Marine Mammals Used To Fight Terrorism

pinkstuff writes "The Navy unveiled its terror-fighting marine mammals at a two-day homeland security and disaster preparedness exercise in California this week. From the article: 'A Navy seal — actually a sea lion — took less than a minute to find a fake mine under a pier near San Francisco's AT&T Park. A dolphin quickly located a terrorist lurking in the black water before another sea lion, using a device carried in its mouth, cuffed the pretend saboteur's ankle so authorities could reel him in.' Queue the 'frickin lasers' jokes."

Comments

Marine Life Kicks Ass

[eagee]

*This* is why we environmentalists want to protect marine life. It kicks ass.

*CUE* the 'frickin laser' jokes

[kg8484]

Cue as in the stage signal. Not the waiting line (or data structure named after it). Otherwise, does anyone else get reminded of Jones from Johnny Mnemonic when they read these articles?

This is not new

[bigredradio]

Actually the Navy has been doing this for years. Harbor patrol using seals and dolphins has been around for a while. When I was in the Navy in 93' I wrote an article about it (Yep there are journalists in the military). I was unable to run the story though because they were afraid people might jump to conclusions and think they were strapping bombs to marine animals. The facilities for training the marine animals in San Diego ranked right up with SeaWorld (if not better).

Jeez .. you youngsters

[OzPeter]

The Day of the Dolphin Now git off my lawn or patch of seaweed or what ever is appropriate for you to git off

This was predicted in Red Alert

[Anonymous Coward]

It is also a good counter to the Soviet Squids.
Do not forget the Chronosphere and Weather Control Station

Cute application, but why?

[BobMcD]

This is a truly novel approach, but what kind of sophisticated aqua-terrorists are we genuinely preparing to encounter?

9/11 was civilian aircraft, Oklahoma City was a Rider truck, and the attack on the USS Cole was a rubber raft.

Color me stupid, but it seems that stealthy and/or sophisticated attacks are absolutely not the point of terrorism. They don't seem to be trying to show that they are worthy James Bond villains, but rather that an attack could materialize out of the simplest and most common things.

But nice job with the seals and dolphins. Good luck with the sharks and the lasers.

Re:Cute application, but why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when does Oklahoma City count as a terrorist attack? McVeigh was a white American and that makes bomber/tax protester/survivalist/separatist not a terrorist.

Newsweek said so: http://www.newsweek.com/id/233949

Re:Cute application, but why?

[robot256]

IIRC, the Mumbai bombings were executed by terrorist operatives who swam to shore from dinghies in scuba gear in order to enter the country illegally. But yes, it does just sound like an excuse for sharks with lasers.

Re:Cute application, but why?

[nohelix]

This is a truly novel approach, but what kind of sophisticated aqua-terrorists are we genuinely preparing to encounter?

This is not a novel approach.
Both the US and Russian governments have been training and using marine mammals (wikipedia) as well as other animals (wikipedia) to help with military tasks. Dolphins and sea lines have been in training and use in the Gulf Wars. Perhaps the funniest example of military animals is the dogs that the failed Russian anti-tank dogs (wikipeida) that due to their training attacked Russian instead of enemy tanks. Its worth noting that this was again unsuccessfully attempted by Iraqi insurgents in 2005.