Um, wrong type of seal (US Navy)
In a recent interview with a Russian news source, Gennady Matishov, director of the Murmansk Marine Biology Institute in northern Russia, criticized his government for allowing the United States to surpass them in the latest arms race: weaponized sea mammals.
“We would really like our animals in the future to work like American sea lions,” Matishov told the Izvestia Daily. “The Americans drop their animals from helicopters into enemy waters and then the animals place mines on installations, make videos of what they see along an enemy shore or use a special gauge to measure radiation.”
Ha! The jokes on you, comrade… there are no such thing as American seals, we buy them from the Chinese.
While websites such as Snopes have debunked the military might of armed sea creatures – such as the killer cetaceans that were freed during Hurricane Katrina – the U.S. Navy does indeed employ the services of dolphins to detect and mark mines.
But none, apparently, boast the Rambo-like tendencies possessed by the animals of the former Soviet Union.
According to Izvestia, the 10 seals trained by Matishov not only locate mines, but they can also differentiate a Russian diver from an enemy and can “render harmless” or even kill an adversary.
Mmm, hmmm… Flipper gonna put a cap in your dorsal.
Matishov, whose research is funded by the Russian Academy of Sciences, worries that American mammal technology is surpassing his country’s efforts because few researchers remain in the field.
During the Soviet era, the scientist told Izvestia, bottle-nosed dolphins were trained to guard the Sevastopol naval base on the Black Sea and if necessary, to kill enemy infiltrators using spears attached to special muzzles.
“If it found an intruder,” Matishov explained, “the dolphin would immediately communicate to an operator on the shore and if it got the order, could kill him on its own.”
According to highly placed Pentagon official, however, the U.S is not widening the armed mammal gap in spite of Russian calls for a sea world proliferation.
Expect a White House decision on increasing military seal pods in about 90 days.
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