead of just waiting for experience to come to us, we need to go find it. Try things that are totally unprecedented, for which no experience whatsoever exists, (and then only repeat those tactics that show promise on application, of course. )

One half of evolution is survival/propagation of the "fittest" (or best adapted). The other half is mutation. I just don't think the military does enough of that second half to keep up. Honestly: do you want to be sitting in some think tank in 2028 after we lose, and asking what we should have tried, but were too timid to try, in Afghanistan? Our enemy doesn't have that timidness. They'll try just about anything once.

Originally Posted by kojax

The rules of warfare no longer favor close in, soldier to soldier combat. IED's are supplanting sniper warfare, because you can use an IED from even further away, and with less exposure.

False on all counts.

You can activate an IED without even making it apparent that you're a combatant. Reduced exposure is at least one count I'm right on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0st0...eature=related

If you start at about minute 4 in that video, you can see one of the more severe IED attacks that have happened. You tell me: did the guy who set that bomb off have to give away his position to do it?

...the intention of the US military is clearly not to expend the enemy's money.

Why isn't it? Money is one of their biggest weaknesses, since they don't have much of it. Starry eyed idealistic young foot soldiers (/cannon fodder) is what they've got lots of. They're probably hoping the we'll be dumb enough to fight them on terms that are advantageous to them, instead of terms that are advantageous to the us.

What? Is this war just a huge ego trip? The USA has to demonstrate that it can beat the devil at his own game?

Dogs have been tested in wars before. Soviet had tens of thousands of trained military dogs deployed during the second world war. Sure most were probably guard dogs and other ordinary tasks. But they also had a project with anti-tank dogs. That were trained to crawl under tanks to be detonated. (Early attempts had the dogs deliver the bomb and return to it's trainer, but that was scrapped as the dogs often returned to their trainer still wearing the bomb.)

A few dozen german tanks were destroyed this way, however the strategy wasn't very effective. One mistake during WW2 was that the dogs were trained on Soviet tanks, making them their prefered target. Worse was that the dogs often were frightened by gunfire and moving tanks and returned back to the soviet trenches.

Apparently in 1943 USA also had a dog project similar to the one proposed in the thread where dogs were sent into enemy bunkers with explosives. This was canceled as the dogs often returned to sender instead of waiting for detonation.

There is a pretty interesting wikipedia article on it. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog

Ever hear of cruelty to animals laws?
Your idea is morally indefenseable!

We have JDAM missle's to clear out bunkers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

If dog's could fly.

Originally Posted by Pong

... unless you put a camera on the dog ...

So, strap a camera to a dog's head (perhaps a chihuahua ), a battery pack on its back, and an ear buds in its ears. The controllers watches the pictures sent back and directs the actions of the dog.