The U.S. Navy must reconsider the strategic uses of naval mines, its “least spectacular and most effective weapons.” Naval forces took a backseat to ground and air forces in the Middle East wars, but sea control has been the cornerstone of military success among great powers since the dawn of civilization. Command of the sea has two basic requirements: the ability of one’s own forces to move and act freely and the ability to deny free movement and action to the enemy.
As the U.S. military reorients toward the sea, old assets must be updated to meet the demands of an evolving future and ensure command of the sea. The platforms the Navy uses to conduct mine warfare, including the Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships, must be overhauled to prepare the United States for 21st century mine warfare. Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), P-8 Poseidon aircraft, and a reinvigorated sense of purpose are all key ingredients to modern naval mine warfare supremacy.
U.S. Mining History
Mines are versatile weapons because they can be used defensively and offensively in a variety of situations. The United States has deployed mines for generations, from the crude “keg” torpedoes of the American Revolution to the secret mining of Nicaraguan ports during the Iran-Contra Affair. But modern technology has unlocked new promises for mines beyond mere explosiveness. The modern mine is less like a roadside improvised explosive device and more like a patient underwater robot able to gather and disseminate information, discriminate between friend and foe, and finally unleash efficient violence on an enemy ship.
Mines are essential to sea control. More than almost any other instrument in the Navy’s arsenal, they can deny freedom of movement by forcing enemies to channel themselves into mine-free areas or deterring their movement altogether. Mines can turn a segment of ocean into a maritime Thermopylae by funneling the enemy into a strategic area that advantages the minelayer.
Mines introduce friction, one of Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s more famous neologisms. “Activity in war is movement in a resistant medium. Just as a man in water is unable to perform with ease and regularity the most natural and simplest movement, that of walking, so in war, with ordinary powers, one cannot keep even the line of mediocrity,” wrote Clausewitz. Since the beginning of mine warfare, mines have been a tool to increase the friction an enemy faces.
Additionally, mines do not need to be very sophisticated to cause lethal damage. As captured in a 2016 Proceedings article,
During the 1980s “tanker war,” the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) struck a contact mine of World War I design, resulting in damage exceeding $96 million. On one day in February 1991, Iraqi-laid mines inflicted serious damage on two U.S. Navy warships. The billion-dollar Aegis cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) suffered $5 million in damage in the shape of a 23-foot hole in her hull after she struck a World War I-technology-based contact mine.
Since 1945, four times as many U.S. ships have been damaged by mines as by any other anti-ship measure.
If an enemy ship knows where a minefield is, it will have to avoid or disarm it. This can delay or thwart the enemy’s operations. The United States learned this lesson during the Korean War as it attempted to clear the minefield at Wonsan to disastrous effect. Over the course of 15 days, three vessels were lost and more than 200 sailors wounded or killed in the naval campaign. Moreover, mines can delay or deflect the transport of fuel, personnel, and materiel that travel overseas. Thus, mine countermeasures (MCM) must be the first wave of an offensive sortie because a large sealift operation is too risky without the escort of MCM forces.
Finally, mines disrupt nonmilitary affairs such as commercial trade, commercial travel, and industries like fishing and drilling. Operation Starvation, the Allied mining campaign against the Japanese at the end of World War II, was a rousing success on this front. In the final five months of the war, Allied mines laid by aircraft damaged or destroyed more than 1,250,000 tons of enemy shipping. The potential impact of commercial mining is especially stark today because supply chain disruptions have proven so costly. The cargo ship Ever Given’s grounding prevented as much as $10 billion of cargo per day from passing through the Suez Canal in 2021, and that situation was merely an expensive mistake. Nobody was trying to disrupt trade. A mining campaign explicitly aimed at that purpose could catastrophically affect global supply chains.
In trade as in war, friction can make even simple actions more difficult. In the past, the increased friction caused by naval mines has been a double-edged sword. While the minelayer always had the advantage of knowing where a minefield was, the mines within that field were not able to discriminate between enemy and friendly vessels. The minelayer had to avoid the mines just as carefully as the enemy. Modern technology has changed the equation. It is now possible to construct “smart” mines designed to discriminate between friend and foe.
Navy Mine Warfare Shortfalls and Solutions
The Navy uses only two types of mines—the air-launched Quickstrike mines and submarine-launched mobile mines (SLMMs). Both are incapable of enemy discrimination and can only be deployed in shallow water. Air Force bombers mostly deploy Quickstrikes, although Navy fighter and maritime patrol platforms are able to carry them. Importantly, the Quickstrikes usually require slower speeds and lower altitudes for their deployment envelopes. Although the Navy and Air Force have deployed 2000-pound Quickstrike extended-range mines at altitude and outside the presumed antiaircraft weapon range by outfitting them with Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) technology and pop-out wing kits, these capabilities are not available to every Quickstrike. If aviators cannot consistently drop mines without exposing themselves to lethal enemy fire, then deploying those mines becomes infeasible.
To solve this problem, the Navy has flirted with the idea of autonomous or semi-autonomous mines for years. The Office of Naval Research’s Undersea Weapons Program supports basic and applied research into cooperative autonomous swarm technology, undersea vehicle and weapon hydrodynamics, improved sensor performance, vehicle propulsion, and warhead lethality in undersea weapons. The Full Spectrum Undersea Warfare (FSUSW) Innovative Naval Prototype has five targeted project areas including the emerging subsea and seabed warfare (SSW) area and undersea intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISR&T).
These are admirable efforts, but the average sailor has never heard his or her commander speak about the strategic or operational importance of mining or MCM. Quiet weapons like mines are easy to overlook. If the Navy wants to improve its mine warfare capabilities, it must devote greater attention to mine warfare. Operationally, the top brass must emphasize the importance of mine warfare to the Navy. They must innovate new command structures and allocate new funding to mine warfare contracts and programs.
The Navy is not lacking teams trained in mine warfare altogether. For example, there are expeditionary MCM (ExMCM) companies trained to use UUVs. These companies require more personnel and technological funding. Meanwhile, the Avenger-class minesweepers are still able to hunt and sweep mines effectively, but they are old and deteriorating. The littoral combat ship (LCS) is not a replacement. In fact, the Department of Defense marked all nine Freedom-variant LCSs for decommissioning in its fiscal year 2023 budget proposal.
The Avenger-class cannot be retired until a replacement is developed, or the Navy’s MCM capabilities will be substantially reduced. Fortunately, the Navy does not have to start from scratch in developing a new cost-effective surface MCM platform because U.S. allies already have them. Japan’s Awaji-class minesweeper is less than one third the price of an LCS and is half as expensive as a new Avenger-class. Awaji-class ships have already participated in joint mine warfare exercises with the United States, most recently in the Mine Warfare Exercise (MIWEX) 2JA 2021.
The Navy must develop more than just its surface platforms for mine warfare. Underwater, the Navy can shore up its MCM systems with UUVs like the Knifefish, which can autonomously scan for mines for up to 16 hours at various depths and provide intelligence to other mine warfare systems. Similar UUVs include Raytheon’s Barracuda, an expendable mine neutralizer, and BAE Systems’ Riptide. Air Force planes have taken the lead on offensive mining campaigns in the past, most notably the B-29 during Operation Starvation and the B-52 today. However, undersea mines are naval weapons, and naval aviation platforms should carry out more minelaying missions.
In particular, the P-8A Poseidon must have a larger role. It has an antisubmarine warfare mission that includes launching small sonobuoys to acoustically track submarines. New smart mines could be launched from the same rotary launchers already on board every P-8 in the Navy’s fleet. Laying a minefield would be operationally similar to laying antisubmarine sonobuoy patterns. The research and development costs would be relatively low compared with creating and testing a whole new platform for the same mission. Even if the P-8 uses the old Quickstrike mines, those mines can be supplied with the successfully proven extended-range and JDAM technologies so they can be deployed outside of antiaircraft range.
Better Mines
One way to improve the Navy’s in-house mining operations is to develop smaller, stealthier mines. The Quickstrikes come in 500-pound, 1000-pound, and 2000-pound types, but smaller devices could be used to great effect in future conflicts. A mine that surgically targets enemies does not need to weigh 2000 pounds, and planes such as the P-8 could arm themselves with smaller mines more easily than the hulking Quickstrikes. The Navy should contract engineers to develop smaller mines that can fit the P-8’s existing sonobuoy launch system or even for a seaplane like the P6M Seamaster or Japanese US-2. The Russian Navy is already exploring the use of seaplanes in offensive mining operations, along with more sophisticated mines. China has done the same with its Harbin SH-5 seaplane. Seaplanes make sense for mine warfare because they have the advantage of being able to fly in ground effect and “hide” in plain sight.
While deception in war is as old as war itself, the technologies of war are always changing. Mine warfare is reemerging as a core U.S. Navy function and officers must advocate and prepare for the innovation and expansion of naval mining training and strategy. The Navy has chosen to invest in new methods of mine warfare, especially UUVs, but there is room to add both offensive and countermeasure capabilities to existing platforms like the P-8.
To be successful at sea, the Navy must have command of the sea. To have command of the sea, the Navy must be able to move freely and deny the same to its adversaries. Mine warfare is as crucial to the future of sea control as it has been in the past. To thrive in the modern era and take command of the sea, the Navy must not undermine itself.
