Military Animals...

The Soviet Navy also had (has?) Dolphins which like their US counterparts we trained for "anti-swimmer" roles. Theres really no tech yet developed for human divers to make them a match in that enviroment.

The US has being doing work with Bees, seems the little guys can be trained to hunt for explosives

link

Remember playing Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2?

Nothing says bow before me puny mortals than

A TAMED GIANT SQUID

MWA HAHA

Experiments on dolphins were first conducted in the Soviet Union in Crimea (presentday territory of Ukraine). The laboratory was located in a small town by the name of Balaklava. This town became a top secret site and was closed of to civilians but I forget the year they did that. point is that town didn't exist on any maps until late 80s I think. The reason for making this a restricted classified area wasn't the laboratory (not entirely) but the construction of a large submarine pen/nuclear bunker in a mountain in the harbor. The dolphins there were trained to attack divers, they had poison needles attached to their noses or something of that sort. Also dolphins would have torpedos straped onto them. I believe those torpedos were like magnets, some mechanism would be triggered and the torpedo would be realeased and guide itself into the ship (I never got exactly how that was supposed to work - see 2nd paragraph). The Dolphin never actually swam into the ship (or that wasn't the plan anyways).

There is no link available. How I know all this - been there. Balaklava is no longer a top secret military site, it's demilitarization began in the early 90s and it's now a very popular tourist atraction. I've toured the submarine base/nuclear bunker, that thing is wicked. The part about the dolphins was explained to us on a tour, and i only recall the baisics off the top of my head. We were told that after the collapse of the soviet union the lab went down the drain due to lack of funding, and US scientists came and bought it out. They took everything with them to the US.

Regards,
Maestro

PS: I recomend paying a visit to this place, well worth the trip.

As a kid I remember going to "Sea-Camp" and one of the people that ran the camp told stories about the dolphins that were put into service by the US Navy during our involvement in Vietnam. This was 10+ years back so I don't remember the details, but according to a PBS show the Navy's marine mammal program began back in 1960.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

That page notes the rumor about the dolphin "swimmer nullification program" is just that (the dolphins alerted their handlers to swimmers, they did not attack them.) The page also mentioned the Navy's use of sea lions and belugas. Some of you may remember that following Katrina there was a rumor being spread that Navy dolphins equipped with some kind of darts or other offensive capability had "escaped" from where ever they may have been held in New Orleans.

In addition, you've probably no doubt have heard by now of the training of bees and/or wasps to detect explosives to protect our borders. Neat stuff.

Interesting topic!

Not really for the military, more for homeland defense but they are using bees to detect bombs.

Pretty cool.

www.technologyreview.com...