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Dolphins Trained For Military & Other Tasks

Timble2

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This story sounds like the plot of a hollywood thriller (possibly based on a novel by Michael Crichton). I'm not sure if it's true in the sense of actuallly having happened...


The Observer

Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

by Mark Townsend Houston
Sunday September 25, 2005
The Observer



It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.

'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?'

Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan.

The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy's help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them.

Sheridan is convinced the scientists were keen to ensure the dolphins were not the navy's, understood to be kept in training ponds in a sound in Louisiana, close to Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters devastated New Orleans.

The navy launched the classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission in San Diego in 1989, where dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea.

Criticism from animal rights groups ensured the use of dolphins became more secretive. But the project gained impetus after the Yemen terror attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Dolphins have also been used to detect mines near an Iraqi port.
 
Timble2 said:
I'm not sure if it's true in the sense of actuallly having happened...

:rofl:

We really shouldn't be getting Dolphins involved in this kind of thing though. It's not on.
 
Would the neck harness have the gun on it too? They'd have to have something like in the Dolphins mouth to make the gun go off though or something the Dolphin could do to set a gun off.
 
Anyone remember the book or film Day of the Dolphin? In that, the dolphins talk as well as being trained to attach bombs to ships. "Pa! Fa!"
 
gncxx said:
Anyone remember the book or film Day of the Dolphin? In that, the dolphins talk as well as being trained to attach bombs to ships. "Pa! Fa!"

No but I remember a Simpsons with Dolphins taking over Springfield in a halloween special. 8)
 
gncxx said:
Anyone remember the book or film Day of the Dolphin? In that, the dolphins talk as well as being trained to attach bombs to ships. "Pa! Fa!"

Yes, that's going back a bit. Not very good IIRC.
 
so long and thanks for all the fish

Like a cross between the life aquatic, the hitchiker's guide to the galaxy and Deep Blue Sea.... nightmarish. Maybe they're all out there capping great whites, having a whale of a time..

geddit?

kisses
 
Re: so long and thanks for all the fish

daisys1 said:
Like a cross between the life aquatic, the hitchiker's guide to the galaxy and Deep Blue Sea.... nightmarish. Maybe they're all out there capping great whites, having a whale of a time..

geddit?

kisses

I don't get it! :shock: :p
 
I hope you do.

Or am I just so rooted in popular culture I make jokes that don't exist?

This one is mamalian actually, do I need to spell it out? Or are you pulling my leg.

We should all be in bed. :roll:
 
"whale of a time"

dolphin? Having a whale of a time? Whale - dolphin?

Maybe it's not even a joke, it's certainly not funny - I wouldn't argue with that.

I really am giving up and going to bed.

Later max

x[/quote]
 
daisys1 said:
"whale of a time"

dolphin? Having a whale of a time? Whale - dolphin?

Maybe it's not even a joke, it's certainly not funny - I wouldn't argue with that.

I really am giving up and going to bed.

Later max

x

Yeah I get that bit but thought it wasn't a joke. ;)
 
If such a harness really existed, do you really think that the dolphins go around wearing them 24/7 and not just when they are on a mission, or that they would work anything like as described?

The story is full of holes and the source does not have the greatest track record, but there have always been questions over the ethics of the USN's Marine Mammal program.

However, given the number of marine mammals that get exterminated by the USN's indiscriminate use of high-powered sonar, I'm not convinced this one is so much of an issue.
 
Somebody saw Austin Powers and decided to turn the rescue of those 8 oceanarium dolphins into something more sinister. I visited my usual source for debunking stories like this and followed a link to MSN. The dolphins are trained to hunt for mines and the like, not attack anyone. And even if they were, like wembley8 said, would they really have the dart guns on them 24/7? Of course not. And there was plenty of time before the hurricane hit to relocate the dolphins or at least insure they were secure and would not get sept away. If the military really had spent all this money training dolphins to shoot people, would they risk losing them when they had ample time to protect them?

daisys1, I got your joke and chuckled. Okay, so I actually snorted instead at the pun but it was, obviuosly, a joke. :p
 
Reminds me of the Don Knotts movie, "The Incredible Mr. Limpet," concerning the fish who helped sink subs. :D
 
evilsprout said:
Snopes gives it a status of "probably not". http://www.snopes.com/katrina/rumor/dolphins.asp

I remember when Katrina first hit there were reports of (normal, non-killer) Dolphins being washed out from an oceanarium, and later found out to sea. Maybe someone heard this and wove it into this.

Here's something that should be verifiable: one version I heard was that the recovery effort of the "civilian" dolphins was aided by the US Navy, and that the navy supplied the pre-fab tank that the refugee (evacuee?) dolphins were moved to. The implication being that the navy was quite interested in checking out these dolphins, assumedly to verify whether they were the navy's dolphins or not.
 
I went to NOAA's website, which is where I first heard about the non-lethal dolphin rescue and they mention that not only did the Navy help them, so did the Coast Guard, the Air National Guard and the Harbor Branch maybe keeping this secret for the Navy, I can't see NOAA and the oceanographers all keeping their mouths shut.

To give credit where credit is due, BTW, NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a really cool site at NOAA.gov
 
I checked this one out quite thoroughly; my view is that the dart-firing dolphin assassins freed by Katrinas are a complete myth.

However, there are real questions over some of the activities carried out by the Marine Mammal Program's precursors...and an aggravating absence of solid evidence. The claims all come down to a small group of ex-Navy individuals whose stories are not all consistent. Very tricky indeed, and I don't know if I can see any way of finding the truth, unless something turns up in the declassifieds.
 
Navy Dolphin Patrol Under Fire
By Noah Shachtman

The sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads were unavailable, apparently. So instead, the U.S. Navy wants to use teams of strobelight-wielding dolphins and sea lions, to protect a nuclear submarine base against enemy swimmers.

The plan, first floated in 2007, enraged local environmentalist groups. Sure, dolphins already patrol the sub base in Kings Bay, Georgia, they argue. But in the waters around Washington state's Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, flipper and friends would just be too chilly.

Not so, the Navy responded. "The dolphins would only be on duty for two hours at a time and otherwise be in heated enclosures," the Kitsap Sun notes. Environmental impact hearings are scheduled for next month.

Under the Navy's plan, the paper explains, the dolphins "would work only at night" around the base, which serves as the home port for eight nuclear missile-carrying Trident submarines. The marine mammals would use their speed and underwater sensing abilities to look for dog-paddling adversaries. If the dolphins found such an intruder, they would drop a strobe light nearby. "The light would float to the surface, marking the spot." Human security guards in nearby speedboats would race to the light, to handle the rest.

The sea lions would play an even more active role in enemy apprehension. They would "carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If they found a suspicious swimmer, they would clamp the cuff around the person’s leg. The intruder [would] then be reeled in for questioning."

As nutty as the whole thing sounds, the Navy allegedly trained marine mammals for even more extreme missions during the Cold War. In 1977, Michael Greenwood, a former Navy dolphin trainer, claimed that dolphins had been armed with "large hypodermic syringes loaded with pressurized carbon dioxide" which would cause enemy divers to literally blow up.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/n ... in-pa.html
 
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More Dolphin Assassins, these guys do it on porpoise.

Report: Ukraine Trains Dolphins With Friggin’ Pistols on Their Heads
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/dolphins/
By Robert BeckhusenEmail AuthorOctober 12, 2012 | 3:00 pm | Categories: Bizarro


A mine-seeking U.S. Navy dolphin chills out before a snack. Photo: Navy
Killer dolphins with knives and pistols attached to their heads. It might sound crazy, but that’s reportedly one element of the Ukrainian navy’s restarted marine mammal program.

The program reportedly includes training dolphins to search for mines and marking them with buoys. But Ukraine also plans to train the dolphins “to attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads,” according to RIA Novosti. A source inside the Ukrainian navy told the agency that the exercises, which are being conducted at the state oceanarium in Sevastopol, are “counter-combat swimmer tasks in order to defend ships in port and on raids.”

Largely, using dolphins for military purposes is no secret. The U.S. Navy trains dolphins to hunt mines, and tests several dolphin-based systems designed to stop enemy divers from infiltrating harbors. The Soviet Union had a dolphin program of its own based at the Black Sea port of Sevastopol until the USSR cracked apart. The Soviet dolphin unit stayed in Sevastopol, but ownership was transferred to Ukraine, where it was kept afloat by switching to civilian tasks like working with disabled children, according to the agency.

Now they’ll be trained to kill, allegedly. If so, it won’t necessarily be the first time. Russian commandos trained to fight dolphins in case the animals were ever used against them. The Soviet navy once deployed dolphins armed with hypodermic syringes loaded with carbon dioxide, according to one dolphin expert who advised the Sevastopol base on caring for the animals after the program first ended. Soviet dolphins were also purportedly trained to attach mines to ships, and were attached with parachutes before being thrown from helicopters.

Rumors about killer dolphins have also been directed at the U.S. Navy. One former Navy dolphin trainer said the Navy experimented with arming dolphins with syringes. In June, blogger and former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb posted an anonymous message from a person claiming to be an ex-SEAL, who wrote: “The dolphins would have their simulated CO2 system attached to their nose, they would then ram us in the chest cavity to simulate the injection. The dolphins could kill just with this force alone (we had to dive with special padding) but the idea was to recover the bodies and any intelligence.”


But whether the Ukrainians are attaching pistols to the dolphins’ heads — that’s a little iffy. The program “sounds directionally on point,” e-mailed Webb, whose unit practiced diving with U.S. Navy dolphins. But “attached firearms to their heads seems far fetched.” For one, dolphins can be lethal without a weapon attached to their heads or snouts. Ukraine will also have to devise a contraption to set off a blast. But a triggered-on-contact “bang stick” — which are used to scare off sharks — risks inadvertently killing or grievously injuring any dolphin armed with one.

Other non-lethal aspects of the program sound similar to the mainstream U.S. Marine Mammal Program. Officially, that program doesn’t train dolphins to kill and never has. “The Navy does not now train, nor has it ever trained, its marine mammals to harm or injure humans in any fashion or to carry weapons to destroy ships,” the Navy states. Instead, the Navy has tested a device called the Mark 6 Marine Mammal System: a buoy attached to a dolphin’s snout. Once detecting an enemy diver, the dolphin plants the buoy nearby and returns to its handler. The buoy then floats to the surface and emits a strobe light to mark the location for human guards. The Ukraine program appears to be largely similar. In a recent Ukrainian exercise, dolphins searched for items “and attached devices to them which were fixed on their heads, after which a buoy on it was sent to the surface to mark it.”

The U.S. also has the Shallow Water Intruder Detection System, which uses a sea lion equipped with a spring-loaded clamp that can be attached to a diver’s legs. The sea lion then swims back to its handlers, who can reel the enemy diver in like a snagged fish. The Navy has also deployed dolphins to the Persian Gulf to help detect and clear underwater mines. Animal rights groups, though, haven’t been happy about it. No word if Ukraine is trying something similar.

Finally, there’s a big risk in arming dolphins, as they could easily become a danger to your own side. “Since dolphins cannot discern the difference between enemy and friendly vessels, or enemy and friendly divers and swimmers, it would not be wise to give that kind of decision authority to an animal,” the U.S. Navy states in its FAQ about the mammal program. If the Ukrainian navy is in fact arming its dolphins, Kiev’s admirals might want to take note of that.
 
Some doubt is cast on the story.

Here’s Why The Navy Doesn’t Have Its Own Fleet of Killer Attack Dolphins
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03 ... -dolphins/
BY SPENCER ACKERMAN03.13.131:42 PM


An Atlantic bottlenose dolphin swims up to a transport mat during a multi-nation military exercise in San Diego, July 2012. Photo: U.S. Navy/Flickr
Whatever, Ukraine. Your claims of arming a fleet of dolphins with pistols and knives are dubious. This is why you can’t transform man’s favorite adorable aquatic buddy into sea mammals of death.

Dolphins are fantastic, intelligent creatures. They’ve got a sensing ability, echolocation, that’s akin to “natural biological sonar,” as Ed Budzyna of the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program puts it. Yes, as we’ve reported in the past, the Navy trains dolphins and sea lions for harbor and port security tasks that nature has endowed them well to perform.

Those tasks are not attack tasks. And yet, a story has resurfaced that the Ukranian Navy has strapped its military working dolphins with knives and pistols to their heads. It smelled funny to us the first time we encountered it in the fall. This time around, the allegedly-armed Ukranian dolphins have apparently gone rogue, swimming away from their Sevastopol handlers, apparently spurred to sea by a frenzy of lust. That account is already looking shady.

But fits of romance are not what stand in the way of your fleet of killer dolphins. It’s easy enough to train dolphins and sea lions to hunt for mine-like objects on the sea floor or mark unidentified swimmers for security personnel to investigate. The Navy does it through typical repetitive positive reinforcement, like rewarding the marine friends with food for successful performance. What the Navy doesn’t do is train them to distinguish people or objects in the water.

“You can’t leave it up to a marine mammal to decide who’s a friend and who’s a foe. You can’t train them for that,” Budzyna, a spokesman for the Navy program, tells Danger Room. “How would they know which is which down there? You can’t leave it up to them to make those judgment calls.”


And yet there are persistent rumors that dolphins — American and Soviet — have been equipped for battle. In the ’70s, a Navy employee alleged that some of the U.S.’ dolphins carried hypodermic syringes containing pressurized carbon dioxide that could potentially cause a diver to “literally blow up,” as our David Hambling reported in 2007. More baroque stories involve the Russians dual-purposing their own harbor-security dolphin fleet with an weapon similar to the Farallon Shark Dart.

Budzyna insists the Navy doesn’t take any such gamble with its sea lions and dolphins. In addition to the lack of “operational sense” in arming a creature that can’t figure out the right person to attack, he says, the danger to the animals’ safety would be far too great.

What the Navy’s dolphins and sea lions do without weaponry is sophisticated enough. Every day at San Diego, Navy sea-mammal handlers teach the dolphins to alert their human partners if there’s a suspicious object at the bottom of the sea floor. If their echolocation picks up an undersea signature that could be a mine, the dolphin taps a disc-like pad on the side of its handlers’ boat. The handler passes the dolphin a device to mark the suspicious object’s location — either a beacon or something that emits a sound or releases a balloon — and then Navy explosive-ordnance disposal divers descend to take care of it.

Similarly, the Navy harnesses sea lions’ ability to see in low levels of light to check out suspicious divers who might want to damage a pier. If the sea lion sees a nighttime diver, it would swim to the location and drop off another such marker for the authorities to investigate. “They work with Navy divers so that no one gets hurt,” Budzyna says, either man or beast. Training such creatures typically takes two to four years.

But what the mammals don’t do, perhaps the robots will, someday. The Navy’s working on an undersea robot that basically fools a mine into detonating before a Navy ship is in range. There’s no plans to arm it; and the Navy will have its hands full designing a robot that can outperform a dolphin’s natural echolocation. But the Navy is more likely to weaponize a fleet of robotic dolphins than it is to form up a lethal armada of the real thing.
 
Makes a change from dolphins being trained to be assassins, plant mines etc.

Mexico's government says it plans to use dolphins trained by the US Navy to try to save the world's most endangered marine species, the vaquita porpoise.

Environment Minister Rafael Pacchiano said that the dolphins would be deployed to locate and herd vaquitas into a marine refuge.

Mexico also permanently banned fishing nets blamed for the vaquitas' decline.

Scientists estimate that fewer than 40 of the mammals are still alive in their habitat, in the Gulf of California.

Mr Pacchiano said the dolphin project would begin in September.

"We've spent the past year working alongside the US Navy with a group of dolphins they had trained to search for missing scuba divers," he told Formula radio.

"We've been training them to locate the vaquitas.

"We have to guarantee we capture the largest possible number of vaquitas to have an opportunity to save them."

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40466607
 
There's evidence suggesting North Korea is developing a military dolphin capability.
New Evidence Suggests North Korea has a Naval Marine Mammal Program

Evidence is emerging that the North Korean regime is training dolphins for military purposes, according to new satellite imagery.

While the U.S. Navy pioneered the training of dolphins and other marine mammals for naval purposes and has a program based in San Diego, it’s not a capability most navies can afford. To date, only the Russian Navy, with bases in the Arctic and Black Sea, has followed suit.

Based on image intelligence, North Korea’s program dates back at least to October 2015. Their first appearance was at the site of a major naval display in Nampo, a naval base and port city on the west coast. The program is likely part of the widespread modernization of the navy that has taken place under North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. ...
FULL STORY: https://news.usni.org/2020/11/12/new-evidence-suggests-north-korea-has-a-naval-marine-mammal-program
 
On another thread there is mention of orcas deliberately ramming boats off Portugal. One wonders if we might see similar if military dolphins end up socializing with regular dolphins.
 
On another thread there is mention of orcas deliberately ramming boats off Portugal. One wonders if we might see similar if military dolphins end up socializing with regular dolphins.

They drink together at the wet bar in The Trolls Head.
 
Have they made their first kill?

Hamas Alleges That Israel Has 'Killer Dolphins'​


A video posted by Hamas alleges that one of its frogmen was killed by an Israeli trained dolphin. This may not be as far fetched as it at first sounds. The video (shared on Twitter) shows a harness which it alleges was recovered. The harness appears to fit the nose of a dolphin. And is similar to those used in US Navy and Russian Navy marine mammal programs. The harness appears to have a spear gun-like device attached.

Dolphins cannot tell friend-or-foe so generally you would not expect them to deliver lethal force. Instead they mark the target with a buoy. The harness device may be part of that type of system. Or, possibly, it is indeed a straightforward weapon.


More at Link:
http://www.hisutton.com/Israeli-Navy-Killer-Dolphins.html

Video cited:
 
Have they made their first kill?

Hamas Alleges That Israel Has 'Killer Dolphins'​


A video posted by Hamas alleges that one of its frogmen was killed by an Israeli trained dolphin. This may not be as far fetched as it at first sounds. The video (shared on Twitter) shows a harness which it alleges was recovered. The harness appears to fit the nose of a dolphin. And is similar to those used in US Navy and Russian Navy marine mammal programs. The harness appears to have a spear gun-like device attached.

Dolphins cannot tell friend-or-foe so generally you would not expect them to deliver lethal force. Instead they mark the target with a buoy. The harness device may be part of that type of system. Or, possibly, it is indeed a straightforward weapon.


More at Link:
http://www.hisutton.com/Israeli-Navy-Killer-Dolphins.html

Video cited:

From memory, that side of the Arab/Israeli problem has identified all sorts of creatures as being used militarily by the Israelis. l definitely remember a vulture being “arrested” as a spy. l also seem to remember dragonflies being under suspicion?

The Arabs are renowned for military fakery. lf you can mock up an entire stealth fighter, the device shown in the Twitter video would be an hour’s work.

maximus otter
 
Satellite pictures show Russia is deploying spy dolphins to attack Ukrainians

The southern Russian Navy force is located at the port of Sevastopol in Crimeaand could become a major target in the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

As a result, desperate Putin has piled in "layers of nets and booms" at the harbours entrance, the UK defence intelligence agency said.

1672118745991397376-mod-statement-russian-use-827141688.jpg


Birdseye images of the strategic port showed it littered with makeshift barriers as well as a bunch of marine mammal pens.

According to the Ministry of Defence, the enclosures housed "spy dolphins".

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22794...ploying-spy-dolphins-attack-ukrainian-divers/

maximus otter
 
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