Aeroflot’s Canine Corps: jackal-dogs sniffing out explosives

22 Dec 2010

The use of dogs in the detection of narcotics and explosives is nothing new. Canine units are part and parcel of many a law enforcement agency’s arsenal and dogs olfactory sensitivities well known. Despite this, whilst Customs, Quarantine and Bio-security agencies routinely deploy them at border crossings, including airports, to sniff out illicit imports, there has been a reluctance to utilise them in pre-flight security screening. Philip Baum visited Moscow to see how one airline has invested in its own canine unit. Not only has Aeroflot embraced them as part of the counter-terrorist solution, the Russian carrier has gone a step further and is actively breeding its own dogs to ensure that their four-legged agents are the best in the pack.

The recent history of attacks against aviation has demonstrated that explosives remain the weapon of choice for extremist terrorist organisations and, as a result, we have seen huge investment in the research and development of explosive detection technologies. As an industry, we do tend to favour solutions that give us definitive alarms, hence the reluctance by many states to either embrace profiling, where humans make educated decisions, or to deploy canines to the front line, whatever their olfactory capacity.

Perhaps the prime argument against the use of dogs is that they don’t have any red light that illuminates when their battery power is running low. In other words, how do we know that they are functioning effectively and are not having an off-day? Well, it’s always easy to criticise, especially a solution that is not operating with a tick-box mentality. Yet, perhaps, that is the very reason we should be considering canine deployment; it is hard for us to understand the mind of a dog, so in the same vein it is also going to be extremely unnerving to those who wish to penetrate our security shield to have to bypass their mysterious decision making processes. And, as far as I know, dogs are not even prone to making decisions based on race, religion or gender…MORE ONLINE

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