The Ukrainian military has apparently lost three of its trained military attack dolphins in the Black Sea, RIA Novosti reports.
Supposedly, the dolphins swam away from their handlers during training exercises earlier this month, though Ukraine's Defence Ministry denied the reports.
The dolphins may have swum off to mate with wild dolphins, former soviet naval officer Yury Plyachenko told RIA Novosti. He said that when this has happened in the past, they've come back in about a week.
Supposedly, though the Ukraine Defence Ministry denies it, they restarted the military marine mammal program last year. The dolphins are trained to find underwater mines (which has been done in other military programs including Russia and the U.S.) but in the Ukraine, they are supposedly also trained to kill enemy divers with knives and pistols attached to their heads, according to RIA Novosti. Some could also be trained to place explosive devices on enemy ships.
Note: there's a Ukrainian report going around that people claim says that the trained dolphins never existed, and haven't gotten loose, but we know that the government has denied reports of military trained dolphins in the past. Until we know more, the article stays.
There's no evidence that the dolphins were armed when they escaped their handlers. Here's a documentary about the Soviet military dolphin program:
