WMDs and IEDs - Good for Beezness

You read about cold fusion reactors, you read about hafnium bombs, even "gay spray," and still you wonder what crazy ideas scientists will pitch for the advancement of military capabilities. In today's case, why not explosive and chem-bio sniffing honey-bees? In yesterday's Washington Post:

Some promising technologies fizzled. The Defense Department invested more than $2 million in the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project, including extensive research at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the "Manhattan Project-like" effort that Abizaid had called for had realized its goal: a nuclear bomb. Various engineers were pursuing the "scientific molecular sniffer" that Abizaid had also envisioned shortly after taking over at Centcom in 2003, but Los Alamos hoped to exploit the honeybee's keen sense of smell as a means to detect explosives.

Researchers placed each bee in a tiny harness, exposed the insects to various explosive scents for six seconds, and then provided a sugar water reward. This Pavlovian conditioning soon caused a bee to extend its proboscis -- tongue -- in anticipation of sugar whenever it detected a whiff of TNT or C-4 plastic explosive. A small television camera placed in a box where the bees were harnessed would allow a soldier watching a monitor to see whether the "proboscis extension reflex" signaled the presence of explosives. In 2004, bees had stuck out their tongues at 50 pounds of TNT in a simulated IED, according to Robert Wingo, a Los Alamos chemist.

Votel's reaction upon learning of the project was typical: "What?" The practical applications in combat seemed limited. "How do we operationalize this?" he asked. "How does, say, 1st Platoon manage their bees?" Among other problems, harnessed bees tended to be short-lived. After an analysis concluded that the honeybee's "explosive-detection capabilities have significant reliability issues," as a Defense Department official put it earlier this year, the Pentagon withdrew its support.

This idea to use honey-bees to sniff out explosives and chem-bio warfare agents is not new. LANL has been pitching this idea for maybe a decade. Ever since the Cold War ended and concerns about CBRN terrorism grew, LANL (and the other DoE labs) have looked to refocusing their nuclear weapons skills into defenses for CB warfare. Hey, they had ideas, if not the talents. They also have contacts to get money from fat defense wallets.

I don't know how any military analyst or "user representative" could seriously listen to a LANL researcher talk about the potential of bees as hazard sniffers, let alone give them $2 million walking money. I mean, at the least, think about the expense of stitching those tiny harnesses needed to walk the honey bees down a road with suspected IEDs...