Alabama Squadron, K9 Unit Team for Search Exercise

The Alabama Wing’s Redstone Composite Squadron combined forces with the locally based SARTEC K-9 Unit for a joint agency field training exercise simulating a missing person.

Two teams, each led by a search dog with its handler, worked with Redstone cadets and senior members to search wooded areas and fields in the morning.

The dogs, Bebe and Riley, used a search technique that involved sniffing each team member before searching for any human scent that didn't match.

A Civil Air Patrol drone  flew overhead, looking for the missing fisherman. In the early afternoon, the drone team discovered a clue and passed it along to the mission base, which directed ground teams were directed to the location. Lt Col. Bryce Kuykendall, incident commander, monitored the teams’ status and health.

At the specified location a trailing dog named Naika sniffed a sweatshirt in the field and determined the direction of the scent. A cadet team, followed by the drone, quickly found  Gilbert Sanderson, who had failed to return from a fishing trip in the exercise scenario, safe in a thicket of woods west of Huntsville International Airport.
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2nd Lt. Chris Butera
Public Affairs Officer
Redstone Composite Squadron
Alabama Wing