A weapon is absolutely doable. The US military have dolphins trained both in mine detection and removal, and in mine placement - they attach a magnetic submersible charge to the harness, and the animal then rubs along the vessel, attaching the charge. The same technique is used for attaching tracking beacons, listening devices, and anything else you might want to affix to a target vessel.
The behaviour that has been described for this whale ("tries to rub the straps off") is absolutely in line with this training.
So, no, the whale wasn't kitted out to have a Vulcan cannon mounted on it, but explosives, potentially.
Given the region, I first thought of the Swedish submarine scare and cold war panic in the 80s. Sweden, a non NATO member which didnt want to join NATO, had repeated incursions by submarines into their waters which were attributed to the soviets. It seems that wasnt the case for most subs. Instead the likely culprits were often NATO vessels.
"It seems that wasnt the case for most subs", according to whom? The book you're referencing? Read the abstract:
"After a Soviet Whiskey submarine was stranded in 1981 in the Swedish archipelago ... Today, all evidence for Soviet intrusions appears to have been manipulated, or simply invented. " so NATO would steal a Soviet sub, fill it with Soviet navy guys, and bash it against the Swedish shoreline? Seems reasonable.
I'm going to use Occam's razor here; the SU had extensive plans to invade Sweden (as it had against the rest of [central] Europe). I'm pretty sure they practiced those plans.
The Swedish government back then attributed only two of these submarines to the soviets, one of them being the stranded Whiskey sub. The second case was also later disputed.
I think you understand that the author isnt talking about the Whiskey sub being invented or staged.
To "most", the sentences after your quote is the interesting one.
> Classified documents point to covert US and UK activity. Former US secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger stated that Western submarines operated ‘regularly’ and ‘frequently’ in Swedish waters in order to ‘test’ the Swedish coastal defences, and former British navy minister Sir Keith Speed confirms the existence of such operations. Royal Navy submarine captains admit having carried out top-secret operations in Swedish waters, and that a member of Cabinet signed approval for every single operation
The Swedish government is and was very cautious to not point fingers without having proof. Getting proof is often hard when it comes to submarines. Unless they get beached on your islands...
According to the article you're linking:
"'NATO subs never entered Swedish waters without being given approval beforehand,' Weinberger said."
Sweden dropped depth charges on these submarines. You think the Swedish government would invite NATO subs just to drop bombs on them?
The swedish government didnt tell their population which saw dozens of submarines and went in to a panic expecting a soviet invasion.
Again, the whole quote:
>Many military officials and politicians said they had never heard of the NATO exercises.
>``You need some sort of agreement to do a thing like this. But I know nothing of such an agreement,″ said Admiral Per Rudberg, head of the navy from 1978 to 1984.
>Current Defense Minister Bjoern von Sydow said he was surprised, but added, ``I have no reason to question what a former U.S. defense secretary is saying.″
There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that wherever the intruders came from, at least some died trying. (There were a lot of depth charges fired and moored mines detonated, sometimes on chance, sometimes as an "exercise", not only in the widely published sub hunts of the era.)
I'm guessing they are talking about the whale being a weapon, and Russia has admitted to training beluga's.
>a 2017 report by TV Zvezda, a station owned by the defence ministry, revealed that the Russian navy has again been training beluga whales, seals and bottlenose dolphins for military purposes in polar waters. In the past three years, president Vladimir Putin has reopened three former Soviet military bases along its vast Arctic coastline.
>The recent research and training was done by Murmansk Sea Biology Research Institute in northern Russia on behalf of the navy to see if beluga whales could be used to “guard entrances to naval bases’” in arctic regions, “assist deepwater divers and if necessary kill any strangers who enter their territory”.
Well, Russia recently invaded a European country, assassinated several people in the U.K., got caught using spies to infiltrate U.S. political parties, hacked the emails of a U.S. presidential candidate while meeting secretly with her opponent (who may or may not be massively in the Russian government’s debt), and resumed air attack drills on NATO countries. So, a lot of English-speaking people see Russia as the “bad guy” right now.
> So, a lot of English-speaking people see Russia as the “bad guy” right now.
So a lot of English-speaking people are falling for mass media lies. And frankly it's getting ridiculous now days. It seems that whatever US media starts pushing out ( and it's usually w/o proof ) people will just eat it up.
"The referendum was regarded as illegitimate by most members of the European Union, the United States and Canada mainly due to Russian intervention.[13] Thirteen members of the United Nations Security Council voted in favor of a resolution declaring the referendum invalid, but Russia vetoed it and China abstained.[14][15] A United Nations General Assembly resolution was later adopted, by a vote of 100 in favor vs. 11 against with 58 abstentions, which declared the referendum invalid and affirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity."
"In February 2014, Russia made several military incursions into Ukrainian territory. After Euromaidan protests and the fall of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, Russian soldiers without insignias took control of strategic positions and infrastructure within the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Russia then annexed Crimea after an unlawful referendum in which Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation, according to Russian official results.[12][68][69][70][71] In April, demonstrations by pro-Russian groups in the Donbass area of Ukraine escalated into an armed conflict between the Ukrainian government and the Russia-backed separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. In August, Russian military vehicles crossed the border in several locations of Donetsk Oblast.[31][72][73][74][75] The incursion by the Russian military was seen as responsible for the defeat of Ukrainian forces in early September."
Well what do you call it when each side reports extremely biased opinions that further only their cause and portrays the other side as the criminals?
We can call it also misinformation, fake news, ignorance or whatever. Does it really matter what is the exact word I used, given that it is occurring on a mass scale ?
I'd stopped consuming so much cable news, it can rot your brain. And why did you edit out "China's human rights may be even worse" from your comment? That's certainly something that is up for debate.
"English-speaking people"? What's that?
Russia does bad things. China does bad things. The EU does bad things. We do bad things. What's strange is the sudden hysteria and relentless propaganda directed towards china and russia in particular. It's not like Russia and China were saints before.
>And why did you edit out "China's human rights may be even worse" from your comment? That's certainly something that is up for debate.
That comment didn’t seem relevant in hindsight. The article is only about Russia. Discussion of China’s human rights record would not be on-topic commentary.
We in Europe have a very personal stake in this. The chance of China ever invading us is minuscule bordering to none, the same can't be said for Russia.
They've already done it in the past numerous times - I know damn well since I come from former Czechoslovakia. I have no kind word for a russians due to this, my parents and their whole generation have pretty horrible stories to tell and effects of their meddling and bloody direct invasion in 1968 are still felt these days. And they've done it recently (and still doing it while LOLing like nothing is happening) with Ukraine.
You don't need to consume cable news at all, I've stopped some 15 years ago. This is plain old history.
> They've already done it in the past numerous times - I know damn well since I come from former Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia was a part of the Soviet Bloc, wasn't it? During the time of Cold War? With Soviet Union being, in effect the ruling center of the bloc and considering the rest of the Soviet countries its sphere of influence? I mean, it doesn't justify what Soviet Union did then, but what happened to Czechoslovakia couldn't have happened to France, or Sweden, or the UK.
Things are completely different now. Yes, even now, with the militaristic rhetoric on both sides rising to the Cold War-era level. There is no Soviet bloc. Russia is reduced in its ambitions to the level of a minor regional power.
As for Ukraine, it has the misfortune of sharing a border and a lot of common history with Russia; so much so that Russia still considers it its sphere of interest. With Western Europe things are completely different. Russia may have squabbles with Ukraine or perhaps even with Baltic states (unlikely, because they are members of NATO), but to conclude from that that other European countries are under the risk of Russian invasion is to misrepresent reality, I believe.
I think it's a fine thing to take responsibility for your government. But it's a bit much to blame people for the government doing bad things with "their" money. It's not their picture on the money. There's no unsubscribe option on a tax return form. You can't opt out, and even in our Western democracies representation is... poor, to say the least. The distinction between a government and its population is not meaningless.
We vote. The only legal democratic tool to "do anything about it", isn't it? Only our vote is a minority one that doesn't count much.
And what the hell is "society", anyway? Given that, say, 70 percent of the population votes one way and 30 percent the other way, is there any fault with the 30 percent? Are they "society"?
And the US are the good guys, never played a role in foreign countries political systems, never spied on anyone, never started wars, killed civilians in countless countries, founded terrorists organisations, &c. ?
It's very easy to tell the bad guys to stop being bad, while doing the same things and pretending it's right. You don't even have to go back to MKULTRA or vietnam, it's happening right now.
But be careful, the mean russians have whales with light harnesses and the chinese have backdoors in all our technology. It's even sillier than most WW1/2 propaganda.
That the US does bad things does not invalidate the bad things China and Russia do. You sound like someone who gets a speeding ticket and answers "but everyone else is speeding too! Why do you punish me?!"
It's actually a better excuse for traffic violations than for international politics. What the rules of the road specifically don't matter all that much so long as everyone is behaving predictably so doing what everyone else does is generally the best option even if it's not the letter of the law.
I rarely see negative threads about the US on hackernews, but not a day goes by without the regular anti chinese/russian propaganda, especially concerning military and/or technology.
I see plenty... often times it's more corporate focused but frequently it's about how those corporations interact with the government/society in ways that implicate government/society as well.
Thanks for the chuckle, but shitting on the USA is one of our favorite passtimes on HN as Americans, so it kinda makes your "b-b-but what about the USA" here into a trite eye-roll.
It's like complaining HN never talks shit about Javascript in a submission that shits on PHP.
> True, but whataboutism like that only carries any weight at all because the US has been the most warlike nation since WWII.
Not really. Russia was de facto involved in many of those conflicts (e.g. supplying fighters and pilots to North Korea during the Korean war to fight the UN), and had many of its own (e.g. the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, to name a few).
Meanwhile, Mexico (and other Central American countries) continue to have rampant violent gangs and political corruption, causing a constant of drugs, guns, and refugees. And undoubtedly has a greater aggregate impact on U.S. politics than a handful of Russian nationals.
Yet Mexico gets a fraction of the bad press as the Russian threat.
I used to scuba dive a lot in the kelp beds off of Point Loma, San Diego in the early 90's. One day while floating on the top of the water with my buddy after a dive, a military boat drives by really fast. All the sudden, I'm lifted and spun around by a huge push of water. Scared me silly, I will never forget it. After a moment, I realized it was a couple of trained dolphins following the boat and messing with me. My buddy couldn't stop laughing at me.
This is the sort of totally obvious prisoner’s dilemma that just a tiny bit of international cooperation could easily avoid, if only Russia (and now the US) had not gone down the road of pseudo-macho brutalism in politics.
With the beluga cat now out of the bag, any maritime conflict will be liable to justify the wholesale slaughter of large marine mammals, just as 60 years of preservation efforts have been showing some good results, and incidentally proving that international cooperation actually can work.
On the plus side, nothing was gained. Whales as a weapons, or reconnaissance, platform may have worked as a tactical surprise. But it is useless once it’s known. Killing all the whales in the Atlantic is a day’s worth of fun for bored sailors.
Instead, everyone could have just played солитер all day in the safe knowledge that they are doing the best work of their life.
While there are some efforts to keep mammals away from wars specially when it comes to sea creatures. But sadly no one cares about dogs and horses that are being used and trained.
The comments here are getting border line conspiracy theory crazy, its honestly sad to see that people think the invasion of another country was justified (Ukraine) and 'mass media' lied about it all.
> That video does not show the removal of the harness.
This article includes that video and also pics of the removed harness. Apparently the buckle is marked with the brand "Equipment St. (logo) Petersburg."
Then it got trapped in it pretty damn neatly, with one part behind the fun and one on its "neck". It's like my dog getting randomly tangled in its chest harness with the legs in the right position.
> How many whale-sized harnesses are just floating around in the sea anyway?
Quite a lot actually. RT was just showing a documentary about the undersea harness plants of Sweden. Apparently they are naturally made of nylon and float up from from the sea floor and attach to Beluga wales to spread their seeds throughout the sea. Absolutely nothing to do with Russia. /s
Oh noes... not more Russiagate conspiracy theories. Chris Hedges and Aaron Mate were just on with an American RT host Rick Sanchez talking about the reasons for this sort of theme. I also think it feeds into rising nationalism that (inevitably?) lead to things like civil war and world wars.
Don't forget that Russia Today is part of a deliberate effort to feed that rising nationalism in Western countries. Undermining international collaboration is the foundation of Putin's long-term geopolitical game.
You might be able to strap a gps or a camera on it, but a weapon ?! What's up with all the articles "russia/china bad" popping up recently ?
> In 1980s Soviet Russia, a programme saw dolphins recruited for military training
Yeah, just like any nation with enough defence budget. Dolphins/sea lions [1], dogs, rats [2], &c. are used all the time.
[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-whale-wearing-strang...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/5-animals-that-serve-in-the-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APOPO