Mining has recently seen a resurgence in attention and focus on American naval power. As such, ensuring mining proficiency across the joint force has been acknowledged as a critical tool to project military power. However, many within the U.S. military still have a conceptual mismatch between mining and its contribution to the high-end fight in the current generation of warfare. Some only acknowledge mining as a necessary effort for allies to protect their own waters, also known as defensive mining, as seen by the Ukrainians in the Russia-Ukraine war. Using mine warfare for an offensive purpose has been almost exclusively confined to what has traditionally been understood as clandestine operations. However, this now-traditionalist perspective places limits on speed and capacity inherent to those operations, which may undermine their potential effect.
Mining should be a fundamental capability for Navy surface and aviation assets. Any requirement for Navy ships or aircraft to deliver mines has gone unresourced for some time. The Navy wholeheartedly trusts its partners in the Air Force to deliver mines to their intended threat areas. Of course, any aerial delivery (manned or unmanned) risks attracting adversary attention. The same cannot be said of surface delivery. However, the Navy has no ships capable of or trained to do it. A recent study on mining by Naval Postgraduate School students concluded that surface ships can complete a large minefield with nearly the same covertness as some of the more expensive tools—and significantly faster. Imagine if this capability was integrated into an unmanned vessel, particularly one that operated from over-the-horizon.
Cost-Benefit of Mine Warfare Remains Unmatched
A tool of asymmetric maritime conflict, which history suggests was first used by the Chinese in the 15th century, cheap (relative to their targets) sea mines can cripple ships indiscriminately—large combatants and merchant vessels alike. In fact, the largest vessel ever sunk by a mine was the RMS Titanic’s sister ship, the HMHS Britannic, a hospital ship struck during World War I.
Mines have been the center of many of the Navy’s historically important moments. In 1898, historical controversy notwithstanding, the Navy claimed a drifting mine caused the explosion which floundered the USS Maine. It served as the cause for the United States to go to war with Spain, which ultimately resulted in the annexation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the United States. A sea mine spurred enough political will and fervor of the American people to force retaliation against the Spanish.
Mines possess a clear and efficacious psychological power. When a weapon can be wielded with such a profound effect, it must be respected and used properly. On learning that an area has been mined, decision-makers must recognize that maritime forces have entered contested waters. In doing so, senior leaders instinctively know that seas are denied and change their decision calculus to consider the associated risks. A clearer cause and effect of psychological warfare within naval conflict is rare to find.
What About Mine Countermeasures?
The ability to diminish or make the threat of mines obsolete should be an important capability to decision-makers. Unfortunately, because mine countermeasures (MCM) are not kinetic—that is, as decisive as actually blowing up an enemy—they do not receive the appropriate level of consideration in naval theory or practice. This is true even when MCM could be the most direct way to render an adversary’s attempts to control the seas ineffective.
To the uninformed maritime warfighter, the MCM mission could be described as tedious, complex, and even boring. The joint force cannot necessarily be blamed for that. Unrestricted line and combat arms officers are not required to learn the mine threats prevalent in their associated theaters of conflict in the same way they must memorize munitions, missiles, torpedoes, and the adversarial platforms that employ them in the undersea, air, and land. Navy and Marine Corps exercises often “fast forward” the timelines for MCM operations, if they are included at all.
In some ways, today’s mine threat is more dangerous, obscure, and less observable than in prior decades. Sailors and Marines must learn to take this threat seriously and understand it as a component within its appropriate sphere in undersea warfare. While Navy has been successful in articulating the relevance of seafloor and subsea bed warfare to the wider undersea domain, mine warfare has not been part of that increased interest. The Navy must task itself to modify years of willful ignorance and an inclination against regarding mine warfare as relevant to the undersea warfare domain.
Another paradox lies in the relative importance navies across the globe regard MCM. For many global partners, MCM is considered a fundamental capability. Notably, many of the best U.S. mine warfare training instructors attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization school for MCM.
Debunking Myths, or “Get Real”
With legacy systems, manned assets operate in the mine danger area to find and neutralize the threats. There is an inherent danger to the force when operating inside the minefield. This is, in the author’s estimation, why senior naval leaders regard MCM as an untenable risk. It is true that an additional air defense asset would normally be assigned to protect those legacy ships, aircraft, and crews when in a “contested” environment. As a friend and mentor says routinely, “When there are mines in the water, it is a contested environment.”1
However, the Modular MCM systems operating from Independence-variant littoral combat ships (LCSs) do not pose the same inherent risk. LCS with MCM Mission Package (LCS MCM) can hit an enemy surface combatant with the naval strike missile (NSM). It also has point air defense with the Sea Rolling Airframe Missile (SeaRAM), in addition to a 57-mm gun for prosecution of surface fast attack/fast inshore attack craft threats. Compared with legacy platforms, there is a reduced risk in using LCS MCM for operations in a contested environment. Until now, commanders have assumed MCM was unacceptable when hostilities were ongoing. Any perceived limitation of which level of conflict our forces would use MCM is only considered within the context of a risk-to-force assessment. The risk to force, which currently undermines any concept for contested MCM operations, is based on the extremely vulnerable, organically indefensible manned assets currently in the naval MCM force.
However, if U.S. forces could obtain sufficient superiority in the warfare domains for a short enough period to enable LCS MCMs to carry out its exploration or clearance tasks within an identified minefield, then MCM could be conducted throughout the spectrum of naval conflict. If MCM efforts in research and development are any indication, the use of MCM should be reframed to leverage the hybrid fleet that Force Design 2045 has already visualized. Delivery of the Modular MCM systems, and the additional supporting tools, could make contested MCM or, at a minimum, low-observable MCM a reality, thereby changing the commander’s risk calculus.
In addition, a self-imposed constraint by senior naval leaders that “never shall I ever do MCM” is forcing tactics into an unnecessary conceptual box. If unmanned systems could—with an acceptable amount of risk within a specific time frame—complete clearance of mined waters to enable an advantage in movement or maneuver for surface or undersea assets, then combatant commanders would see the value of conducting MCM throughout all phases of conflict.
The next policy worth considering is that of MCM being left to allies and partners. It is true that other navies have more MCM assets in terms of their fleet percentage. However, that does not mean their systems are necessarily better or faster. Nor would it be wise to entirely depend on an ally. Despite the political and military trust the United States may have with its global friends, it is doubtful the combatant commanders and the American taxpayer would approve simply relegating all mission risk to said partners.
In the meantime, a misinformed perception that MCM is something only “our allies should have to do” has permeated the sentiment of the Navy’s resourcing decision makers, unjustifiably generating routine excuses to defund MCM efforts, delaying delivery of critical enablers at tremendous opportunity cost.
In addition to the airborne MCM sensor from an unmanned aerial vehicle, which was divested because the platform it was integrated on was divested from by its parent resource sponsor (outside the control of the MCM requirements team), the Near Surface Neutralization module (“Barracuda”) of the MCM mission package also has been affected by funding reductions. An expendable semiautonomous neutralizer with a sonobuoy form-factor that could have enabled precisely the type of unmanned clearance previously mentioned, this program of record has continually been at-risk because of a misalignment between the MCM resource sponsor and the undersea unmanned vehicle resource sponsor’s priorities.
Considering this is an evolutionary moment for technology, these efforts to deliver MCM capabilities as autonomous, unmanned systems leveraging at-the-edge sensor processing with artificial intelligence/machine learning should be seeing increased funding, not be subject to reductions. Mine warfare (both mining and MCM) is the smallest warfare portfolio in terms of resourcing across the Navy. However, the return on investment could be huge if clandestine MCM could be conducted in contested environments. Mine warfare is a ripe area to realize this and serve as the pilot for hybrid fleet fielding and tactics development. Therein lies the advantage that a competent and speedy MCM force possesses in the maritime commons of the 21st century. If a force can clandestinely and quickly clear a minefield, it could very well change the outcome of a decisive naval battle.
“Get Better”
Paradoxically, MCM is one of the most noble efforts that U.S. maritime forces can carry out in warfare. It aligns perfectly with two primary missions in the Navy: protect freedom of the seas and win the nation’s wars. While many military-age Americans consider uniformed service as an expression of belligerence for national benefit, MCM seeks to prevent loss of life amid conflict—not contribute to it.
Unfortunately, the Navy has learned these lessons before, realized in the burning metal and blood-soaked waters that have surrounded the 15 U.S. Navy ships struck by mines since World War II. Mines had a significant effect on the Korean conflict. During the first Gulf War, mines altered U.S. decision-making about which large-scale courses of action were available, and more recently, defensive mining of Ukrainian coasts may very well have prevented a Russian amphibious assault which could have been decisive in the early months of 2022. History speaks to us incessantly, and time and again, mine warfare has been demoted in importance at our Navy’s peril. Mine warfare must be restored to its appropriate place as a fundamental capability which enables decision-makers in Joint Warfighting. It deserves to receive cross-community advocacy and resourcing to make autonomous, unmanned systems the way of the future in maritime domain control. Only when mine marfare can be entrusted to these next-generation robots, will the hybrid fleet we envision prove practical and achievable.
1. Conversation with the author, 2024.
