By Amy Newcomb
GUIDON staff
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In May, members of the Mine Detection Dog training course from the Counter Explosives Hazards Center began working with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md., to help evaluate technical contract proposals for the development of the Rugged Automated Training System, which was awarded to Barron Associates Inc. in Charlottesville, Va.

This system is used to train rats as well as other small animals on the detection of explosives and other odors, and will determine if rats can be trained to save Soldiers’ lives, said Brian Nering, Mine Detection Dog course administrator.

However, expanding the Army’s detection capability through the R.A.T.S. program will not phase out the use of dogs, Nering said, and could actually help the MDD training course.

An essential part of the R.A.T.S. program, developed by Barron Associates Inc., is the monitoring system that measures the physiological reaction of the animal to an odor, which scientifically proves the animal has correctly identified the target odor, Nering said.   

“Specific to rats and MDDs is their search technique, which concentrates on ground odors,” Nering said. “This allows them to identify trace amounts of odor emitted from buried explosives, mines the size of hockey pucks and other explosive remnants of war, but most important is the identification of IED’s.”

Nering said it was possible that the CEHC and the MDD course could use some of the same technology from the R.A.T.S. program to refine training and testing of mine detection dogs as well in the determination of the optimum K-9 — Military Working Dog — for use in the search of explosives.

“Where that is important is we have a multitude of dogs out there,” Nering said. “You have the mine detection dogs that concentrate strictly on ground odor, and you have specialized search that concentrates on air odor or air scent, so if we can use that same monitoring technique on the dogs then we will have undisputed scientific evidence as to which dog can detect what at what level.”

Jim Pettit, MDD program manager, said this research was important for the military because it could benefit the explosives detection training for all military dogs, especially the MDDs trained here at Fort Leonard Wood.

“It could make training easier and more consistent leading to lower costs and potentially faster training time,” he said.

“Since the Engineers have a collective task to clear areas and routes of explosive hazards, there is a mutual benefit in working closely with the Army Research Lab and this program,” Nering added.

Pettit said the program could possibly take five years before it’s ready to be implemented, especially where the MDDs are concerned.

“The research with rats has to prove successful,” Pettit said. “As the training methods for rats are different than for dogs, the automated training system will probably require modifications before dogs can be trained with it.”

Currently, there are 66 countries and 7 territories that are affected by landmines and explosive remnants of war and the automated system used to train rats to find mines could accelerate worldwide efforts to clear mined areas.