25 thousand dollars for the purchase of five dolphins, three males and two females. This is the announcement published on the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Dolphins must be between three and five years old and must have a minimum length of 2,3 meters and a maximum of 2,7.
I Delfini - reads the notice published on the website of the Ministry of Defense - they will be taken in charge by the specialists of the Russian army and transported on special vehicles equipped with tanks filled with sea water. The captured dolphins will be subjected to a quarantine period of 30 days in a facility provided by the contractor.
The Russians do not issue other details about the missions that the dolphins will carry out. In fact, we know that the "Combat Dolphin Program" which involves the training of dolphins for war purposes in the Sevastopol aquarium, in Crimea, was not dissolved, but incorporated into the Russian Navy.
Moscow and Washington have been training sea lions for decades to protect their coasts from enemy enemies. The Aquarium of Sevastopol, it should be remembered, is one of the two centers in the world for combat dolphin training. The other is managed by the US Navy, in San Diego, in the program Marine Mammal Program.
According to the official website of the Ukrainian navy, the dolphin training aquarium for the Soviet navy dates back to the 1960. The animals have been trained both to detect military equipment at the bottom of the sea and to attack sub-enemies. In the 1980, training included anti-sabotage and rescue operations. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the entire dolphin training section and its specialists switched to the Ukrainian navy. They were then used for civil tasks (such as the treatment of some childhood neurological diseases), in order to keep the unit intact. In the 2011, the Ukrainian defense ministry has restarted the specific formation of dolphins for combat.
The US Navy uses five teams of marine mammals, each with a specific mission profile. Every team, formed by a man and an animal is known in the jargon with the acronym MK followed by a number. The MK 4,7 and 8 teams use only dolphins. The MK 5 team uses sea lions while the MK 6 uses both mammals.
I team can be deployed with up to 72 hours notice worldwide. Dolphins have been used in Vietnam for ten years, and in the 2003 in the Persian Gulf. The Kitsap Naval Base, at 20 miles from Seattle, is also defended by dolphins trained by the US Navy.
Nearly a quarter of the 9.962 American nuclear weapons are found in the Bangor submarine base on Hood Canal, 20 miles northwest of Seattle. Bangor was the name of a base, incorporated by Kitsap into the 2004. This means that the largest nuclear arsenal in the United States, perhaps in the world, is protected by dolphins. In the official note of the US Navy, the use of dolphins in defense of the waters around the base since May of the 2010 is confirmed. Before that, a team of sea lions trained to detect unwanted swimmers was used.
The US military currently has 85 service on dolphins and 50 trained sea lions for different types of missions: port surveillance, mine clearance and equipment recovery. The program was declassified only in the 1990.
According to the US Navy, no mammal has ever been trained to kill.
(photo: web / US DoD)
