Air force of bomb sniffing bees.

www.breitbart.com...

US military defense scientists have found a way to train the common honey bee to smell explosives used in bombs, a skill they say could help protect American troops abroad.
Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said in an online statement published Monday they had developed a method to harness the bee's exceptional olfactory sense.

The new techniques could become a leading tool in the fight against the use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which present a critical vulnerability for American military troops abroad and is an emerging danger for civilians worldwide," the research laboratory said.

The scientists used Pavlovian techniques on the bees' natural response to nectar, a sticking out of their tongue, or proboscis extension reflex.

By rewarding them with sugar water, the scientists taught bees to give the same reflex action when they were exposed to vapors from explosives such as dynamite, C4 plastic and TATP (triacetone triperoxide), often used by suicide bombers.

Are the troops going to be carrying them around in their pockets?


Sounds interesting, don't know the effectiveness of using these bees unless tested in a real battlefield. Insurgents probably just pour honey all around their vehicles but that just be like telling American troops at checkpoints that somethings going on, after all, who pours honey all over their vehicles?

Imagine the reaction of local Iraqis when US troops start opening jars full of bees at checkpoints.

We are all skeptical of new and unorthodox methods but that does not athey are totally useless. Remember the Bat Bomb from WWII? One of the most cost effective and capable incendiary systems the US developed.

Wait a minute, if some bees escaped and begun to populate the wild, wouldn't it become, well, a local hazard?

At first we have ppl trying to sue the respective countries of NATO for failing to mark and warn the local population somewhere in Europe

There's also an old thread on this, if you want to take a look

Bomb and Drug-Sniffing Wasps

...so there's apparently bomb sniffing wasps and bomb sniffing bees. This thread is not closed (and never was). Just sayin'

im sorry but that is one of the most outrageous ideas in the world

on the bright side they wont run out of honey
well they could also be used for that
just sayin