The weapons deployed by Vladimir Putin in Crimea are never seen before but certainly particular: two 'soldier' dolphins patrol the seabed of the port of Sevastopol, base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet hit in the heart with the sinking of its flagship, the Moskva.
The American Naval Institute (Usni) has detected the presence of the two mammals on the basis of some satellite images and according to experts they have the aim of "defending the fleet" from submarine attacks.
It is likely that they are two dolphins trained over the years by the Ukrainians in the Crimea, and ended up in the hands of the Russians in 2014. Moscow then recruited other marine mammals, at least 5, which would have been trained and then deployed in the area.
The dolphins have essentially a defensive purpose but the Russian military would have developed a system to convert the echo signal directly into the control instrumentation.
This way the dolphins would be able to track mines or any moving object underwater in real time.
The base of Sevastopol is definitely protected, in the bay you can clearly perceive a hiss that is fired to prevent the advance of the underwater raiders;
the presence of dolphins could signal an increased level of alert for attacks.
For the Russians, another Moskva would be a disaster in all respects.
Dolphins, sea lions and even whales - such as the 'Russian' one spotted in 2019 off the Norwegian coast - have been trained by the American and Russian military for years.
The United States started the first program during the Vietnam War and now there are hundreds of 'soldiers' of this marine army.
And not only them: the most famous war animal of recent years is that Belgian shepherd-special agent K-9-who chased the leader of Isis Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in the basement of the bunker where he was nested, forcing him to kill himself.
