Dogs beat machines at detecting IEDs
Readers of this blog won’t be surprised to learn that, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch puts it, “Dogs turn out to be best at finding IEDs.” This isn’t just a point to warm Rebecca’s heart. There are some serious lessons to be learned from the more than $15 billion (that’s a B, fellas) the Pentagon ...
Readers of this blog won't be surprised to learn that, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch puts it, "Dogs turn out to be best at finding IEDs."
Readers of this blog won’t be surprised to learn that, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch puts it, “Dogs turn out to be best at finding IEDs.”
This isn’t just a point to warm Rebecca’s heart. There are some serious lessons to be learned from the more than $15 billion (that’s a B, fellas) the Pentagon spent on its effort to defeat IEDs technologically. But it turns out that the two most dependable ways to counter the roadside bombs are both warm-blooded. The first is the dog, to detect bombs planted. The second is putting soldiers who have a bit of Arabic out in an outpost in a neighborhood for weeks at a time and protecting people sufficiently that they feel safe pointing out to soldiers who is planting the bombs or where they are. As an Iraqi once put it to a U.S. Army commander in Ramadi, we all knew who the insurgents were, we just couldn’t tell you and expect to live.
I think there probably is a good dissertation to be done by someone out there about how most of that $15 billion got wasted here.
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