A practiced guerrilla fighter and leader, Mao Zedong instructed insurgents to “swim” among the people like fish in the sea.1 Just as roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs) attrite and slow maneuverability on a highway, the struggle of overcoming mine ordnance in other areas of the modern battlespace allows Mao’s precept to be inverted. To properly confront modern naval combat, the Navy–Marine Corps team should develop the capacity to wage a “naval insurgency.”
Naval Insurgency Tactics
Facing “hedgehogs” of U.S. mines that appear randomly within their antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) zone, enemy forces would be subjected to considerable, ever-increasing friction. The result would place adversary navies on the horns of the same dilemma that characterizes combat against insurgencies armed with IEDs on land: consistent attrition, loss of mobility, and delays, allowing the Navy–Marine Corps team to take on an insurgent’s ability to isolate, prioritize, and destroy enemy bastions at will.
Mines and minefields are critical tools to support the Navy–Marine Corps team’s future strategic vision. In the era of advanced A2/AD capabilities, traditional offensive missions structured around carrier groups or Marine expeditionary units are often highly vulnerable and cumbersome.2 As near-peer adversaries fortify “bastions” from which they intend to project control of territorial or international waters, the lessons of subsurface and mine warfare from past campaigns become relevant once again.3
Accordingly, the U.S. Navy should prioritize developing and stockpiling complex mine obstacles that can be emplaced from standoff range and disrupt both air and sea traffic. The current Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM)-ER project is a strong step in the right direction.4
Significant stockpiles of these weapons would allow U.S. aircraft to launch effective temporary blockades of outlying bastions from great distances without sending ships into the enemy’s A2/AD weapons engagement zones. Such isolation tactics would not off permanently cut forward positions from their supply lines, but the threat of torpedoes would require the adversary navy to drastically limit operations until a route could be cleared.
Unable to act freely inside their own A2/AD weapons engagement zone, enemy naval and air forces would face a serious dilemma. Economic starvation and a crippled enemy war machine can be understood as a simple math problem in the modern era: lay minefields faster than the enemy can clear them, and the enemy’s ability to resist will be ground down.
Extending the Utility of the U.S. Arsenal
As renewed great power competition puts pressure on the Department of Defense’s budget, redeveloping the previous generation of submarine-launched weapons for use as homing mines provides an opportunity to extend the utility of the current arsenal. Consideration might also be given to developing Quickstrike-ER versions of antisurface or antiair missiles—for instance, Harpoon missiles or the abortive subsurface version of the AIM-9X.5
Placed correctly, even the best-guarded surface vessels could be surprised by attacks from mine-based systems at close range. Dropped in hedgehog formations of concentric rings that combined torpedoes, antisurface missiles, and antiair missiles, U.S. minefields could become so lethal that enemy air and naval forces might avoid them altogether.
Underseas Deployment
For maximum lethality, mines need not only be carried by aircraft or surface vessels. Undersea warfare has historically presented a critical threat to enemy war efforts. The U.S. submarine force in the Pacific during World War II destroyed 55 percent of Japan’s merchant shipping, causing a shortfall in hulls that crippled the empire’s supply chains.6
Deploying modern naval mines from submarines could allow the Silent Service a safer, cheaper path to replicate the efficacy of its 1940s forebears. The Navy has a stockpile of legacy weapons that serve this purpose already, most notably the Mk 67 Submarine Launched Mobile Mine (SLMM).7 Adapting the autonomous targeting capabilities of Captor munitions for these mobile mines would add a layer of complexity to the enemy’s ability to predict and detect minefields in their own backyard. In short, rearming the submarine fleet with mines as a primary tool has great potential to make each vessel far more lethal to enemy shipping than torpedoes or missiles alone.
Engaging the Marine Corps
Though the largest naval mines are likely to remain primarily in the hands of the Navy, the Marine Corps currently is engaged in a major effort to find ways to compete on and dominate the modern naval battlefield. Therefore, the Marine Corps must also become fluent in the use and placement of naval mines.
Between the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HiMARS) and Quickstrike-ER mines in the F-35B’s payload selection, Marine artillery and air assets could employ mines in any contested sea space as standard practice. Mines launched from these platforms would allow Marines to create depth and defensive space across beaches and littorals, functioning in the same way as claymores and concertina wire on land.
In addition, the Marine Corps’ unique proficiency close to shore allows its artillery and vehicles to fill a sizable gap in the Navy’s current mine capabilities: small shallow-water mines, for use within a few thousand meters of the beach. Retired amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs) could be repurposed to carry light naval minelaying racks, similar to the way M1129 Strykers carry mortar platforms. Development funds could be devoted to naval mines meant to be fired from 81-mm mortars or 227-mm M270 rockets. Marines tasked with defending naval outposts or seeking to fortify islands newly taken from enemy counterattacks could litter the seas with these mines, seeking to force the enemy into the air or to canalize its landing craft into terrain of the Marine Corps’ choosing.
Sustained enemy reinforcement efforts of contested islands would become vastly more difficult if challenged by Marines firing naval mines into the water. Enemy landing craft advancing under cover of smoke and electronic jamming would be forced to slow down and maneuver around suspected obstacles, extending their time in the kill zone of shallow waters. Even return journeys could be made perilous, with enemy lines of communication threatened by Marine Corps mortars firing mine clusters into the routes these craft had moments earlier used to come ashore.
Looking Ahead
As U.S. near-peer rivals flex newfound sea power, naval mines offer several low-cost, high-impact methods to balance the playing field. Long-range platforms can be used to emplace mines deep within the enemy’s “safe” A2/AD weapons engagement zones, adding serious risk for unarmed shipping and diverting assets to constant minesweeping efforts. Mine emplacement such as this, used in concert with electronic jamming or deception efforts, would be part of a doctrinal emphasis that could place the enemy in an omnipresent state of friction, fearing mines around every corner with little ability to effectively locate their actual whereabouts.
The use of mines as a primary undersea warfare platform would upend the cost-benefit analysis of A2/AD: Instead of expending cheap shore-based missiles and aircraft in exchange for the destruction of expensive U.S. ships, now crucial merchant tonnage and expensive warships would be threatened by low-cost U.S. mine hedgehogs within sight of the enemy’s shoreline. Though minefields cannot replace the capabilities of warships or aircraft, the ability to blockade or threaten sea lanes would add friction to the enemy’s efforts that would be just as potent as the friction imposed by IEDs on land forces engaged in counterinsurgency. If the United States seeks to deter enemy naval aggression against its allies and impose prohibitive costs on enemy nations waging naval warfare, a strong, diverse, and powerful 21st-century mine capability should be made a keystone of the strategy.
1. Zedong Mao and Samuel B. Griffith, Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare (Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 1989), 92–93.
2. GEN Joseph F. Dunford, USMC; ADM Jonathan W. Greenert, USN; and ADM Paul F. Zukunft, USCG; Forward, Engaged, Ready: A Cooperative Strategy for
21st Century Seapower, March 2015.
3. James Lacey, “Battle of the Bastions,” War on the Rocks, 9 January 2020.
4. Richard R. Burgess, “Latent Lethality: Offensive Mine Warfare Sees Renewed Focus in Era of ‘Great Power Competition,’” Seapower, 29 July 2019.
5. Northrop Grumman, Underwater Launch Systems: Challenging the Submarine Force Payload Paradigm, 2013.
6. Gary E. Weir, “Silent Victory 1940–1945,” Undersea Warfare 2, no. 2 (Winter 1999).
7. Lee M. Hunt, “The Enduring Tribe,” in Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on Technology and the Mine Problem, vol. 1 (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2006): B115–B117.
