The U.S. military launched research in the 1960s to harness the detection and swimming capabilities of marine animals for military purposes. Known as the "Navy Marine Mammal Program," the research focused on dolphins, beluga whales, and sea lions. In particular, the program concentrated on dolphins, which are intelligent enough to communicate with humans, swim rapidly in deep waters, and identify objects using ultrasonic waves. In the early stages of dolphin research, the animals were trained for simple tasks such as carrying various items to the seafloor or guiding lost divers. The difficulty was gradually increased, and the dolphins were eventually taught to locate underwater mines and install identification buoys, as well as to carry out mine-clearing and reconnaissance missions including the detection of enemy personnel and vessels underwater.
The dolphin unit was first deployed in actual combat during the Vietnam War, which broke out in 1965. Five dolphins conducted maritime surveillance operations around Cam Ranh Bay, the assembly point for U.S. forces dispatched to Vietnam. Later, as the Iran-Iraq War, which began in 1980, dragged on for years and nearby oil tankers came under attack, the U.S. Navy deployed six dolphins in 1986 to conduct reconnaissance of Bahrain's port in the Persian Gulf, escort merchant ships, and carry out mine-clearing operations. Encouraged by the successive results in actual combat, the U.S. Navy expanded its dolphin unit to more than 100 through breeding and other means in the 1980s, but significantly scaled it down after the end of the Cold War. The former Soviet Union also operated a dolphin unit, and Russia is said to have inherited it and is currently using dolphins to patrol the Black Sea naval base.
With Iran recently laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz and blockading the waters, dolphin units are once again drawing attention from foreign media. While underwater drones and other equipment have been mainly deployed so far in mine-clearing operations in the Strait of Hormuz, the possibility cannot be ruled out that dolphins will conduct combined operations alongside minesweepers and drones in the future. The South Korean military bears the painful memory of the Wonsan landing operation during the Korean War, when the Allied advance was blocked by North Korean mines for more than 10 days, during which Chinese communist forces pushed south, ultimately thwarting the complete recovery of the national territory. To avoid repeating past failures in the event of a contingency on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea must develop sophisticated and integrated mine-clearing operational capabilities like those of the U.S. military.
