Eyes! Russia trains SEAL "Special Forces": 2 times a day to be ready for battle

Remember those two seals with "military hats" on their heads and "water guns" on their shoulders? On the day of the Russian Victory Day military parade, the video of them being "reviewed" by the trainers in the aquarium in military uniforms once swept the Internet. Now, the real SEAL "Special Forces" are really coming! On February 16, Russian media released a video of seals conducting military training. Experts showed that experts trained seals to carry out tasks such as mine detection, detonation of mines, reconnaissance, rescue of people who fell into the water, and search for frogmen who carried out sabotage operations. This shows that the Russian army has a "special forces" composed of seals, dolphins and other marine mammals.

At present, the Russian Ministry of Defense is carrying out relevant research work with the Russian Academy of Sciences. They farmed nine marine mammals in the Seal Lab. Here, seals are cultivated as an important part of the biological security system. Here, they learn many "special operations" skills: practice twice a day and participate in various tests, fly in an airplane for several hours if necessary, and are ready to "fight" on the other side of the globe. Given the growing threat of terrorism, the more the skill base of the Navy SEAL "Special Forces", the better.

The entire training period of seal "special forces" takes about one year, and the service period can be as long as 15-20 years, which is quite cost-effective. During domestication, first of all, they must be taught not to fear people, learn to drill into the cage, and complete some of the simplest instructions; then begin to learn the main course, during which each seal must master a specialty, mainly involving search and patrol tasks, such as checking the bottom or hull of a warship, some patrolling the waters, some searching for targets, some acting as an assistant to the diver, etc.; most importantly, they must learn to return to the instructor one hundred percent according to the instructions, and cannot become disposable.

At the end of 2017, Academician Magishov, who was the director of the Southern Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published a series of papers on the application of marine mammals to national defense, and was awarded the "Arctic Maritime Contribution" medal of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Academician Magishov said that seals have a series of sensory systems such as hearing and vision, and can find targets at a considerable distance. Studying their senses of smell, sight, and hearing and developing similar sensory systems for underwater equipment is promising. Currently, scientists are studying seals' magnetic sensation and magnetic navigation abilities.

Compared to dolphins, seals are better adapted to the harsh natural conditions of the Arctic. The temperature there is as low as -30 °C, and the water temperature is also below 0 °C. In this extreme environment, seals have more advantages than real special forces or dolphins or even any current technical equipment: they can move both in the water and on land, and they spend longer on land than dolphins, which is much less difficult to transport; they can tear off the mask worn by frogmen, and their teeth are no less sharp than many dogs. Therefore, from many indicators, today's seemingly omnipotent robots can not replace the status of seal "special forces", and combat seals are not in service with the Russian Navy.

The U.S. Navy was the first to use marine mammals in military practice. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military used dolphins that could adapt to the temperature of the waters in the tropics to defend the Cam Ranh Bay Naval Base. From 1991 to 2004, dozens of dolphins and trained sea lions participated in U.S. Navy military operations in the Persian Gulf.

Russia also used marine mammals for military purposes early. In 1915, the famous animal trainer Vladimir Durov secretly built a pond dedicated to the domestication of marine mammals "warriors". He managed to equip seals with the skills to search for and destroy mines in the sea. Just as he was about to show the results to the Russian naval command, the seals suddenly died one after another. It turned out that German agents learned of the test and poisoned the research project.

During the Soviet era, dolphins serving in the Crimea region once learned how to search for saboteurs. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dolphins were sold, and the trainers went their separate ways. In 1981, the Soviet Union learned that the United States had launched a scientific research project to use seals against submarines, so Soviet scientists also began scientific research on the use of marine mammals for military purposes. They found that local seals far outperformed fur seals and sea lions in carrying out instructions, and that they were no less than dolphins in mastering the skill speed necessary to perform their missions. In addition, they can dive into the deep sea and can reach amazing speeds of 40 km / h. But in the turbulent 1990s, Russia's marine mammal research and domestication program was interrupted and was not revived until this century.

[Original title: Russia has SEAL "special forces"]