{"id":11975,"date":"2026-05-06T20:27:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T01:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11975"},"modified":"2026-05-06T20:27:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T01:27:29","slug":"are-military-dolphins-working-in-the-strait-of-hormuz-probably-not-but-they-have-been-part-of-the-us-navy-for-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/05\/06\/are-military-dolphins-working-in-the-strait-of-hormuz-probably-not-but-they-have-been-part-of-the-us-navy-for-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"Are military dolphins working in the Strait of Hormuz? Probably not, but they have been part of the US Navy for decades"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/05\/05\/politics\/dolphins-iran-us-mines\">CNN<\/a> With concerns about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/03\/10\/politics\/iran-begins-laying-mines-in-strait-of-hormuz\">Iran laying mines<\/a>&nbsp;in the Strait of Hormuz, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was asked Tuesday whether Iran might turn to dolphins to help confront the US Navy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said that he could \u201cconfirm\u201d that Iran didn\u2019t have dolphins to deploy as part of operations but said he would neither \u201cconfirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One source familiar with US operations in the Strait of Hormuz told CNN that the US military isn\u2019t using dolphins as part of its efforts in the Strait. But the US Navy does, in fact, have a decades-old program to train dolphins to help detect mines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Marine Mammal Program is a part of the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Department within Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific. The department\u2019s dolphins are not kamikaze dolphins in that they do not sacrifice their lives to detonate mines. Instead, they\u2019re focused on detection.<\/p>\n<!-- <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" title=\"kFJPXUKu SZltmkx\">kFJPXUKu SZltmkx<\/a> --><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CNN With concerns about&nbsp;Iran laying mines&nbsp;in the Strait of Hormuz, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was asked Tuesday whether Iran might turn to dolphins to help confront the US Navy. He said that he could \u201cconfirm\u201d that Iran didn\u2019t have dolphins to deploy as part of operations but said he would neither \u201cconfirm or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":11976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coping-with-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-06-at-21.24.33.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11977,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11975\/revisions\/11977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}