Have cetaceans (dolphins, whales) been used by the military? And today?

The military use of cetaceans is a little-known chapter in the history of the Cold War, and it continues today in forms that are sometimes unexpected. For more than sixty years, several major powers have trained dolphins, belugas and other marine mammals for operational missions: mine detection, patrolling submarine bases, recovering objects at depth. The practice raises significant ethical, ecological and geopolitical questions.

The American origins: the NMMP

It all begins in the United States in the 1960s, at the heart of the East-West confrontation. The US Navy launches the Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP), initially oriented towards basic research. The starting idea is scientific: to study the hydrodynamics of dolphins in order to improve torpedo design. But researchers quickly realise that these animals have cognitive and physical abilities that go well beyond the original technical remit. The programme then shifts towards operational applications.

One of the most emblematic cases is that of Tuffy, a common bottlenose dolphin which, in 1965, took part in the Sealab II project. His mission: to shuttle between the surface and a crewed undersea habitat sixty metres down, carrying tools, mail and messages to the aquanauts confined below. In 1967 the programme moved to classified status, placed under defence secrecy, and the details of its missions became largely inaccessible to the public.

The Soviet answer

Seeing the potential the Americans were exploiting, the Soviet Union set up its own programme. The nerve centre was installed at Sevastopol, in Crimea, where the waters of the Black Sea offer a sheltered training ground. Soviet missions leaned more towards offensive applications: laying mines on enemy ships, detecting incoming torpedoes, underwater sabotage.

The story takes an improbable turn after the fall of the USSR: the Sevastopol unit passed under Ukrainian control in the 1990s, then returned to Russia after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In 2022, satellite imagery showed what look like training pens for military dolphins at the entrance to the port of Sevastopol, in all likelihood intended to protect the Russian base against enemy swimmers.

The operational missions in practice

The missions assigned to military marine mammals fall into a few broad categories. Underwater mine detection is the best documented: trained dolphins can locate explosive devices buried in the sediment using their echolocation, then signal the position to a human diver. This capability was used during the Vietnam War and more recently in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq War (2003).

Protecting naval bases against enemy swimmers (combat divers, saboteurs) is another common application. Trained dolphins quickly detect the presence of an intruder and signal it to the handler, or, in some versions of the mission, push the diver towards the surface themselves. Recovering objects at depth, from practice torpedoes to lost pieces of equipment, is also part of the repertoire.

The puzzling case of Hvaldimir

In April 2019, Norwegian fishermen found a notably tame beluga wearing a harness marked “Equipment of St Petersburg”. Nicknamed Hvaldimir (a play on hval, whale in Norwegian, and Vladimir), it became a global celebrity. The hypothesis most widely put forward by the media and by some military experts is that it was a beluga that had “deserted” the Russian military programme, with no official confirmation, neither Moscow nor Oslo having commented on the matter. Hvaldimir was found dead in September 2024 in circumstances that have been the subject of several investigations.

The ethical controversies

The military use of cetaceans gives rise to substantial debate. Animal protection organisations denounce the exploitation of sentient animals in potentially dangerous settings. The ethical arguments carry all the more weight because cetaceans show high cognitive abilities, and even a form of self-awareness (common bottlenose dolphins pass the mirror test). On the navies’ side, the argument is that the programmes guarantee a high standard of veterinary care and that the missions are less risky than they look. The United States has progressively declassified its programme since the 2000s and is exploring replacement by autonomous underwater drones, without entirely giving up its dolphin teams, still regarded as unmatched on certain kinds of mission.

---

Further reading