For experienced naval captains, sailing the Black Sea should be straightforward. But since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, even this most popular of shipping lanes can prove treacherous. In October 2023, to give one example, Ali Najafov was damaged by a naval mine while passing the coast of Romania. And while the Turkish tanker reached port more or less unscathed, suffering only minimal damage, not every vessel has been so lucky. Soon after the war began, after all, Helt was also struck by an underwater mine – only this time, the Estonian cargo ship sank, ultimately resulting in the deaths of four innocent crew members.
Add to this tally the damage to military ships – a Romanian minesweeper’s engine was wrecked in September 2022 – and maritime mines are clearly a menace. Nor is this very surprising. Cheap to build and easy to deploy, they’re increasingly popular wherever naval warfare seems likely, from the Straits of Hormuz to the South China Sea. Not, of course, that the situation is hopeless. For if the number of naval mine producing nations has risen by 75% since 1988, military researchers are equally busy developing solutions to the naval mine threat.
As so often in the military space these days, their efforts can be characterised by a single word: automation. Rather than sending crewed minesweepers to find and neutralise mines, navies are increasingly experimenting with unmanned alternatives. Yet if this approach naturally offers a range of advantages – not least in preventing sailors from needlessly meeting a watery grave – the road from theory to practice is far from straightforward. For one thing, crewless vessels are arguably more vulnerable to attacks from the air or sea. Reliability and cyberattacks can prove challenging too, even as defence ministries can’t hope to deploy without help from the private sector.
Underwater threats
Few experts are better placed to consider the risks of maritime mines, and the ways to combat them, than Sidharth Kaushal. A senior research fellow in sea power at the Royal United Services Institute, he’s worked at the prestigious security think tank for more than half a decade. Over that time, he’s covered naval warfare in all its variety, exploring everything from coastal operations to amphibious assaults.
When Kaushal speaks, in other words, it’s worth listening – and, as he says, naval mines have become a “considerable threat” across modern seaborne warfare. As the expert continues, this can be understood in a number of ways, starting with their price. Less sophisticated variants can be purchased for as little as $2,000, even as laying them doesn’t cost much either. Even better, from the perspective of a minelayer anyway, is the fact that recovering bombs is cumbersome, hardly surprising when they’re floating in the middle of the sea.
Nor, Kaushal adds, should we ignore how dealing with mines often puts minesweepers in danger. “While clearing them,” he says, “typically lightly armed mine countermeasures vessels can be held at risk by other means such as anti-ship cruise missiles – which is a challenge the US would likely face in the Straits of Hormuz.” A fair point: though recent statistics are hazy, one 2012 report found that Iran had secured a stockpile of up to 6,000 naval mines. That’s even before you consider their recent use by the Houthis, to protect the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, let alone the roughly 500 mines deployed in the Black Sea by both Russia and Ukraine. As Kaushal summarises: “These interlocking challenges collectively comprise a difficult anti-access threat – because while it is technically easy to defeat any one problem, different means of denying access reinforce each other.”
It’d be wrong, of course, to suggest that navies are insensitive to these problems. Once again, that’s clear enough from the numbers, with the global market for minesweeping vessels market expected to reach $3.5bn by 2032. Yet it’s equally apparent that older anti-mine technologies suffer from a range of limitations. That’s obvious enough when it comes to manned systems, with Ukraine’s recent sinking of the Ivan Golubets minesweeper costing the lives of two Russian sailors. Nor, Kaushal continues, are outmoded autonomous examples much better. “Traditional methods,” he says, “require a vessel to be close to a minefield as the remotely operated vehicles deployed are controlled by tethers of around 1,000m. In a contested strait like Hormuz, or the Bab al-Mandab, where the challenge of mines overlaps with that posed by cruise and ballistic missiles, minesweeper vessels have to operate at some risk from other anti-access tools.”
A clean SWEEP
Dovetail in the time-consuming nature of traditional minesweeping, and it’s no wonder that navies have begun hunting for alternatives. For a good sense of what this looks like in the field, meanwhile, you could do worse than visit Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S). The UK’s military technology research centre, the organisation has been developing a range of autonomous mine-hunting systems for about a decade. One of the most striking examples here is the so-called ‘MMCM’ platform. Encompassing uncrewed surface vessels, mine hunting payloads and remote command centres, it allows operators to detect and destroy mines from literally miles away. In practice, moreover, this happens via a range of sophisticated new technologies, from high-performing sonar to multishot neutralisation systems.
$3.1bn
The estimated size of the global countermine market by 2032.
Market Research Future
Nor is the MMCM, developed jointly with the French Navy, especially unique. Just at DE&S, after all, scientists have developed a range of minebusting unmanned platforms. One is the ‘SEACAT’, which helps other vessels covertly search for underwater threats. Another is ‘SWEEP’, whose magnetic, electric and acoustic signals can detonate a range of naval mines. No less important, meanwhile, is the comparable work being done by other countries. Unveiled in 2022, for instance, the US’s so-called Unmanned Influence Sweep System uses sensors to detect and destroy naval mines. Across the Pacific, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has moved in a similar direction, with autonomous vessels and Chinese frogmen working together to disarm mines.
If all this represents a market that was already worth $2.4bn by 2022, Kaushal is unsurprised. Between the sonars, the sensors and the multi-shot payloads, he stresses that autonomous vessels can operate “at greater reach” than tethered alternatives. That’s just as well, he adds, given how important mine warfare could become later in the century. “Naval mines will be of great importance to both sides in a Pacific war,” he says. “The PLA has one of the world’s largest stockpiles of mines and would deploy them liberally using a range of tools including maritime militia vessels.” No less important, Beijing’s American rivals see mines as a vital means of limiting the Chinese navy’s freedom of action around Taiwan – where the US in principle only needs to achieve “sea denial” to doom any invasion from the mainland.
$2,000
The cost of a simple naval mine. War on the Rocks)
Going it alone?
With these strategic considerations in mind, at any rate, it makes sense that the market for countermine technology could reach $3.1bn by 2032. All the same, and notwithstanding the stark need to develop autonomous mine-busting tools from Taiwan to the Middle East, difficulties do remain. One arguably involves the ability of the public sector to develop complex new systems independently. To an extent, this is apparent if you return to DE&S: alongside its partnership with the French government, MMCM is being delivered by Thales. SWEEP, for its part, is being built by the Bremen-based giant Atlas Electronik.
Not that these hurdles are insurmountable. As Kaushal puts it: “Working with industry is important – but much of the technology here is mature and at either initial-operational or full-operational capability. In a sense, a well-defined technical challenge like mine countermeasures is where autonomous solutions are already ready to be fielded, as compared to more complex tasks.” That’s doubtless true from a technical perspective – just look at achievements like SWEEP – but that hardly leaves naval leaders totally without worries.
Ironically enough, one involves the implications of automation. For if crewless vessels are obviously safer, they’re also more vulnerable to attack from drones or submarines. Probably for that reason, naval commanders seem increasingly drawn to hybrid manned/unmanned systems, with SEACAT just one example among many. Then there’s the threat of cyberattacks – automated ships are obviously more exposed than old-fashioned helm-steered vessels. Yet here, too, there’s reason for optimism, not least given the US Navy lately unveiled a new ‘national cyber range’ to keep its seaborne forces safe. Given how important sea mines seem destined to be over the years ahead, ensuring the countermeasures are also adequate surely makes sense.
