For more than two months now, war has raged in Ukraine following the invasion of the country by Russian armed forces. If firearms, tanks and aerial devices constitute the most deadly threats there, we learn that Russia would have deployed other very specific weapons: “war dolphins”.
unconventional weapons
War is horrible in that it destroys millions of lives and sometimes destroys just as many. The war in Ukraine proves it once again, even the most innocent, the civilians who lived in peace until then, are affected and lose their lives. Whether they are collateral victims or sometimes even voluntarily targeted, they have to deal with varied and increasingly sophisticated weapons: artillery, tanks, fighter planes, drones, etc.
Among the strategic means of transport for the armies, ships occupy a place of choice. And it is precisely to ensure the protection of their own that the Russian forces have visibly deployed much less conventional weapons: “war dolphins”, at the entrance to the port of Sevastopol.
Very effective defensive weapons
One of the most important Ukrainian cities controlled by the Russian army is that of Sevastopol, Crimea. One of its main characteristics is that it directly overlooks the very strategic Black Sea. As a closed sea, it notably allows easy navigation between many important ports. It is therefore its port which serves as an important naval base for the Russians during the conflict, hence the idea of deploying war dolphins capable of defending the area.
It is a satellite observation analyzed by the military association of the US Naval Institute which would have indeed made it possible to spot two dolphin enclosures. And for good reason, since the Cold War, the armies of several countries have been training dolphins for military purposes. These are capable of defending strategic positions (here, to prevent divers from sabotaging Russian ships), but also of using their extraordinarily developed sonar to locate underwater mines or people lost at sea. Very interesting capacities, therefore, which would explain the presence of at least two of them near the port of Sevastopol.
For the little story, this is not the first time that war dolphins have been deployed in the field, since the Americans would have called on them during the Vietnam War, or even that in Iraq.
