Militarized Dolphins Protect Almost a Quarter of the US Nuclear Stockpile | Hacker News Reader

Militarized Dolphins Protect Almost a Quarter of the US Nuclear Stockpile

military.com

393 pointsneatze213 comments

This isn't exactly a secret or new information... it was pretty well known when I lived on the peninsula 10+ years ago (thus the username, Poulsbohemian...). There's a state park right near the Hood Canal bridge where it isn't uncommon to watch the submarines come and go in and out of the canal. Always a bit surreal to push your kids on the swings while watching a first strike weapon capable of destroying the world pass by ;-D. I don't recall the name of the street, but there are houses with views across the water to what locals believed to be the dolphin pens...

Second strike weapon. It is supposed to be able to survive someone else's first strike. First strike weapons can't survive someone else's first strike. It's part of the whole "assured destruction" thing: doesn't matter if you hit us first, you're still going to end up a self lit parking lot afterwards.

The obvious problem with mutual assured destruction is that an insane person could get ahold of the weapons, launch first, and kill all of current and future humanity.

How about not strike back, just try to survive & show future generations of the world how to be. Go live in that other country that isn't radioactive.

Because then a sane person could get ahold of the weapons, launch first, and kill all current opponents.

Even worse, the aggressor would come to believe there are no deleterious consequences to massive nuclear first strikes.

As counter intuitive as it may sound, a massive retaliatory strike would render a more safe future world for non combatant nations. Yes, despite what Hollywood may have told you in films, most of those nations would survive. Especially nations in the Southern Hemisphere not called Australia.

The US actually believed that for many years, at the start of the atomic age.

"Mutual Assured Destruction" isn't a policy of anyone. It's a game theoretical idea that requires pre-conditions that don't necessarily apply. I mean, you hit on one of them: insane people. Most of the large nuclear powers have checks on that: the guy at the top can order the launch, but there's a bunch of relaying of the order. So the guys who turn the keys can refuse. So you need a bunch of insane people to make it happen.

And... also the Soviets once upon a time had a plan to nuke everyone, not just the US, in order to make sure that you don't have countries that build back up faster than they did. There weren't going to be any other countries that weren't radioactive.

What do you mean, had?

Do you have any evidence their doomsday device isn't running anymore?

  Dr. Strangelove:
  Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?

  Ambassador de Sadesky:
  It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.

Source on that last bit? How close to reality did that plan really get?

I’d imagine world war 2 ending just 2-3 years early prevented nuclear holocaust. Certainly the Nazis and Soviets were not going to have any reluctance pushing that button.

"How about not strike back, just try to survive & show future generations of the world how to be. Go live in that other country that isn't radioactive."

The word for that is "surrender".

Wish you weren't downvoted, it's a valid question (if not beaten to death).

I highly recommend the movie By Dawn's Early Light if you haven't seen it. I will offer no spoilers.

Because then there would be no deterrent to stop people nuking you.

"Turn the other cheek" doesn't work for nukes.

Why not? Japan surrendered. They're fine.

Nobody else had nukes back then, so the calculus was completely different.

I've always thought nuclear war is basically Newcomb's Paradox. You want to be perceived as a one boxer (will retaliate) until the exact moment to make a choice when you two box (hold retaliation to let others live).

"Oh hey, we nuked those guys and nobody cared! Let's nuke some other country too!"

Those don't exist, hence why the OP didn't refer to them. They were referring to something from the actual article.

Game theory doesn’t work that way

If game theory was how reality works, WW3 would have started several times already. Game theory is a guide, not the actual playbook.

I love what you're doing here. There is a logical, rational argument. And that's MAD (the acronym). You're saying you "obviously" don't believe people will act rational in 2 different ways

1) with second-strike guarantee people will act irrationally and launch nukes

2) without second-strike guarantee people will NOT act rationally and use nuclear strikes as a threat in negotiation, or outright launch and eliminate opponents without warning

And you present that people will act irrationally without any evidence, in a way that comes off as smug and arrogant despite YOU being the one that presents the far-fetched argument.

Did Game theory prove that Nixxon's Madman theory was the best approach to handle a scenario of mutually assured destruction? I would have expected that playing an irrational, trigger happy bluffer would not be the best approach. Conversely, I do think that the Soviets expected to play rationally.

Let's compare it with the COVID response. Did world leaders listen to their scientists, or did many act irrationally because they have the last word? If some of them don't follow science, why would they follow game theory perfectly? What about their whole pyramid of underlings?

I don’t see how anyone conceivably can compare getting nearly 8 billion individuals to follow COVID orders where failure only requires 1 individual leaking the virus compared to a select few people who can launch nukes who all have to agree to go ahead with it and use that comparison to try to make a point.

Actually that is an amazingly good proxy for how effective MAD would be. Look at each world leader. Did they follow overwhelming scientific advice (backed up by peer pressure from all other world leaders) and publically promote lockdown, or did they publicwlly disown the science, announce their own solutions / policies etc.

Those that made official advice to "use aromatherapy" or something are people not likely to follow Game Theory.

The count is well above zero

No doubt surreal, but a single sub destroy the world? That piqued my interest so took a quick look and found an article [1].

This article states that "even a single vessel [submarine] could reduce as many as 288 city-sized targets into radioactive ash in less than 30 minutes." Later in the article they say that the Ohio class is capable of carrying up to 24 UGM-133 Trident II D5 submarine launched ballistic missiles. Each ballistic missile can carry as many as 12 W88 475 kiloton thermonuclear warheads. For comparison, the one that struck Hiroshima is estimated to have been 10-20 kiloton. So the Ohio class can delivery up to 472 x 12 or 5,700 kilotons (5.7 megaton) or ~285 x the energy release of Hiroshima.

- EDIT: 472 x 12 X 24 = 137 megatons or 6,796 the energy release of Hiroshima.

By comparison scientists have been speculating the scale of the energy release of the eruption in Tonga [2]: "Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said the eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano on January 15 released "hundreds of times the equivalent mechanical energy of the Hiroshima nuclear explosion". The article goes on to say that preliminary estimates are between 4-18 megatons. That energy release created a cloud ~650km / 400mi in diameter. "The cloud would obscure most of Great Britain and the east coast of Ireland. It is almost the same size as mainland Spain.".

EDIT: So an Ohio class SSBN could unleash ~136 megatons which is 7.5-34 x the energy release of the Tonga eruption.

The eruption occurred undersea whereas nuclear warheads detonate above ground as an "air blast" or close to sea level as a "surface blast". "Tactically, surface detonations can be seen as an effective means to obliterate a specific target and surrounding ground forces." [4]. "Unlike surface blasts, air blasts produce almost no local fallout upon detonation. Instead, air blasts are more effective in producing high levels of over-pressure over larger areas and increased yields of thermal radiation.".

So what's my conclusion from this short research? The sources suggest an Ohio class submarine could destroy 288 cities in 30 minutes. No argument there. But destroy the world? It seems evident Earth itself would remain in it's current spherical shape but it would be terribly perhaps irreversibly poisoned, taking a lot if not all life with it. As Nevil Shute puts it in "On the Beach" (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1957) "there would be no “over there,” there would only be “here.” Whether scarred by blast and fire from a nuclear war, no place would be spared the inescapable lethality of the resulting radiation". "Global thermonuclear war is just that, a war against the globe, against the Earth itself."

Thanks parent for fueling a perfect little distraction from my long list of important tasks today :)

[1]https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/these-5-submarines-co...

[2]https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/24/asia/tonga-hiroshima-bomb...

[3]https://graphics.reuters.com/TONGA-VOLCANO/lgpdwjyqbvo/

[4]http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2019/ph241/abbate2/

> But destroy the world? It seems evident Earth itself would remain in it's current spherical shape but it would be terribly perhaps irreversibly poisoned, taking a lot if not all life with it.

At risk of being self absorbed, if the world is largely uninhabitable and our way of life irreparably changed, then I'd consider that serious enough to lump in the "destroy the world" category. At that point I probably wouldn't care if the Earth was still an intact oblate spheroid given I'd either be dead or likely wishing I was.

I don’t think they meant literally destroy the Earth. Nothing we have could possibly do that. But it could easily destroy our world here on Earth. I have to imagine the world as we know it would cease to exist after such an attack. Everything we take for granted today would probably be gone pretty quickly, the collapse of civilization in much of the world.

It’s a fun bit of research you did, but I think it’s disingenuous to interpret the comment so literally.

While a complete nuclear war would cause radioactive waste to reach all the globe, humanity and civilization will likely survive, in the form of countries that were not primary targets.

For example, in North America USA would be severely crippled, but Mexico would be mainly unscathed. Canada probably too, as it officially has no nuclear capabilities.

I mean, maybe, maybe not. Depends on a lot of factors. The entire collapse of a major superpower could potentially have a lot of knock-on effects on otherwise unscathed countries.

Spent fuel pools at nuclear reactors not getting cooled is a bit of an issue after a nuke exchange.

Funny story, I'm not sure that's true. If by the earth, you mean the land and not the whole planet, there's some very interesting ways man could flood the whole thing.

>> Nothing we have could possibly do that.

There is some credibility to melting of permafrost triggering runaway greenhouse scenarios that would turn Earth into something more akin to Venus. If we really wanted to destroy the world I think we could do it.

I meant compromise the physical integrity of the planet, which is what I assumed was the metric the commenter I was replying to was using, based on their comment that the Earth would retain its roughly spherical shape.

We can't physically destroy a planetary body yet, not even close to it.

"...The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!..."

   George Carlin

Not that it entirely matters but the most likely scenario for a nuclear exchange would probably have most nukes used on hardened military targets. This is the main reason why MIRV weapons were invented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...

Civilian infrastructure (like your house) is readily flattened by nuclear explosions but if you want to destroy nuclear launch silos, hardened command centers, tanks, etc you need to hit them pretty much head on. It's then a lot more productive to have many independently targetable warheads to hit enemy silos in a first strike or enemy conventional forces in a tactical exchange.

In practice, you'd still get massive civilian casualties given how many bases are built right next to cities. Also, submarines are second-strike weapons so they might go for "countervalue" (your house).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervalue

It is very hard to imagine a war where nukes are used on enemy homeland and likely on yours that does not become a total war. In such a war, the goal is not merely to secure an advantageous peace treaty, it is a struggle for survival.

I can't foresee a war starting with tactical strikes that doesn't also see further use of nuclear weapons against the population.

Take every one of those numbers with a grain of salt. For instance Hiroshima. By total energy released, the burning city after the explosion released more energy than the bomb. My point: the devestation yield of a nuclear weapon depends far more on where it is detonated than its physical power.

And remember the physics of spheres. Twice the energy in a 3d explosion does not mean twice the damage on the 2d ground. They very biggest bombs are not of much military utility. Far more damage can be done via multiple smaller bombs.

> But destroy the world?

If by "world", it meant "human world", not "the planet", and your intention were to bring our civilization into total chaos, post-Roman-Empire-style, then you'd think that killing a billion people in just the right places would be a pretty good start.

This link definitely deserves to be referenced here: https://qntm.org/destroy

"You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

"Fools.

"The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron."

If you kill all humans then who cares if the planet is still around or not?

While your figures are likely correct for direct damage, it would most certainly destroy human civilization for several generations at minimum. Which is generally what is meant by "destroy the world", not that the planet would be literally destroy but rather human life as we know it would cease to exist.

Even if you survive the blast, and radiation, even if you are not impacted by the environmental disaster, every world government, every world economy, every thing about modern human life would collapse in fall of nuclear war. We have problems now because our trinkets from china are being delayed a few weeks off the shore... What happens when the supply chain is not simply slow, but instead is gone?

    > irreversibly poisoned

Is this the case? While nuclear weapons are, obviously, beyond horrific… I’m not sure that the radioactive fallout is a permanent problem. As a rule of thumb, the more intense the radiation, the shorter the half-life.

In the cases of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only a small portion of the deaths were due to radiation poisoning, and the cities were thriving on their former sites within decades.

(I don’t mean to minimize the magnitude of the death and destruction; I’m just focusing on the “irreversible poisoning” aspect)

Of course, there are a myriad of other potentially civilization-destroying outcomes of any nuclear exchange.

The bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also very rudimentary compared to a modern nuclear arsenal.

Correct. But - modern bombs are more powerful, but is there greater residual radioactivity?

If anything there is less. Residual radioactivity is unused explosive potential, they try to minimize that.

Modern bombs are also fusion bombs which have even less radioactivity.

I wonder if there are bombs that leave more radioactivity as goodbye gift, to delay the rebuilding.

The term you are looking for is "Neutron bomb"

The residual radioactivity decays at the same rate, but there's also more of it (roughly proportional to weapon yield). Since modern weapons yield much more energy than the bombs of 1945 they also yield much more radioactivity. Further, surface or ground-penetrating attacks against military targets would tend to rain out much more of the radioactive material locally than the relatively high altitude airburst strikes of 1945. The Japanese targets would have probably suffered fewer casualties but would have had a more persistent radioactive contamination problem if the 1945 bombs had been configured to explode on hitting the ground instead of in the air.

You might expect that modern weapons would have lower yields of radioactive fission products since they all incorporate fusion and don't rely on fission alone. And it's true that the US and USSR (and perhaps other nations) successfully developed thermonuclear weapons that produced over 95% of their energy from fusion, which doesn't create radioactive fission products. This was in the late 1950s/early 1960s.

This is an amazing recently published article about the cleanest American device ever tested:

"Ripple: An Investigation of the World’s Most Advanced High-Yield Thermonuclear Weapon Design"

https://web.archive.org/web/20210616194950id_/https://waterm...

However, devices like that described above were too large for submarine launched missiles. The most effective way to make small, light, efficient warheads for submarine launched missiles is to use the fusion reaction's fast neutrons to fission additional uranium in the tamper around the fusion fuel. So modern submarine launched thermonuclear weapons develop about half of their explosive yield from fission, with corresponding generation of radioactive fission products.

https://www.quora.com/What-percent-of-typical-thermonuclear-...

Thank you for the very patient and informative reply!

A single sub can destroy the world any time it's commander wishes, not by launching 288 warheads at 288 cities, but by launching one warhead, at either Moscow, or Washington.

Contingency plans for responding to a decapitating strike will do the rest.

Reminds me of the soviet nuclear false alarm where the fact that computers detected a single missile was important.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...

> Shortly after midnight, the bunker's computers reported that one intercontinental ballistic missile was heading toward the Soviet Union from the United States.

> Petrov considered the detection a computer error, since a first-strike nuclear attack by the United States was likely to involve hundreds of simultaneous missile launches in order to disable any Soviet means of a counterattack.

Now I wonder if one missile fired by a submarine would be similarly dismissed as computer error...

So crazy to think that at any given time you have thousands of warheads targeting the pentagon so as to obliterate the place. Same to other strategic US and Russian places.

I highly recommend the book Command and Control.

I really doubt that they have "thousands" of warheads targeting the Pentagon. At most a few hundreds but even that is an overestimate probably.

Not that the difference practically matters. You only need enough to saturate the defences plus one to cause a very bad day for everyone involved.

You would be amazed by which degree those high importance sites have been targeted to ensure total, complete, and unequivocal destruction.

A single submarine commanding officer is unable to destroy the world. For US Navy ballistic missile submarines at least, launch authorization requires concurrence by the executive officer as well. I assume other nuclear powers have a similar safeguard.

It's crazy how so many people are terrified of civilians with powerful fully automatic weapons, while keeping eyes shut to the risk the military and state actors represent to society.

There’s plenty of room to be terrified of select members of both groups.

Risk is always estimated impact times probability. The impact of automatic weapons is low, compared to nuclear weapons. The probability is much higher.

It's almost as if both were problems that need to be tackled in different ways, not issues to be used for whataboutism.

Can a submarine commander even launch a nuclear warhead independently ? I assumed explicit launch codes needed to be given from the top.

You forgot to multiply the warheads' yield by the number of missiles onboard.

475 kt × 12 × 24 = 136.8 Mt, so that's even way more than that.

Thank you. I've updated the post to reflect this correction.

Or you could just play with:

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

During the 50's and 60's many nuclear bombs were tested in the atmosphere. I don't know the exact total megatonnage but I do know that the largest test, the "Tsar Bomba" alone was 50 MT. So the total megatonnage of all atmospheric nuclear tests very likely exceeds 137 MT by quite a good margin, and, whether for better or worse, the world is still here.

Depends how you define "the world" our lives, our ecosystem, our relationships, our family, are things I'd think of when I think of our "world" as opposed to the big ol' rock we roll around on.

Is the hydrogen bomb still the king of mutually assured destruction in terms of megaton payload or have we invented new technology?

The submarine might burrow itself down into the Mariana Trench and then set them all off at the same time. This would open a crack in the ocean floor, draining the ocean. I’m studying how these things work where this guy went to school: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q

SSBNs have a launch depth that is much shallower than the Marianas Trench... This isn't the Abyss.

Uh where is all this hypothetical water going in this drain.

Where's the ballistic missile sub that isn't crushed by the pressure long before it gets to the depth of the Marianas trench?

The Turtle That carries the Globe is peeing it to the space duh...

We lived right on Hood Canal a few miles south of the sub base in the early 80s. Such a beautiful, peaceful place but pretty much right at ground zero. As a high school student I worked a summer at the Naval Undersea Warfare and Engineering station. We even had our Senior Prom at the on-base restaurant there at Bangor.

All these links and no 'Johnny Mnemonic' reference. Takes place in 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mnemonic_(film)

I watched it last year on January 17th, because that is when the movie was. I did like the conceit that you would need something like a dolphin, with a brain where much of the hardware was dedicated to processing sonar, to process the somewhat similar data from the SQUID.

They also used dolphins carrying bombs in the movie "The day of the dolphin" I watched as a kid in the 70s.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069946/

The second I read the details in my head I heard the eeeeeee!

Can't say I recall anything dolphin-related in the film.

But The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou had a comedic military dolphin element.

"Son of a bitch,

I'm sick of these dolphins."

That's a cache miss though, the military dolphin in Johnny Mnemnonic is a big part of the plot. He even has a name, Jones!

Hard for me to forget since a friend ran a keyserver in the 90s called jones.[his-domain].net...

Ok, I'll have to rewatch it, it's not something I've seen much since it was released.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I can’t remember it including anything with dolphins.

Well, the book is built around militarized dolphin able to figure out password for encrypted files in Johnny's head

Clearly not a memorable movie: https://youtu.be/nGXKFmWF-OA

The Dolphin is the only thing I remember and I saw it last when it came out in the cinema.

Yes - the dolphin and the VR sequence

It has Dolph Lundgren.. Close enough?

Which is probably the most memorable character in the movie.

“Do you want someone brought to Jesus?”

This is a movie with no less than Dolph Lundgren, Ice T, and Henry Rollins, competing to chew the scenery with supporting characters.

Tough call, but Ice T's Low-Tek style is what I remember best.

Great movie!

This, together the news that North Korea also has weaponized marine mammals, makes me more saddened than from the usual dismal news we hear. Even the primal innocent are being roped into our primate rivalries. It gets even worse, as each side in such an umderwater war will blast away every cetacean it detects, just in case.

''' Even the primal innocent are being roped into our primate rivalries. '''

what's your opinion of say, horses used in olden times (heck till about WW-I, quite extensively) in battle ?

The accounts of horses in war are quite horrific, and their replacement by machines in the role of war transports is gratifying.

Indeed, the horror of their long history of participation in our primate wars puts their modern militarization in perspective.

Is the modern military's exploitation of animals actually significant compared to any other time in human history?

Or current K-9 units?

Cops still use horses, too. And routinely kill suspects' dogs (https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2018/jun/16/doj-polic...).

They are often used to maul people maliciously by cowards so yeah also bad

Is there something about cetaceans that saddens more than canidae, columbidae, equidae, or "sapiens?"

For some people I have met, the answer seems to be yes. There are definitely people that would rather spend their mindshare improving the animal condition than the human condition.

> rather spend their mindshare improving the animal condition than the human condition.

How does arming dolphins improve the human condition?

Did you read the article? They aren't arming the dolphins.

The dolphins are scouts for intruding mines and infiltrators - they find something strange, they come back and report it, and are sent out with a buoy to mark it, or attach to the intruder to float them for capture.

Someone could make a compelling argument that US' global military dominance imposes a kind of Pax Americana that is net beneficial to the human condition, and this is one limb of that military dominance.

I think you'll need to repeat that a little bit louder beacuse it seems like they didn't get the news in the middle east.

I'm not making the argument myself; it's just one I could imagine being compelling.

For better or for worse, horses and dogs have been alongside humans in peace and war for millenia and are adapted specifically for that. They are even classified as domestic/farm animals. I hope that current K9s do not strap bombs on dogs.

Yes, I'm thinking about the question more because I think that the use of marine mammals is somehow different emotionally even if not different semi-objectively. Maybe part of it is that horse and dog are domesticated as almost extensions of people (and the pigeon doesn't have the mammalian emotional resonance).

In a larger than dolphins specifically sense, it is something significant to think about since autonomous machines will be asked to perform similar tasks and since no war is "anything goes" it will be advantageous to think about how people perceive these other methods of execution.

Brings to mind Karel Kapek's 1936 "The War with the Newts".

He is better known for his 1920 play, "R.U.R.", or "Rossum's Universal Robots", which brought "robot" into English.

Both explore the self-deception character of attempts at imposing servitude. The US has still not processed its varied experience.

Nit: not Kapek but Čapek, where the Č reads like "ch" in "chair".

Sounds that were missing from classical Latin are still not interoperable across languages using the Latin script.

> Sounds that were missing from classical Latin are still not interoperable across languages using the Latin script.

Sure, but it's hard to blame that on the phonology of classical Latin. Sounds that were present in Latin are also not interoperable across languages using Latinate scripts. The sounds in a language change over time, and they do it much, much faster than the spelling does.

> "The War with the Newts"

Good book. I read it at a young age, and missed most of the irony and references to the real world, and still found it engrossing.

“ The Soviet Union trained dolphins for similar harbor protection.

After the fall of the USSR, the program was said to be in limbo, and the Soviet-trained dolphins are believed to have been sold to Iran in 2000.”

Ah, good old 50’s paranoia: when one enemy sunsets, the next one is built-up with the scraps of the former.

"For protection against enemy divers, dolphins will swim up to the infiltrator, bump into them and place a buoy device on their back or a limb using their mouth. The buoy then drags the outed diver to the surface for easy capture." I mean come on, "enemy divers" will just kill the dolphins or avoid contact with them..

Yeah I did wonder that. Dunno how far Dolphins echo location is effective from. But presumably it's further than most people probably can see underwater. Especially if the water is murky or dark. It could allow the dolphin to detect the diver beyond the perception of the diver. Then presumably the dolphin is trained to rush the diver and 'bump'/smash into the diver before he has time to react or even see the dolphin.

Still does all sound fairly risky for the dolphin. Think I'd still rather be the dolphin given it's much better suited to water than humans and probably has the perception advantage with echo location.

ok Dolphin bump into a little squad of marines. Then with its mouth the Dolphin place a buoy in a soldier's back? The scenario Dolphin carries explosive, bump in a diver and explodes is pretty possible. But a Dolphin bumps in a diver, and with it's mouth it places a buoy in the divers back and go unnoticed? It is Hilarious!

I think you are overestimating how well a diver can maenouver under water in comparison to a dolphin.

As a driver, I agree with this. While I feel comfortable in the water, I'm not dolphin. I can try really hard to be streamlined but I still have a lot of lumpy bits I have to drag around so that I don't die. Lots of drag. That's not even taking into account millions of years of evolution.

But we should also not underestimate the ability of the enemy to train dolphins.

It would be hard to send an strike team of just dolphins but I imagine a strike team of both humans and dolphins trained to fend of the defending dolphins and protect the divers would stand a chance.

AFAIK dolphins are never used together with friendly divers against other divers as the dolphins can't discern between friends or foes.

Just make sure the enemy team wears red diving suits and the friendlies wear blue ones. Foolproof!

How does the enemy get the trained dolphins there? And once discovered, an attack, dolphins or not, isn't going to have much success.

Except the divers are probably Marines. Enemies which are probably well trained and armed. No Dolphin will bump on them and place a device on their back...

You have evidently never dived. Even the biggest, roughest, toughest marine diver would be outclassed by a juvenile dolphin with regard to mobility. Let alone a trained one who didn't want you to touch it.

You assume too much on Internet. Dolphin isn't really known by their fine work with their "mouth". I'm wondering how it would place a buoy with their mouth on somebody's back..

Imagine trying to kill or avoid a shark while diving... Where is it? Which direction is it coming from? How fast is it coming? How far can you see in this water, because it can "see" you with its non-visual senses...

except the shark isn't trying to kill you but to place a buoy on your back with it's mouth..

I love that you think a human can "just kill" a dolphin on their home turf. And not just any dolphin, a trained dolphin.

And I'd love to hear an explanation about how a human just "avoids contact" with a sea-based animal with built-in echolocation.

while a Dolphin is placing a buoy on your back or limb? We are not talking about you and me, but probably a small US marine squad.

> I mean come on, "enemy divers" will just kill the dolphins or avoid contact with them

Good luck! You'd never see them coming and they're too fast and agile to "shoot".

I think while the dolphin is trying to place a buoy in his back, a well trained soldier can get the Dolphin away with a simple knife.

I doubt the dolphin loiters long enough. It's probably a "boop" and done. My money is on the dolphin in almost every situation unless there's a large disparity in divers vs dolphins.

What they didn't tell you in the article is that there are militarized sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads that protect the dolphins from enemy divers.

Hmm. Have you ever had to handle one large dog who was determined to attack you? Or watched video of this happening to someone else, preferably?

Difference being, both of those animals evolved on land.

Dolphins can and do ram sharks to death. "Bump into" might be a euphemism here.

Nope, it's not. "bump into them and place a buoy device on their back or a limb using their mouth." I'm quite sure they could bump some one violently. But bump into an elite soldier squad - i.e US Marines - and place a buoy device on their back or limb using their mouth? Lol

Visibility while diving can be super low and underwater weapons (mostly crossbows) are not that great. Also the dolphin is kind of a smarter shark and if you attack it's not out of the realm of possibility it will bite you in balls in retaliation. It's not impossible the might be arming dolphins with guns too against armed divers.

I think the scenarios of Dolphins armed with explosives that just explode when they bump into enemies a real one. Or sacrifice them to detect mines. But the whole The Dolphin detect the mine and then come back or Dolphin place a buoy in the back of an enemy diver with its mouth is nonsense

Do you understand the context?

These dolphins are protecting an area claimed by the military. Killing the dolphin would be an act of war. Even doing the same to non-live military equipment would be.

Obviously during wartime the dolphins would be vulnerable. But during peace time you'd think twice before attacking a military dolphin. You don't "just kill" them if you're not in war.

This made me laugh.

Sabotage, border clashes and airstrikes happen all the time without constituting acts of war that give casus belli to their target. A basic legal condition of a just war is that it is proportionate and embarked upon as a last resort: launching a war because a dolphin you trained was killed is neither of those, as sad as it might be.

I didn't talk about casus belli, you're just making stuff up.

Sure, things happen all the time without a war breaking out. But it's not like you can "just kill" or "just attack" without repercussions. That's ridiculous thought. It's similar to saying "what's the reason to have a security guard in the shop, when you can just take a pistol and kill him". Security isn't about having an impenetrable defense; such a thing isn't possible. Anything can be destroyed in the end.

There's always a repercussion for attacking the military, be it diplomatic, economic or a military retaliation.

The phrase 'an act of war' means an act which intends to and/or actually does give the target casus belli. I took it for granted that you knew that.

See, for example, the OED reference:

'An act by one nation intended to initiate or provoke a war with another nation; an act considered sufficient cause for war.'

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20...

Well, war has changed. Russia annexed part of Ukraine without ever declaring war. It's not as black and white today. War is a spectrum, especially at the borders of superpowers. Whether you want to call it an act of war or an escalation or whatever, I don't care. If you want to play definition semantics, I'm not interested as it completely misses the point I was making.

If you are a military diver covertly infiltrating a foreign country's military installation and you get discovered by an agent of that country (be it human, animal or artificial), you are already quickly approaching (if not across the line into) "act of war" territory.

Granted, modern international relations has done a solid job of fuzzing the delineation of "acts of war" such that interpretations of acts can serve needs in a geopolitical context, but that will be the case whether you kill the dolphin or not.

> Since Bangor, Washington, now houses the largest single nuclear weapons site in the world, it needs protection from all sides, including the seaward side.

Well crap. I just can't seem to catch a break.

When I was a kid from ages 12 until I went away to college I lived within 3 miles of Castle Air Force Base and from ages 8-12 within 7 miles of it. Castle was home to a ton of B-52s and KC-135s and probably was a prime target in most all out nuclear war doomsday scenarios.

And now, many years later I'm within 5 miles of Bangor, which I'd guess is currently a prime target in that scenario (or in the North Korea tries to nuke the US scenario).

Though maybe being on ground zero counts as 'lucky' compared to being, say, 20 miles away in the fallout zone. One goes quickly, in the flash itself. Either that or on a Pacific Island somewhere (with a mountain, not sea level) with 10 years of supplies.

It's the best place to be - it will be over quickly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal

For reference.

one that is theorized to have escaped from the russian training program even has his own wikipedia page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hvaldimir

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roDkgbhvmsQ

These days you can't believe anything unless an official source is provided. This is it: https://www.niwcpacific.navy.mil/marine-mammal-program/

I think I can believe most but that part is really weird:

> For protection against enemy divers, dolphins will swim up to the infiltrator, bump into them and place a buoy device on their back or a limb using their mouth. The buoy then drags the outed diver to the surface for easy capture. When trained sea lions perform the same maneuver, they use a kind of handcuff with their mouths to attach the buoy

Imagine if we did this on land: monkeys or dogs handcuffing or tasing people! Surely they wouldn't be deployed against civilians and I know there have been exotic animals travelling with military (like bears) but training animals to fight humans with TOOLS looks incredibly hard.

We might never know what is currently in use, but I'm convinced that any wild and wacky idea has been tried by somebody. Some fun ones off the top of my head:

- Meet Wojtek the bear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(bear)

- AT-Dogs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog

- Ships made of ice and saw dust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

- Funny tanks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart%27s_Funnies

- Pink camouflage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountbatten_pink

- Gay Bomb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb

- LSD Trials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziqpwkhqTRs

- Portable nuclear launcher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)

Also dogs don't need to attach handcuffs, it suffices that they chomp on your leg. And that they can be trained for easily enough.

My contribution to your already wonderful list: The Bat Bomb, aka Project X-Ray https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

Olga answered that the murder of the messengers sent to Kiev, as well as the events of the feast night, had been enough for her. She then asked them for a small request: "Give me three pigeons...and three sparrows from each house."[15] The Drevlians rejoiced at the prospect of the siege ending for so small a price, and did as she asked.

Olga then instructed her army to attach a piece of sulphur bound with small pieces of cloth to each bird. At nightfall, Olga told her soldiers to set the pieces aflame and release the birds. They returned to their nests within the city, which subsequently set the city ablaze.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev#Drevlian_Uprising

And pigeon guided bombs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon

came here to say this one

Psychic spies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project

"The Men Who Stare At Goats" is a delightful book that was made into a film about the subject.

More practically, bouncing bomb: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouncing_bomb

This truly sounds a bit sketchy. From an outsiders perspective this sounds like a big april fools joke.

Well, I mean dogs are widely and effectively used in law enforcement. Perhaps dolphins are just the equivalent of aquatic dogs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/01/12/the-un...

World War II , anti-tank dogs (dogs with AT mines strapped to their backs).

If memory serves, the story goes that the soviets trained their dogs with soviet tanks - so when they released the dogs into battle, they turned around and ran for their own tanks.

Possibly apocryphal, but quite funny.

It wasn't so much about the design of the tank as I recall. Instead it was about one side using diesel tanks, with the other side using gasoline in their tanks. The dogs turned out to be trained on the smell of the fuel, which caused them to be attracted to the wrong vehicles.

I can see the highway signs now:

SPEED CONTROLLED BY

HAWK

Some skepticism seems warranted for official sources as well!

I mean, the essence of the Cold War was each side trying to find any advantage they could, while pretending everything they tried worked.

Maybe the dolphins don't work well, maybe the enemy knows it, maybe they don't. Maybe the risk it works dissuades them from trying. Maybe the anti-dolphin countermeasures they carry are cumbersome and lead to their discovery. Maybe the dolphins work for once; I'm sure not every trial failed.

When you're throwing unlimited piles of other people's money at a problem, why not try some long shots?

Hah - I wish it was that easy to know what the truth is...

> you can't believe anything unless an official source is provided

Official sources are necessary but not at all sufficient. They are highly biased.

This was the most fascinating thing about David Brin's "Startide Rising". And I never forgot that book in my life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startide_Rising

Amazing book. I think the concepts around the whole Uplift trilogy are great. The first one was a little tough for me to get through, but the next two are among my all time favorites. It's interesting to think about the potential of different species.

This reminds me of reading about the US Camel Corps the other day:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Camel_Corps

Reminds me of the dogs the Russians trained to deliver bombs to the Germans. However, in the chaos of war, the dogs would get scared and run back to the owners with the bomb, killing the Russians.

Not bombs, AT mines. And "run back to the owner and blow him up" is an anecdote/bullshit in this case

That is a great example of irony.

Anyone have an estimate of the numbers of dolphins and sea lions currently "enlisted"? I can't find numbers anywhere.

Excellent question, because it's likely a trivial number and a program that only still exists for PR purposes.

And I thought dolphins in Red Alert 2 were a joke...

red alert 2 vibes

Yeah, using sonar dolphins to defend against killer squids

Indeed. But it looks like we have rocketeers these days now to counter?

Even better if Russia has giant squids:

https://cnc.gamepedia.com/Giant_squid

Today in not-the-Onion …

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254495.A_Deeper_Sea

Here is Russia's answer to this; "Navy Seals"

https://youtu.be/0-unYZ6ltfI

I remember seeing similar dolphin pens down in San Diego across from Coronado.

Floating by in a little 20 foot Catalina while the sail of a nuclear sub cruises by is surreal.

You can see the pens on google maps.

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.701949,-117.2360585,297m/dat...

> Since 1967, the Navy has been training dolphins and sea lions (and probably other marine life)

I like how they threw in "(and probably other marine life)". Always keep the enemy guessing. Is that really just a sea horse, or is it a highly trained US operative? Is that cuttlefish strobing because it thinks I'm a suitable mate, or is this some DARPA Psy Op? Even the kelp have ears...

>If a mine or other weapon is detected, the dolphin returns to its handler,

but who places mines there?

are those animals actually having missions or they just stay prepared?

They are on guard dutty.

Do you have the same question about human military guards? 99.9% of the time they are just standing around “doing nothing”.

If the trainers are any good they regularly excercise the dolphins with simulated “attacks”.

> but who places mines there?

Potential enemy saboteurs?

Countries in the west has a long history of military infiltrators who are trained to swim/float to enemy ships and place limpet mines on them. These attacks are relatively low-tech, besides the limpet mines everything else can be bought from general sporting good / diving stores for it. Therefore we can assume such attacks are widely available to our enemies (large and small).

Here is a few examples from history of such attacks:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jaywick

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Frankton

Obviously all these documented cases are from the second world war, and they used folding kayaks. You can assume that a modern infiltrator has access to improved gear to stay underwater longer, devices to help them swim faster and some will have access to rebreathers too so they won’t leave a bubble trail.

Yes, they're prepared to defend against enemy combat divers placing mines. *In peacetime, they defend against enemy infiltrators gathering intelligence.

There's a long history of combat divers, or frogmen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decima_Flottiglia_MAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Crabb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Frankton

There are many such stories.

One of my favourites is of the jovial, slightly portly Italian diplomat Luigi Ferraro (in reality a frogman under diplomatic cover) during WW2 in neutral Turkey, who at night would go out to a nearby port, swim out and place limpet mines on British ships transporting vital chrome for steelmaking to Britain. Yes, let's go assemble high explosive timed devices, alone, then swim, at night, and place the devices on defended enemy ships. He sank three.

I don't know if it's because the coffee hasn't kicked in yet, but I wasn't sure if this was satire or not at first.

Reminds me of this old movie about George C. Scott getting duped into training a dolphen to KILL! ... The President!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dolphin

Let me add yet another reference: Robert Merle's "the day of the dolphin" (un animal doué de raison) published in 1967 (so the navy began training dolphins and sea lions while reading this book). In it, the (talking) dolphins are used in a false flag attack.

No info on how effective they are of course, how many people/mines have they detected vs missed?

I guess this is the precursor to "Cetacean Ops" in Star Trek: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cetacean_Ops

> For protection against enemy divers, dolphins will swim up to the infiltrator, bump into them and place a buoy device on their back or a limb using their mouth.

I need to see this in action. A dolphin shows up and cuffs you??

> ...the dolphins use their extraordinary biological sonar to detect hazards beneath the surface, whether tethered to the sea floor or buried beneath sediment.

Isn't this, like, job for the drones?

Well, Dolphins are cheaper unfortunately

...and wayyyy faster!

Cetacean ops https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cetacean_Ops

and to think some other people on the internet almost convinced me not to take a load of tax deductions....

I wonder what PETA has to say about it.

PETA will say nothing. That cesspool of corruption will just search for the next innocent who did a selfie with a monkey to attack him, all the while they keep "releasing" dogs from shelters by killing them.

I didn't realize how prescient was Dr. Evil in Austen Powers.

Glad some of that 777.7 billion budget is going to good use!

Loop it through Jones.

Well, I'm disappointed that they don't have "frikkin lasers" on their heads.

That would be the militarized sharks.

Darwin from SeaQuest!

H I Sutton has a good article on Israel's 'Killer Dolphins'

I think in reality it was not a device to kill but had an other use, like mentioned. Hamas seems to say the frogman was killed, but doesn't confirm by the dolphin in the English quotes.

If the dolphins got contused and attacked a school trip swimming at the beach it wouldn't look great. All you need is the dolphin to call back it's found something then drop a conventional bomb in the water or what not.

http://www.hisutton.com/Israeli-Navy-Killer-Dolphins.html

Leave animals outside the d*mn wars, FFS. Good news about all this is that maybe, hopefully, powerful alien races are actually evaluating us and they'll treat us accordingly to our BS.

You are about 10,000 yeas late to the party. Horses and dogs have been used on war for about as long as humans have been fighting.

> Horses and dogs have been used on war for about as long as humans have been fighting

Domestication of horses is surprisingly recent [0] - perhaps only 6000 years ago - compared with fighting between humans, which likely goes back to before we were even human.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse

6000 years ago is hardly recent. Cavalry is nothing new.

It is recent relative to the origins of fighting in humans.

Yeah that's the point. This cruelty party is lasting too long.

Why is that good news?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com