Speckled Jim
Skinner's ideas were based upon stimulus and response -- the pigeons got more food the better they zeroed in on the target.
Problem was the pigeons could not identify between friendly and enemy ship -- aircraft could release missile and pigeon target the friendly ship!
I believe the US navy tried this idea with dolphins carrying explosives -- same problem enemy identification.
Russian's probably had better results based upon stimulus response -- dogs starved but feed near tanks -- therefore tanks = food. So dogs run to tanks which are the source of food.
Just need to keep you tanks out of the way when using the dogs armed with satchel charges.
Today Russia is mean't to be using Whales for intelligence gathering with go-pros attached to head.
I believe GB experimented with chickens and nuclear landmines -- chickens keep the mechanism war and you get cooked chicken.
I always liked the CIA spy cat.... microphone implanted in cat and areal stitched into the tail -- unfortunately cats do not obey orders and wander around cocktail parties intelligence gathering.
I believe the cat escaped and was run over -- multi-millions $ project was then abandoned or was it?
Now the name of the game is to try and make drones look like animals or birds -- drone bird can sit near target and listen/provide real time visual or even carry explosive.....sort of high tech pigeon post.