Pentagon Laughs Off Reports of Iranian ‘Kamikaze Dolphins’ in Strait of Hormuz

American military leadership is laughing off the suggestion that Iran is considering sending bomb-laden dolphins on suicide missions in the Strait of Hormuz.The topic of the Iranian military using so-called kamikaze dolphins came up in a question during a Pentagon war briefing on Tuesday.“I haven’t heard the kamikaze dolphin thing,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, said to laughter. “It’s like sharks with laser beams, right?” he added, in a reference to part of the plot of an Austin Powers movie.“I cannot confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins, but I can confirm they don’t,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added with a smile.The Wall Street Journal reported, last week, that Iranian officials were contemplating using mine-carrying dolphins to attack American warships in an effort to end a blockade on Iranian shipping in the strait. It was reported to be one of several previously unused weapons under consideration.While the possibility of it happening is remote, Iran, about 25 years ago, did buy some dolphins that had been trained to kill for the Soviet navy before the program was scrapped. A former Russian military trainer continued to care for them but eventually sold the aquatic mammals to Iran after he could no longer afford to pay for them.The animals had been trained to attack frogmen or carry out kamikaze strikes against ships, the BBC reported at the time. “In essence, Iran has bought our former secret weapon from Ukraine on the cheap,” the report quoted a Russian newspaper.The chances of those dolphins still being available to deploy is small since the average lifespan of a captive dolphin is less than 30 years.The American military has its own history of training dolphins, but not for suicide missions.The Navy started training bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions in 1959 to detect mines and recover equipment. The Marine Mammal Program has been based at San Diego, California since the 1960s.Dolphins have carried out missions since the Vietnam War, the Navy Marine Mammal Program’s director, Mark Xitco, says.The Naval Information Warfare Centers says it is currently the third largest holder of marine mammals in the world. The animals are known for their trainability and adaptability to a wide range of marine environments.Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to science. They can easily find mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the ocean floor that are difficult to detect with electronic sonar.The Navy says dolphins and sea lions have excellent low light vision and underwater directional hearing that allow them to detect and track undersea targets, even in dark or murky waters. They can also dive hundreds of feet below the surface, without risk of decompression sickness or “the bends” like human divers.The American military says technology is slowly replacing the dolphins and sea lions but they say the animals are still more effective than underwater drones in some situations.

Pentagon Laughs Off Reports of Iranian ‘Kamikaze Dolphins’ in Strait of Hormuz

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