Special Operations Forces and the Military Working Dog

Dogs have competently served military ventures for over 2500 years. At onetime during WWII, there were nearly 15,000 trained military working dogs in the U.S.inventory serving a broad range of duties from patrolling to delivering messages. Todaythe U.S. military maintains fewer than 1,400 dogs.1 Although historic declines in dogutilization are apparent, today's operational environment clearly begs for an enhancedmilitary working dog capability-particularly with U.S. Special Operations forces.Technology preempted the decline of military working dog usage. During theCold War, the Warsaw Pact's numerical equipment superiority encouraged thedevelopment of equipment and doctrine designed to intercept and kill the enemy indepth in a high intensity conflict. Accordingly, the U.S. military focused on sophisticatedtechnological solutions. The dog as a low-technology system saw little developmentduring this period. As a result, military working dogs had limited use in an era of bipolarsuperpowers and nuclear brinkmanship