Though Hegseth said that Iran did not have dolphins<\/a> strapped with explosives at their disposal, he also \u201c[could not] confirm or deny\u201d whether [the U.S.] has them.<\/p>\n While America\u2019s military strategy in Project Freedom might not include kamikaze dolphins, experts have said the marine mammals are highly capable and dolphins have been used by the U.S. military for decades.<\/p>\n The marine mammals have been trained by the Navy to help detect mines – like those Iran has deployed in the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>.<\/p>\n “They can not only locate objects, but differentiate them with a greater degree of facility than the machines that we’ve been able to develop for this purpose,” Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation who previously worked with the now-dismantled Navy mine warfare command, told Mint<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Navy has worked to train dozens of bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions to guard against underwater threats since 1959, the branch\u2019s San Diego research center says on its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Researchers first used dolphins in studies to make torpedoes that could better travel underwater, the non-profit U.S. Naval Institute<\/a> says.<\/p>\n Then, the Navy started to study the animal\u2019s other capabilities, deploying them in Vietnam in 1970 and in Iraq in 2003<\/a>.<\/p>\n The most sophisticated sonar on Earth<\/p>\n Dolphins are uniquely qualified for the program that is currently conducted up and down the West Coast.<\/p>\n That\u2019s largely because of their ability to see in low-light conditions, underwater directional hearing and sonar, which enable them to use sound waves to detect objects on the ocean floor.<\/p>\n \u201cDolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to science. Mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the ocean floor that are difficult to detect with electronic sonar, especially in coastal shallows or cluttered harbors, are easily found by the dolphins,\u201d the Navy says.<\/p>\n They can also dive hundreds of feet below the surface without illness – unlike human divers.<\/p>\n And dolphins are some of the smartest animals on Earth. Research shows that bottlenose dolphins are able to recognize<\/a> themselves in a mirror, use names<\/a>, work together in teams<\/a> and have bigger brains than humans<\/a>.<\/p>\n They share some of our personality traits, too, U.K. researchers say. <\/p>\n “We’ve known for some time that dolphins are similar to us in other respects – for instance, you can just watch dolphins on television and see they’re very obviously smart and social,\u201d Dr. Blake Morton, a psychology lecturer at England\u2019s University of Hull, previously told the BBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Day of the Dolphin<\/p>\n The Navy says past speculation led to animal activist charges that dolphins were used as offensive weapons. But those claims \u201ccould not be countered\u201d because the work was classified.<\/p>\n A movie from 1973 called \u201cThe Day of the Dolphin\u201d reinforced these ideas, the Navy alleged. In the movie, dolphins are used to detonate explosives underneath a yacht.<\/p>\n \u201cSince declassification of the program in the early 1990s, the Navy has repeatedly and openly shared the story of its marine mammals and their missions in the media, but rumors are not easily forgotten, and there are those few who continue to actively promote them,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n While the program works to ensure Navy animals receive top-notch health care, many disagree with its methods, believing no marine mammals should be kept in captivity or used to conduct research \u2013 especially in military service. <\/p>\n \u201cThe military dolphin program of the U.S. Navy should have been shut down long ago \u2013 even the Navy itself is skeptical of the value of the animals in national defense and has proposed shutting down the program several times,\u201d the non-profit International Marine Mammal Project said<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n Some Navy dolphins have reportedly died after training, including during a 2011 exercise that used underwater explosives near the San Diego coast, according to The Los Angeles Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n A 2018 warning<\/a> from the non-profit Center for Biological Diversity said Navy training could kill, injure or harass wild marine mammals there 12.5 million times over the next five years.<\/p>\n None have ever died in combat, Mark Xitco, the director of the Navy Marine Mammal Program, told The New York Times<\/a> in 2023, and the program complies with the Marine Mammal Protection Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess in theory there could be some other program around the corner that I\u2019m not going to show you, where we\u2019re doing things that you wouldn\u2019t be comfortable with or others wouldn\u2019t be comfortable with,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/73871172.jpg\")
A Navy Dolphin is transported before a training exercise off the coast of San Diego, California, in April 2007. The U.S. military has worked with dolphins for decades (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2252472332.jpg\")
A bottlenose dolphin catches a fish off the coast of Florida last November. Bottlenose dolphins have bigger brains than humans (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1869855.jpg\")
A U.S. Navy Sergeant watches as K-Dog, a bottlenose dolphin, leaps from the water of the Persian Gulf in March 2003. The dolphins were deployed in support of the war in Iraq (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1541974807.jpg\")
A Navy mammal handler brushes the teeth of a bottlenose dolphin in March 2003. Navy dolphins live twice as long as dolphins in the wild (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n