Rebecca’s war dogs of the week: Stupid Labradors become bilingual aces

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense goddess of dogginess

It seems that India is attempting to infuse its military workings dogs with a little James Bond style mojo.

According to reports out this week, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is claiming to have a one-of-a-kind elite war-dog team. Details of this new force, comprised of six Labrador Retrievers called Bomb Drop Dogs (BBD) who’ve been trained at the ITBP’s National Training Centre for Dogs, range from the intriguing to the insignificant bordering on painfully obvious.

According to a report in the Telegraph, India’s BBDs boast a variety of Mission Impossible worthy skills including the ability to: "carry explosives in their teeth, sneak into terrorists’ lairs, drop remote-controlled bombs, hide secret cameras, understand instructions in English and Hindi and interpret body language."

But in a statement to The Pioneer that outlined the scope of this program and its aims, the Additional Director General of the ITBP, Dilip Trivedi, said that the team of six BBDs would go a long way to "minimise casualties of our soldiers" because BBDs could "approach the target and secretly plant explosives. When it goes off, the terrorists would be exposed and thus easily targeted. As they are smaller in size to men, these canines are not easily spotted by the enemy. According to the situations, they further lower themselves and approach targets by crawling." (This is the painfully obvious part, History of Military Working Dogs 101.)

Still, another, more compelling point of view was given to the Telegraph by the Indo-Tibetan Police Force’s spokesman, DK Pandey (who was also sure to make assurances about the focus on the dogs’ safety):

It’s the first time in India such a dog squad has been successfully trained in dropping of bombs, video and audio devices and other equipment inside enemy hideouts. They will be carrying them in their mouth and drop it inside the suspected hideout and when [the dogs] report back to their handler and commander, then only the next step will be taken — triggering the blast through remote control,’ [Pandey said.]

While noteworthy, I’m not ready to concede that India’s BBDs yet have a paw up in the wide world of MWDs. While I don’t doubt that these Labs are highly trained or that these dogs are capable of learning such intricate tasks, India’s BBD force still appears to be in the early stages. There are no reports that this training has been put to use or proven successful and effective in the field. Let’s put this one in the wait-and-see pile.