On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine denied that Iran was employing “kamikaze dolphins” to close the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic.
“I haven’t heard the kamikaze dolphin thing,” Caine told reporters during a daily press briefing.
“It’s like sharks with laser beams,” the U.S. military’s top officer added, equating it to the fictional sharks in the Austin Powers film.
Hegseth, however, would only state, “I can’t confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins, but I can confirm they don’t.”
So does the United States have kamikaze dolphins? The best answer is probably not.
The United States Navy’s Marine Mammal Program has trained bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions to “detect, locate, mark and recover objects,” and the program dates back to the late 1950s. The MMP is part of the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Department within the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific.
The Dolphins of War
The use of animals in military goes back eons, and it has included horses, donkeys, mules, camels, dogs, elephants, and pigeons. Reindeer and Ostriches were used for transport, but obviously in very different regions!
At least one bear named Wojtek carried shells for the Polish Army during World War II, and there have been programs where rats and pigs have been employed to carry explosives to enemy positions.
There haven’t been any sharks outfitted with laser beams, but dolphins and sea lions have been trained for mine clearing.
The Russian military has taken the efforts even further.
In April 2019, fishermen off the coast of northeastern Norway were approached by an unusually friendly beluga whale that was trying to dislodge a harness. It was discovered that the whale was one of several trained to carry surveillance devices in Scandinavian waters.
Sea Mammals in The Military
During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union employed dolphins and sea lions to guard ships in port and to search for mines.
The San Diego-based MMP musters around 75 dolphins and 30 sea lions—half its Cold War peak. However, there is no indication they’re being sent on kamikaze missions.
“We use marine mammals to help detect objects under water and to protect ports by detecting intruders,” Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at RAND who previously worked with the now-decommissioned U.S. Navy mine warfare command, told CNN. “So it’s not ‘The Day of the Dolphin.’”
Although there are various dolphin species in the Persian Gulf, there is no reason to believe Iran has trained any of them.
A BBC report from 2000 did suggest that Russia had sold dolphins to Tehran, and The Wall Street Journal also reported last month that an Iranian official suggested the Islamic Republic would “use previously unused weapons to attack U.S. warships, from submarines to mine-carrying dolphins.”
However, any animals obtained by Iran are either no longer alive or too old to carry out such a mission.
Animal Kamikaze Programs Are Ineffective
Although it is very unlikely that any dolphins or sea lions are working with the Islamic Republic, the creatures almost certainly wouldn’t be useful in a kamikaze or suicide mission. Training would be extremely challenging, and there might only be one chance to get it right.
That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been considered.
There has been speculation that the Soviet Union may have trained the animals to attack an adversary’s ships, but the program never went very far. The same is true of a proposed U.S. Navy program during World War II that reportedly considered using sharks to deliver explosives.
The effort was canceled as sharks aren’t exactly the most trainable animals. It would take a fictional Dr. Evil to use lasers on sharks instead!
About the only effort to employ animals in a suicide role was during World War II on the Russian front. The Soviet Red Army trained dogs to carry explosives under German tanks, but there was a fatal flaw in the plan – and not just for the poor canines forced to give their lives to the Motherland. The dogs were trained on Soviet diesel tanks, but the German tanks were gasoline-powered. That led the dogs to run toward friendly tanks!
Dolphins and sea lions would present a similar problem. Plus, if there is one way to turn the world against you, it is to hurt a cute animal!
