Wednesday, August 10, 2005

The Dog Bomb

And, this isn't the first time this has been tired!


On a barren stretch of road in northern Iraq, a dog rigged with explosives approaches a group of Iraqi police officers. Detonated by remote control, the bomb tears the dog apart but doesn't harm the cops.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-dogs10aug10,0,2727461.story?coll=la-home-headlines#Scene_1

Oh I think *economically* it makes sense since human life is economically more valuable than dog life, still it fills be with an unfamiliar emotion...

... I think that emotion is outrage.

and I think it's not unfamiliar.

"The Russian Dog Mine is described in The Book of Heroic Failures* Volume I. The weapon was supposed to work as follows: The dogs were kept hungry, and they were only fed underneath running tanks, to familiarize them with the high noise level. The dogs were then trained to get used to carrying a large weight of explosives (T.N.T.) strapped to their backs and sides. In operation, the dogs would be taken to the battlefield, and released when enemy tanks were clearly visible. The dogs would run underneath the enemy vehicles, expecting to be fed, and the device would be set off with catastrophic results for the tank, and the unsuspecting animal, of course. In actual use, the device did not work as planned. The dogs had been trained underneath Soviet tanks, and they only expected to be fed there, not underneath enemy vehicles. As a result, when they were first deployed in 1941, the dogs immediately made a beeline for the nearest Soviet vehicles. Apparently, an entire tank division had to be withdrawn from the combat zone until the infantry had shot all the uncontrollable mine dogs."

1 comment:

Brian Dunbar said...

One of those 'it sure sounded good in the conference room' kinda deals.

I have some sympathy for the Sov tankers.