Uncrewed Technology to Defeat Deadly Sea Mines

For centuries, sea mines have presented an affordable and effective option in naval warfare. That remains even truer today. However, what has become more concerning is the relatively recent use by terrorist groups and other non-state actors who have used sea mines—“weapons that wait”—to hazard commercial vessels and disrupt peaceful commerce on the oceans.

Unless or until nations and navies can find a way to defeat deadly sea mines without putting sailors in harm’s way inside a minefield, the unimpeded sea commerce that undergirds globalization will no longer be assured.

Not a New Challenge

Mine warfare is not new. Precursors to naval mines were first invented in Imperial China. The first plan for a sea mine in the West was drawn up by Ralph Rabbards, who presented his design to Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1574. Since the invention of the Bushnell Keg in 1776, mines have been an important instrument of naval warfare.

Modern naval mines were widely used for the first time over a century ago, during the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-1905, and again in World Wars I and II with great success. During Operation Desert Storm in 1990-1991, the threat of mines hazarded all coalition forces operating in the Arabian Gulf. Indeed, Operation Desert Storm highlighted the importance of mine warfare with the near catastrophic damage to USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG 58), USS Princeton (CG 59) and USS Tripoli (LPH 10).

In terms of availability, variety, cost-effectiveness, ease of deployment, and potential impact on naval operations, mines are some of the most attractive weapons available. Today, more than 50 countries possess mines, of which 30 have demonstrated a mine production capability and 20 have attempted to export these weapons.

The use of sea mines adjacent to maritime choke points presents a threat that is at once ubiquitous and deadly. Mines represent one of the most vexing military challenges. Sea mines are hard to find, difficult to neutralize, and can present a deadly hazard to any vessel—even those ships specifically designed to hunt them.

No Longer Navy Versus Navy

In the past several decades, rogue states have indiscriminately employed sea mines. Libya used mines to disrupt commerce in the Gulf of Suez and the Strait of Bab el Mandeb. Iran laid mines to hazard military and commercial traffic in the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Iran continues to threaten to use mines to stop commerce through the narrow Strait of Hormuz.

Today, the mine threat no longer comes from just sovereign nations, but from terrorist groups of all stripes. Within the past year, a Maltese-flagged tanker was damaged by a mine in the Yemeni port of Bir Ali, a mine in the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia exploded damaging a Greek oil tanker, a Singapore-flagged tanker berthed at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia was damaged by a mine, and an oil tanker off the coast of Iraq discovered a mine attached to its hull. More recently, the Arab Coalition announced that they have removed 157 naval mines placed in the south end of the Red Sea by Iran-backed Houthis.

In the modern-day context, there is only one way to completely nullify the threat that sea mines present to human life: leverage uncrewed technologies to hunt and destroy mines from a distance. In the past, unmanned vehicle technologies were not mature enough to be considered to take on the complex mine-hunting and mine-clearing task. Today they are, and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies are at the forefront of providing such a solution.

Near-Term, COTS, MCM Solutions

In a series of U.S. Navy and Marine Corps exercises over the past several years, unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) have been evaluated as potential mine-countermeasures (MCM) solutions that can be operated autonomously. These platforms were used to perform the “dull, dirty, and dangerous” work previously done by Sailors and Marines in the hazardous littoral zone.

One of the systems that performed well during these MCM events was the T38 Devil Ray USV. It is this USV that can be combined with surface and subsurface mine-hunting and mine-neutralizing equipment to provide an over-the-horizon “single sortie detect-to-engage” MCM capability.

The U.S. Navy is evaluating several USVs like the Devil Ray for potential use for a variety of missions, but most importantly, for MCM. One of the key attributes of this USV is the fact that the T38 has an aft-mounted tow station which can house either a mine-hunting sonar system or a mine neutralization system (MNS) remotely operated vehicle (ROV). These towed subsystems are installed on two rails aft to allow autonomous launch and recovery.

The single-sortie MCM mission will require two T38s to work in concert with each other. In a full minefield search scenario, multiple T38s with mine-hunting sonars will be supported by one or two T38s with the MNS neutralization payload. Additionally, both craft will have an onboard multi-beam sonar search capability to augment the towed vehicles.

The mine-hunting system is a commercial-off-the-shelf technology embodied in a towed-body-mounted sonar. Several available commercial sonars, both installed and in tow, for this mission have a resolution sufficient to search for mine-like objects (MLOs). An important feature these sonars possess is automatic target recognition to identify MLO anomalies.

The second component of a COTS MCM solution is the MNS ROV. Once the area search is complete, the MCM-MNS T38 joins the search and transitions from hunting to neutralizing through the launch of its tethered MNS ROV, which provides real-time video validation of mine-like objects. The MNS ROV autonomously executes the MLO route for final classification and man-on-the-loop validation of each MLO. This process is repeated until the field is cleared. This COTS-based MCM solution can perform sweeps 24/7/365 with minimal human intervention allowing for a safe and effective MCM solution.

The Future of Effective MCM

If nations and navies want to buy-down inherent technical risk and challenge the paradigm of long-cycle acquisition in the deadly serious business of MCM, it is time to field a near-term, uncrewed COTS solution. Once operators see this solution, we will be well on our way to fielding a system to defeat today’s—and tomorrow’s—mine threat.

To be clear, this is not a platform-specific solution, but rather a concept. When operators see a capability with any uncrewed COTS platforms in the water successfully performing the MCM mission, they will likely press industry to produce even more-capable platforms to perform the autonomous mine-hunting and mine-clearing task.

This feature originally appeared in Ocean News & Technology's Magazine February 2022 edition—Naval Defense & Security. To read more, access the magazine here.