Marine mammals in military service
As part of the exercise, training sessions for dolphins and sea lions to protect ships and harbors, as well as search for sea mines were to be held. To the place of the teachings of animals it was planned to deliver by air on the plane, in which there are special baths in which the animals lie on banners and are watered. In exactly the same way, dolphins were delivered to New Caledonia in 2009 year. On this island in Oceania, near the Australian coast, exercises were conducted to search for mines left over from World War II.
According to Tom Laputstsa, currently there are more than 100 bottlenose dolphins in service in the US Navy (the average dolphin length is 2,5 meters), as well as California sea lions and belugas. At the same time, the number of fighting animals is only increasing. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, their number has tripled - before that, the number of fighting animals on navy amounted to only 30 individuals, and in 2007 there were already 75 of them.
Sea lions of six species, dolphins of five species and beluga whales are trained at the American base in San Diego. Also there are killer whales and blue-headed porpoises. All animals are combined into 5 teams, three of which are working on the search for sea mines, one specializing in the search for sunken objects, and one in the search for those in distress at sea. Despite the fact that the main American base, which is engaged in the preparation of marine mammals, is located in San Diego, animals are trained in other places. As part of the US Navy, as many as five such centers, in addition to the already mentioned San Diego (California), are centers in the Panama Canal zone, on Lake Pand-Oray (Idaho), on Cape Prince of Wales (Alaska), and in Kaneohe Bay (Hawaii ). It is known that one specially prepared unit of marine animals protects the base of Ohio-class underwater nuclear-powered rocket carriers in Bangor (Washington), and another water area of the Kings Bay naval base (Georgia).
American combat dolphins managed to apply their skills during naval operations in Vietnam, Bahrain and Iraq. During the wars in the waters of the Persian Gulf, Americans effectively used battle dolphins to search for sea mines. So only in the waters of the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, they were cleared more than 100 min. For outstanding services one of the battle dolphins, nicknamed Tuffy, was even promoted to sergeants of the American fleet. In total, the base, located in San Diego, managed to prepare more 300 "graduates", as noted by Tom Laputstsa. Back in 2007, the base budget was 14 million dollars, and in 2013, it reached 23 million.
From time to time, the public wakes up interest in the subject of the use of the military with seemingly harmless and such beautiful animals as dolphins. At the same time, few people know that it was for the first time that they offered to use marine mammals for combat purposes in our country. At one time, the Soviet Union was even able to achieve serious success in the field of training and training of combat dolphins, appreciating their possible combat potential. Today, however, fighting dolphins are mainly used by the United States and Iran, in America they are even assigned titles. There is currently no information about the use of dolphins and other marine mammals of the Russian Navy.
Currently, interest in fighting dolphins is also shown by countries such as India and Israel, as well as a number of other states. Meanwhile, according to the staff of the Russian Institute of Ecology and Evolution, it would be much more effective to use marine mammals not for military purposes, but for peaceful purposes. For example, dolphins can be very useful in surveying various underwater structures, such as gas pipelines. They are able to detect a trickle of gas coming out of the pipe or any mechanical damage, take a picture of the damage site, fix cables there that can be used to lower all the equipment needed for repairs, etc. However, the peaceful use of marine animals is already a separate topic of conversation, but we are concerned today precisely about the military use of marine mammals.
Russian dolphins in the military
The idea of recruiting marine mammals into soldiers first appeared not just anywhere, but in Russia. During the First World War in 1915, the famous Russian circus trainer Vladimir Durov addressed the Russian General Staff of the Navy, who proposed to be used for the disposal of underwater mines of seals. The Ministry of War showed interest in this idea and in just 3 of a month they managed to train 20 animals in Balaklava Bay. During demonstrative training sessions, seals very easily found models of anti-ship mines in the water and tagged all the finds with special buoys. However, the use of seals in combat conditions did not present itself.
It is known that the Germans were worried about the appearance of such an unusual special unit in the fleet, and on one of the nights all the prepared "sea engineers" were poisoned. This crime was investigated by military counterintelligence, but did not have time to finish the investigation before the revolution, at this time in the country it was not up to investigating the circumstances of the death of the fighting seals. At the same time, most of the documentation on the preparation of the first pinnacle saboteurs could not survive the revolutionary years, the documents were either destroyed or lost.
The military again returned to the issue of domestication of marine inhabitants in the 1960-s, almost half a century later in the Vietnam War. This time, the Americans achieved serious success, and along with seals and sea lions, they began to train dolphins. The first military baptism of unusual naval recruits was a patrol of Camrani, the largest US naval base in Vietnam. By 1970, 6 animals prepared in San Diego participated in the operation under the code name “Quick Search”. It is reported that sea dwellers were able to detect more 50 swimmers-saboteurs who wanted to attach magnetic mines to the sides of American warships. According to some reports, sea lions sometimes even independently killed enemy swimmers with knives or needles with poison fixed on their noses.
Obviously, it was precisely the use of fighting dolphins and sea lions by the Americans in Vietnam that inspired Soviet specialists to resume work on training marine animals for military purposes. Already in 1967, the first in the USSR military aquarium was opened in Sevastopol in the Cossack Bay. At the same time 50 bottlenose dolphins were supplied to the naval allowance. In 1970-s several dozens of scientific institutions of the Soviet Union joined the problem of training marine inhabitants. The chief military trainer of the Sevastopol aquarium, Vladimir Petrushin, said that dolphins and seals in Sevastopol were trained in several directions at once: patrolling and guarding the terrain, searching and detecting various underwater objects, and destroying saboteurs.
In the Soviet Union, first of all, they decided to start training dolphins, since these marine mammals were perfectly amenable to training, which was previously known, and their population was very large. Moreover, in the course of evolution, a special fatty lump formed in dolphins in front of the airways - a kind of lens that serves as a natural locator. This “device” allows dolphins to send ultrasonic waves and capture their reflections, easily detecting small objects at a distance of up to 1,5 kilometers. In addition, the dolphin is able to determine whether the object is hollow in front of it or not. These qualities were especially well developed in the northern dolphin beluga.
In the Soviet Union, military dolphinariums appeared not only in Sevastopol, but also on the territory of the Kola Peninsula and in the Far East in Vityaz Bay. At the same time, a special research structure, the so-called laboratory of adaptation problems, worked in Minsk. For practical experiments with animals, laboratory specialists traveled directly to dolphinariums. The most successful in terms of work was the Research Aquarium of the USSR Navy, located in Sevastopol in the Cossack Bay. The first head of this aquarium was Victor Kalganov, captain of the 2 rank. After just 3, after the opening of the aquarium, the dolphins trained in it were able to find sunken sea mines and torpedoes, as well as other underwater objects. Later, starting from 1975, the combat detachment of marine mammals began combat duty in the Sevastopol Bay, together with a detachment of combat swimmers. The patrol was round-the-clock, each shift continued for 4 hours, the dolphins entered the position through a special channel at the Konstantinovsky Ravelin.
According to Lev Mukhametov, the head of the group of marine mammals of the Scientific Research Institute for Problems of Ecology and Evolution of the RAS, bottlenose dolphins have an excellent natural acoustic radar, which is much more perfect than all technical devices of a similar nature that were invented and created by people. With the help of echolocation, sea animals are not only able to find the smallest fish in the water, but can also look under the ground to a depth of half a meter. In this case, dolphins can determine without error what exactly the detected sunken object is made of: metal, wood, concrete.
And this unique feature of bottlenose dolphins was used as follows. Special backpacks were put on muzzles of dolphins, in which there were audio beacons and buoys with anchors. Having found a sunken torpedo in the water, the dolphins swam toward it, after which they poked their noses into the ground and threw the audi-beacon in place with the buoy. Further, specially trained divers, who were to carry out a torpedo climb, entered the business. According to the claims of the Soviet military, the creation and maintenance of specially trained combat dolphins in Sevastopol paid for themselves in just a few years. In those years, one training torpedo cost about 200 thousands of rubles, a lot of money at the time, and torpedoes prepared by such dolphins saved hundreds of pieces.
At the same time, the dolphins managed to discover even things that the military itself had already forgotten. So in 1989, the dolphin, nicknamed Bokout, was able to find a Soviet automatic super-small Triton-type submarine that had lain on the seabed for more than 10 years. According to Valery Kulagin's memoirs, dolphins were even able to master underwater photography. Animals could choose the right angle, freeze at the time of the shutter release, and even close their eyes with a flash. It is reported that in the period from 1979 to 1991 a year, trained marine mammals found objects in the sea in the amount of approximately 100 million rubles.
At the same time, contrary to popular opinion, Sevastopol dolphins were not trained to kill people. Animals were simply not able to distinguish their scuba diver from the enemy and could easily attack the wrong one. In addition, the practice has shown that these good-natured and very sociable animals were very stressed if they caused harm to a person during training. The main task of the dolphins in the protection of the waters and the detection of swimmers, saboteurs was to tear off their flippers, masks and pushing to the surface. That was quite enough, at that time a speedboat with special forces was leaving the shore, which was supposed to pick up the offender.
In 1991, the Dolphinarium located in Sevastopol came under the jurisdiction of Ukraine. Quickly enough, the dolphin training program was curtailed, the new government in Kiev had no money even for the fleet, not to mention some dolphins there. Training of dolphins in the Soviet programs in the interests of the Ukrainian Navy began only in 2012 year. They were not as large-scale, but, apparently, some work in the aquarium really went. After the return of the Crimea to Russia in the spring of 2014, the staff of the Sevastopol Aquarium showed their willingness to train seals and dolphins in the interests of the Russian Navy in new training programs. However, there is no official information about the existence of these programs. Only in the media there was information that the Russian fleet is ready to take on the service of the Crimean fighting dolphins. In any case, will the training of these marine animals begin in Russia, we will soon definitely know, but for now we can only note that the Black Sea Fleet is waiting for a massive replenishment of surface and submarine ships, which these same dolphins must protect from sea saboteurs.
Information sources:
http://www.vz.ru/news/2014/4/21/683118.html
http://tvzvezda.ru/news/krasnaya_zvezda/content/201504011028-yxet.htm
http://delfinariy-chelny.ru/facti-o-delphinah/boevye-delfiny
http://www.popmech.ru/weapon/5720-boevye-delfiny-nastoyashchie-zveri/#full
Information