The Military Wants to Create the Ultimate Good Boy

Humanity has kindly shared the horrors of war with our animal-kin for thousands of years, so it's heartening to see the Department of Defense is finally focused on creating the ultimate Good Boy—a proud pupperino ready to serve with the utmost of canine courage.

The United States Special Operations Command is in the market for pharmaceuticals to boost the performance of its working dogs (not officially designated fighting fluffers, but rather 'multi-purpose canines').

Police forces have already turned doggos into cybernetic hunters, but a new bio-medical tender specifically asks for an nutraceutical or pharmaceutical that can ramp up the vision, hearing, and scent abilities of a dog, alongside enhancing the animal's endurance and hydration. As this is US Special Forces, under which dogs operate in dangerous war zones, the tender also asks for the drugs to decrease the adverse effects of trauma caused by blood loss.

"The optimization of [a dog's] ability to perform at very high levels for long durations and to process the operational environment under high levels of stress and distraction will significantly improve their operational effectiveness and recovery," explains the tender, viewable here on the DoD's Small Business Innovation Research portal.

Not content with just super floofs for Special Forces though, the US Army is also fielding applications in the same SBIR round for a military working dog 'hearing protection and active communication system'. Essentially, earplugs and a radio link for hooman-to-pupper communication.

"A functional active Military Working Dog hearing protective/handler communication device will greatly extend canine health and long term mission performance," explains the DoD brief. "In an effort to protect this valuable trained asset and prevent hearing loss acquisition, USAMRMC seeks to develop a functional canine hearing protection system with an active communication component for use in the military environment. Currently a system of this capability is not available for DoD use."

Read more: World War II Can't Save 'Call of Duty'

Of course, where there are good boys, there are also bad borkers. The final DoD request in a trio of canine tenders is for a 'canine response inhibitor''—aka, something that can stop the enemy borks when the soldiers are moving through enemy territory.

Special Forces, by nature of their deployments, "must be able to walk or run undetected through rural and urban areas without alerting adversarial domesticated and feral canines," says the tender. Acceptable anti-doggo tools can inhibit barking, howling, whining, and even induce unconsciousness.

Better make sure you're all h*ckin' good boys and girls or else a frighten's about to be done.

Subscribe to Science Solved It, Motherboard's new show about the greatest mysteries that were solved by science.