Dogs of war

Tessie and Binnie, the US Army's psychic dogs

...It didn’t take Binnie and Tessie long to find the fake mines. The work progressed and the military was impressed. But, was it all coincidence and random luck? To ensure that wasn’t the case, the Army began to make it more and more difficult for Tessie and Binnie to find the mines. Instead of just burying the bogus mines deep in the sand, they took the devices into the water – to depths of about six or seven feet – and had the pair try and find them. They succeeded. The dogs raced into the ocean water, dived below, then surfaced, barking excitedly when they found the mines. It was the water-based experiments that impressed the military most of all. Rhine told the Army: “There is at least no known way in which the dogs could have located the underwater mines except by extrasensory perception.”...

Dogs of war

The US Army has developed an advanced new head cover that will protect military dogs' hearing while riding in helicopters or being near loud explosions

This week the Army announced a new high-tech piece of combat armor intended for an unlikely subject: dogs.

Called Canine Auditory Protection System, or CAPS, the head covering is designed to protect military dogs from short-term hearing loss that can occur when working around loud vehicles and machinery.

The covering is made from flexible acoustic absorption material that filters loud noises and can stretch or shrink to accommodate almost any head size and shape.

'Even a short helicopter flight can affect a dog’s hearing, resulting in impaired performance and inability to hear the handler’s commands, which can hinder the mission,’ Army researcher Stephen Lee said.

‘This new technology protects the canine while on missions and can extend the dog's working life.’

Dogs of war

How four-legged heroes like military dog Conan are trained

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi spent the final moments of his life running from one of the US Military’s greatest weapons: a vicious Belgian Malinois named Conan.

But dogs like Conan are not born heroes — they have to be finely honed from everyday puppies into fearless four-legged warriors.

And it is no walk in the park.

It all starts at the 341st Training Squadron on the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where the military’s K-9s have been schooled since the 1960s to take on America’s enemies.

“We treat these dogs like combat athletes. They are a huge mission force multiplier for us,” Major Matthew Kowalski, the commander of the squadron, told The Post during a recent visit to see first-hand what it takes to train a pooch like Conan.

“If we were able to find something that could do their job, a piece of equipment, the government would wholeheartedly most likely buy as many of those pieces of equipment as we could but we haven’t found anything since and probably never will.”

The squadron’s “Guardians of the Night” program prepares the dogs to do everything from detecting deadly explosives to taking down enemies of the state like al-Baghdadi — who ultimately blew himself up rather than face Conan’s snarling wrath as the animal cornered him inside a dead-end tunnel in Syria last month.

Dogs of war

Dogs have been in the military since 600 BC. And they do some serious work

This week, President Donald Trump shared a declassified photo of a military working dog that was injured during the weekend raid that took down ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria.
Although details about the K-9 aren't public -- the Pentagon has said the dog's name needs to remain classified due to their affiliation with a classified unit -- it's a welcome reminder that military working dogs are an important and ever-present thread throughout America's military history.
In fact, dogs have been assisting military efforts all over the world for thousands of years. Here are some other things you may not know about these highly-trained canines.
...When most people think of modern military working dogs, they may think of a bomb-sniffing Belgian Malinois at a forward operating base somewhere overseas. That's definitely one facet of the job, but it's far from the only task military working dogs perform, and far from the only kind of military working dog to lend their services.
Major Matthew Kowalski is the 341st Training Squadron commander at Joint Base San Antonio in Lackland, Texas. The 341 TRS operates the Department of Defense's Military Working Dog Program, which is overseen by the United States Air Force. This group is responsible for virtually everything related to military working dogs -- their procurement, their training, their handlers, their assignments, and whatever services they may need after their time as a working dog is over.

Dogs of war

Robert Steele: Qatar Buys French Presidents

It is naive for citizens to not  realize that every European politican — as is the case with most US politicians — is not only bought and paid for in the moment, but is also subject to enormous pressures, both positive (guaranteed sugar daddies in waiting) and negative (those pedophile photos are always ready). President Holland is a pawn. He is trapped by forces he cannot comprehend and cannot control. President Obama is in a similar situation, but most interestingly, there appear to be several emergent constructive forces coming to his aid — a resurgence of integrity in counterintelligence; a resurgence of integrity in our most senior military ranks; and the tentative emergence and engagement of the Cultural Creatives, 100 million US citizens with a brain who are now paying attention.

I pray that the obviousness of the current French facade and the deceit of the varied parties involved in creating this facade, inspires the public to the point that President Obama receives the intelligence and the strategic roadmap that he needs to end his term with honor and in relative peace. I for one am eager and ready to help him — and the US Government — rejoin the real world.