These days you can't believe anything unless an official source is provided. This is it: https://www.niwcpacific.navy.mil/marine-mammal-program/
> 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.
Possibly apocryphal, but quite funny.
- 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.
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
"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
SPEED CONTROLLED BY
HAWK
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?
Official sources are necessary but not at all sufficient. They are highly biased.