A military marine mammal is a cetacean or pinniped that has been trained for military uses. Examples include bottlenose dolphins, seals, sea lions, and beluga whales. The United States and Soviet militaries have trained and employed oceanic dolphins for various uses. Military marine mammals have been trained to rescue lost naval swimmers, guard navy ships against enemy divers, locate mines for later clearance by divers, and aid in location and recovery of equipment lost on the seabed. Dolphins Soviet Union Navy dolphins The Soviet Navy operated a research facility to explore military uses of marine mammals at Kazachya Bukhta (), near Sevastopol. The Russian military's dolphin program is believed to have languished in the early 1990s. A Soviet military Beluga whale named Tichka twice escaped in 1991 and 1992, crossed the Black Sea and was admired by the residents of the Turkish town Gerze, who called him Aydın. Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Iran After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Soviet military dolphin program was passed to the Ukrainian Navy. In March 2000 the BBC reported that the Ukrainian navy had transferred their military dolphin project from Sevastopol to Iran. Iran bought the animals, and the chief trainer carried on his research at Iran's new oceanarium. In 2012, Ukraine allegedly "resurrected" the military dolphin program. After the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian dolphin program was taken over by Russia. Conflicting statements have been made regarding the fate of the dolphins. One claim is that the program had been demilitarized prior to the annexation, with all military dolphins either sold commercially or dead by natural causes. A counter-claim suggests that dolphins died patriotically after going on hunger strikes and resisting their Russian captors. Russia reportedly intended to used advanced technology to visualise the dolphin's biosonar signals in future military dolphin research. Government public records show that in 2016, five bottlenose dolphins were purchased by the Russian defence ministry from Moscow’s Utrish Dolphinarium. United States Navy dolphins The U.S. Navy trains dolphins and sea lions under the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program, which is based in San Diego, California. The Navy gets some of its dolphins from the Gulf of Mexico. Military dolphins were used by the U.S. Navy during the First and Second Gulf Wars, and their use dates back to the Vietnam War. About 75 dolphins were in the program circa 2007, and around 70 dolphins and 30