If Chinese offensive mining is a concern, the U.S. Navy isn't saying much about it. For example, the Office of Naval Intelligence report, China's Navy (2007), mentions mines 14 times and submarines more than 150 times; the Department of Defense report to Congress, Military Power of the People's Republic of China (2007), similarly mentions mines only twice, while submarines are discussed in 25 places.
Significantly, a recent joint publication of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Naval War College, entitled China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force (2007), in 384 pages of text, has only one passing reference to mines plus a relevant paragraph with the significant heading, "Possible Sale of Russian Mobile Sea Mines to China." Similarly, numerous articles in Proceedings, the Naval War College Review, and other professional publications address the Chinese submarine threat, but China's use of mines is rarely mentioned.
The significant exception is the relatively obscure but very worthwhile official magazine of the U.S. submarine force—UnderseaWarfare—which, in the Winter 2007 issue, has a significant article on Chinese mine warfare. The authors of the piece—entitled "China's Undersea Sentries"—are essentially the same as those of the book, China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force.1
Another significant—but also probably little read—exception is Michael A. Glosny's essay about China's possible mining campaign to blockade Taiwan. That 2003 piece was published in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Breakthroughs series.2 All of these articles and papers are based mainly on Chinese writings.
Chinese publications regularly discuss mine warfare, and that country's officers have voiced their views—privately in most cases—that mines could be a key factor in denying U.S. surface and submarine forces access to the Taiwan Strait, and could be used to blockade Taiwan. Indeed, in the late 1980s a senior Chinese naval officer had a discussion with U.S. defense analysts about sponsoring a study of employing mines (as well as submarines) in such a blockade strategy.
During the past decade, the Chinese Navy has acquired Russian-built destroyers, submarines, aircraft, missiles, torpedoes, and mines. And, of course, it has developed its own mines, some with Russian technology. As early as 1981 the Chinese began development of rocket-propelled rising mines and produced a prototype in 1989. Reportedly China now offers two types of rising mines—somewhat similar to the discarded U.S. CAPTOR mine—for export. One of these, the EM52, has a rocket-propelled explosive charge and has an operating depth of at least 650 feet.
The Chinese Navy also has bottom and submarine-launched mobile mines. The total Chinese mine inventory is estimated by U.S. Navy officials at between 50,000 and 100,000, with surface ships, submarines, and bombers being fitted to lay them.
Despite its recent modernization efforts, China is still a second-level naval power with its large force of diesel-electric submarines being the cutting edge of the fleet. Mines have traditionally been the weapon of weaker naval powers, and, indeed, of some nations that did not have real navies. With Soviet mines and technical support, the North Koreans in 1950 used small craft to sow Wonsan harbor with some 3,000 mines—enough to prevent a planned U.S. amphibious assault on the port city. The earlier September 1950 U.S. landings at Inchon probably would have been impossible had the North Koreans had sufficient time to execute their planned mining of that area. Without the Inchon landings it probably would have taken the allied forces several years to retake South Korea.
More recently, a U.S. guided-missile frigate was severely damaged by an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf in 1988, while Iraqi mines heavily damaged a U.S. Aegis missile cruiser and a helicopter carrier in the Persian Gulf in 1991. Those events are recent enough that senior U.S. naval officers should remember them. Probably not recalled was the clandestine mining of the Red Sea by a Libyan merchant ship in 1984, which damaged several merchant ships.3
Thus, one is hard pressed to understand the relative lack of concern by the U.S. Navy about the mining potential of China's air and naval forces. Indeed, one can make the argument that the U.S. Navy is endorsing the atrophy of its mine countermeasure forces.
The Navy has made some progress in mine countermeasures. With much publicity, its first destroyer fitted for modern mine countermeasure operations began searching for mines in the Mediterranean Sea in late 2007. The USS Bainbridge (DDG-96) was forward deployed to the Med, where she has begun using the AN/WLD-1 Remote Minehunting System (RMS).
The RMS is a self-propelled, remote-controlled, torpedo-like object that the destroyer lowers into the water and then seeks out bottom and bottom-moored mines. The vehicle, powered by a small, 370-horsepower diesel engine, is 23 feet long and weighs 12,850 pounds. It has forward-looking sonar and an obstacle-avoidance video camera. The images from these sensors are sent by data link to the destroyer's combat center. The craft can be programmed to perform autonomously or can be controlled via data link, even when beyond the horizon from the mother ship, which recovers the RMS after the mission.
The RMS can detect and map the location of mines, but neither it nor the destroyer can sweep or destroy the mines.
There is considerable confusion about the size and scope of the Navy's DDG/RMS program. Some years ago the Navy said that "a number" of DDGs would be fitted with RMS. However, the first destroyer fitted with the system was the Cushing (DD-985), which in 1996-1997 carried a prototype and operated the system in the Arabian Gulf. Subsequently, the Aegis destroyer Momsen (DDG-92) was fitted with the system in 2004 for demonstration and integration trials.
Now the Bainbridge has an RMS installation. When installed in that ship, the Navy stated that six Aegis destroyers would have the system. Then that plan was cancelled, but was shortly thereafter reinstated. It has now been cancelled again.
From the outset the provision of the RMS in Aegis destroyers was highly criticized. The system is intended to support naval forces operating in relatively shallow, littoral areas where the threats include mines as well as small submarines and small surface craft. The Aegis destroyers are primarily anti-air warfare ships, intended for deep-water operation in support of carrier battle groups. Indeed, the Navy's trouble-plagued littoral combat ship (LCS) program was developed in part to provide a littoral mine countermeasures capability. The RMS is a key component of the LCS mine countermeasures suite, which will include the means of destroying as well as detecting mines with unmanned surface and underwater vehicles, and helicopters, both manned and unmanned.
With the decision to delete the RMS from the DDG program and the lengthy delays in the LCS program, this component of the Navy's mine countermeasures program is in trouble.
Meanwhile, the Navy has recently taken out of service the last of its relatively new Osprey-class coastal minehunters. These 12 ships—well suited for littoral operations—were commissioned between 1993 and 1999. The Navy began decommissioning them in June 2006. Some have been transferred to Greece and Egypt, with the remainder being kept in storage at Beaumont, Texas, awaiting disposal.
The Navy cites high maintenance costs and intensive labor requirements as the rational for discarding the MHCs. But those small ships have a significant mine countermeasures/inshore mapping capability.
Lee Hunt, vice president for academic affairs for the Mine Warfare Association, recently said that the departure of the last coastal minehunters robs the service of the ability to survey domestic harbors for mines. The threat of mines or improvised explosive devices in U.S. harbors is of growing concern of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
Still another sign of the confusion—and complexity—of the current mine countermeasures (MCM) situation is the Navy move to replace the large MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters with the smaller MH-60S Sea Hawk. The latter has considerably less endurance and equipment lift capacity than the MH-53E.4 The Navy claims that using the MH-60R—part of the "neck down" strategy to provide fewer types of aircraft in the fleet—in the MCM role will provide cost savings, while the smaller helicopters will be embarked in LCS units assigned to that role.
But the larger, more-capable Sea Dragons can be rapidly flown to forward areas with their support gear in cargo aircraft and put to sea in a variety of ships, especially amphibious helicopter carriers (LPH/LHA/LHD). MH-53Es have also flown from smaller LPD amphibious ships.
While the U.S. Navy has long demonstrated a lack of significant interest in mine warfare, the situation was exacerbated by the 1 October 2006, merger of what had been a separate Mine Warfare Command with the recently established antisubmarine training command to form the Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command with headquarters in San Diego. Despite official Navy statements to the contrary, the merger in reality subordinates mine warfare interests to the larger, broader, and more-visible ASW interests. This is particularly true as the Navy sounds the alarm about the increasing Chinese submarine capabilities with hardly a mention of that nation's mine warfare activities. Today the primary—or, more accurately, overwhelming—concern of the new command as well as the U.S. Navy with respect to the Chinese Navy is ASW.
1. Andrew Erickson, Lyle Goldstein, and William Murray, "China's Undersea Sentries," UnderseaWarfare, Winter 2007, pp. 10-15. Also see their "Chinese Mine Warfare: The PLA Navy's 'Assassin's Mace'," paper prepared for the Naval War College and the Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 11 January 2006.
2. Michael A. Glosny, "Mines Against Taiwan: A Military Analysis of a PRC Blockade," Breakthroughs [Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program], Spring 2003, pp. 31-40.
3. See Dr. Scott C. Truver, "The Mines of August: An International Whodunit," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, May 1985, pp. 94-117.
4. See CAPT George V. Galdorisi, U.S. Navy (ret) and Dr. Scott C. Truver, "Helicopter Procurement: Playing with Fire," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, September 2007, pp. 64-68.