ComNavOps has long criticized the Navy for its utterly misguided philosophical approach to mine countermeasures (MCM) as well as its incompetent execution thereof. It’s the philosophy that I want to look at today.
To review, there are two broad categories of MCM:
Leisurely Clearance – This is the removal of mines with no special time constraints and no threat of combat while doing so. Examples would be mine removal after a conflict or mine removal from an area that has been bypassed by war and is no longer a critical task. The clearance effort can be conducted at a leisurely pace and the goal is 100% clearance.
Combat Clearance – This is the removal of mines with immediate combat implications and severe time constraints. Examples would be mine removal from the beach approach lanes during an amphibious assault or mine removal from a navigational chokepoint in support of fleet combat movements. The clearance effort must be conducted at a very fast rate and likely under enemy fire.
For unfathomable reasons, the Navy seems totally fixated only on the former, the leisurely clearance option. Almost every Navy MCM platform and piece of equipment is designed for slow, leisurely clearance and the numbers of MCM platforms is woefully small and shrinking every day. In fact, the Navy’s only formal MCM force will be the LCS once the two dozen or so decrepit MH-53 helos [2] complete their long overdue retirement and the final Avenger class MCM vessels complete their on-going retirement.
Emphasizing the Navy’s leisurely MCM approach is the lack of numbers of MCM platforms. There are currently only 8 Avenger MCM vessels (and all are scheduled for near term retirement), two dozen flyable MH-53E helos, and 6 deployable (I use that term loosely) LCS MCM ships although the Navy is retiring the Freedom variant so the LCS MCM responsibility may fall to the three deployable Independence variant MCM vessels.
As an example of the Navy’s leisurely approach to mine hunting, let’s consider the Seafox drone. Seafox is a small underwater drone that is controlled from the host ships via a fiber optic cable. The Navy has just issued a contract for maintenance support for the drone ASQ-232A Seafox Mine Neutralization System (for a video description, see ‘Seafox’).
 |
| Seafox Launching from its Cradle |
Atlas North America LLC, Yorktown, Virginia, is awarded an $8,619,126 firm-fixed-priced, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity requirements contract for depot level support and maintenance for the Seafox Mine Neutralization System. This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $35,887,986.[1]
SeaFox encapsulates everything that is wrong with our current MCM approach. The SeaFox operational sequence is:
- Detection of possible mines by the mine hunting host ship’s sonar which, by definition, puts the host ship in or close to the minefield.
- SeaFox is prepared, launched from the host ship, travels to the suspect mine’s location, acquires the suspect object, and the shipboard operator visually identifies the object as a mine.
- Seafox returns to the host ship and is recovered.
- A ‘Combat SeaFox’ is prep’ed, launched, travels to target, and reacquires the mine.
- Seafox is positioned and detonated
- Repeat
A minimal time estimate to destroy a single mine is on the order of 2 hrs … likely much more.
As excruciatingly demonstrated in the product video, the mine hunting process is:
- Far too long
- Far too complex (too many steps)
- Far too costly
- Still too risky to host vessel
This is the approach the Navy is wedded to. Yes, they claim to be working on a sweep system for the LCS but has anyone seen an operational sweep system? Worse, they’ve decided to retire half the LCS vessels, leaving only a few Independence variants to conduct the entire fleet’s mine clearance.
___________________________________
[1]https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/3046664/
[2]The Navy has been scavenging parts from retired Japanese MH-53 helos in order to keep its own helos flying.
"The Navy has been scavenging parts from retired Japanese MH-53 helos in order to keep its own helos flying."
ReplyDeleteAnd they're not even at war right now.
I get it, they don't expect a peer war to happen and neither do I, but the level of inadequacy displayed by "leadership" is always impressive.
This is what we get when the managers we select are obessed with avoiding loses and the possible resulting impact to their achieving higher rank through politics rather than results. Suppose Farraguthad waited outside of Mobile harbor after his first ironclad was hit? Suppose Grant had retreated at Shiloh becuase of heavy losses the first day? We have selected managers and do not hold them accountable for NOT achieving results. Everything flows from that action.
ReplyDeleteI notice your Fleet Structure makes no men of MSM's. What would your ideal Mine Clearing ability look like?
ReplyDeleteThe ideal MCM vessel would be an updated Avenger that is optimized for sweeping as opposed to hunting. Complementing that would be a MCM mothership which would be a converted merchant ship (cheap!) supporting MCM drones.
DeleteNot part of the effort would be helos. They have no effective, efficient place in MCM.
The entire peacetime MCM fleet should consist of around six updated Avengers and four motherships. There simply are vanishingly few actual mine clearance needs in peacetime so the purpose of the group would be to maintain a core of expertise to build on when a war need comes.
"Not part of the effort would be helos. They have no effective, efficient place in MCM."
DeleteDoes the MH-53E's minesweeping sled regularly miss mines? Or does the sled only sweep mines in its path, meaning if you have a ship follow the MH-53E, that ship will likely hit a mine, as it's likely wider than the minesweeping sled?
Helo sweeping is a very time consuming operation to set up. More importantly, it requires vast resources to support (a carrier of some sort, hangers, intensive maintenance per flight hour, etc.). Helos, by their nature, have poor reliability and availability during operations. Far worse, in a combat situation, helos are non-survivable as has been demonstrated repeatedly over every battlefield where they're used.
DeleteI wonder what sort of advancements might have been made in combat sweeping had we (anybody?) bothered for the last thirty-five years or so. Anything SLMM-ish the Chinese or Russians have developed (I'm unfamiliar with their stockpiles) is going to be close to totally unaffected by a magnetic influence sweeper, but that doesn't mean the nut is impossible to crack - any combination of sensor and algorithm can be spoofed with the right technique and equipment, though until you try it's impossible to tell whether it's feasible to do so at a combat-useful scale and speed.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, the "old" fields with a high comparative density of dirt cheap magnetic mines remain effective against an adversary who doesn't bother to field any capability against them!
"I wonder what sort of advancements might have been made in combat sweeping "
DeleteThat excellent question could be applied to so many areas!
What kind of advances could have been made if the Navy had focused some effort on ship armor?
What kind of advances could have been made if the Navy had focused some effort on large caliber gun support?
What kind of advances could have been made if the Navy had focused some effort on torpedoes (we still don't have a wake homing torp!) ?
What kind of advances could have been made if the Navy had focused some effort on long range COMBAT surveillance?
What kind of advances could have been made if the Navy had focused some effort on electronic warfare?
What kind of advances could have been made if the Navy had focused some effort on supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles?
What kind of advances could have been made if the Navy had focused some effort on aerial tanking?
And so on.
Instead, the Navy was totally focused on new hulls in the water no matter how useless they were (LCS, Zumwalt, Ford).
I guess the question becomes, what does fast look like?
ReplyDelete" what does fast look like?"
DeleteIf you're asking about the necessary speed of mine clearance, that's an easy answer: it's fast enough for a task force or unit to pass through an area without having to stop. For example, the cross-channel approaches to Normandy had to be swept quickly enough that the invasion fleet wouldn't be held up.
There are two ways to counter mines—sweep them or hunt them.
ReplyDeleteHunting is the slow way, but the only way to get 100% clearance. Sweeping is based on probability. If we have good intel and select the proper sweep techniques, we can achieve X% confidence that we have cleared Y% of the mines after so many sweep passes. It is then up to the operational commander to decide what level of clearance he wants, the tradeoff being confidence level/swept percentage versus time and effort.
One difference between USN and European thinking is that the USN supposedly focuses on offensive mine countermeasures, whereas the Europeans focus more on defensive measures, particularly keeping the mouths of the Rhine open (which prompts some interesting rivalries among the Germans, Dutch, and Belgians, with the French and English standing by). Therefore, the European efforts are more aimed at hunting than sweeping since they want 100% clearance and are prepared to wait until they get it.
In recent years, the tendency has been to find ways to avoid putting sailors into the minefield. The photo of a Korean sweep blowing up in Wonsan in October 1950, with the first lieutenant about 80 feet in the air, has been one driver for that effort. The USN has tried to achieve it with helicopter sweeps while the Germans have gone for drone minesweeping boats.
The LCS is basically useless as a sweep or hunt platform. Its one capability is the ability to go fast, and a minefield is the last place you want to be running around at 45 knots.
I have proposed two types of mine countermeasures vessels:
1) Something like a smaller LSD/LPD (no need for troop berthing and equipment) that could carry 2-3 minesweeping helos (MH-53/successors) on the flight deck and 4-6 drone sweep boats (like German Seehund) plus 2-3 helo sweep sleds in the well deck. This mother ship could launch, recover, and control both helo and boat sweeps.
2) A minehunter that could be based on the new Dutch/Belgian minehunter class, and would also be able to control helo and drone boat sweeps.
I would propose about 15 of each new ship at minimum and base them in pairs (one of each) in major ports—Guam, Pearl, Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles/Long Beach, San Diego, Corpus Christi/Brownsville, Houston/Beaumont/Lake Charles, New Orleans/Mobile/Pascagoula, Tampa Bay, Miami, Jacksonville, Charleston/Savannah, Chesapeake Bay, New York.
One proposal that I find very interesting is ComNavOps’s idea that I have called wild walrus—a small UUV that would be launched in numbers to follow a programmed path down a channel and to search and destroy anything resembling a potential mine, without taking the time to classify it. This could get a lot of clearance in a hurry. Each of the proposed MCM ships would carry a large number of these.
"wild walrus"
DeleteCute name, by the way. This would be the third way: essentially an underwater area 'bombardment' that doesn't care about hunting or sweeping and is unaffected by electronic signatures or countermeasures. It just looks for anything vaguely resembling a mine and blows it up. Might have been a rock, might have been debris, might have been a mine ... don't care. This approach makes use of the K.I.S.S. principle which is diametrically opposed to the military's current approach of every more complex systems.
The one issue I could see is if the bad guys used a bunch of moored mines and the wild walrus went around blowing up the bases, that could set a bunch of mines adrift, which could be disastrous.
DeleteHow about if we program them to blow up the object that looks like a mine?
DeleteDepends on where they are programmed to look. If they look on the bottom, they will see the base, which looks enough like a mine that they should blow it up. If they are programmed to look up, maybe a different result. In reality very few people use moored mines any more and in the daylight you can see the mines and shoot them (the way we did when we swept moored mines) so it's probably not a huge issue.
Delete"The LCS is basically useless as a sweep or hunt platform. Its one capability is the ability to go fast, and a minefield is the last place you want to be running around at 45 knots."
DeleteFor both styles, most modern MCM systems use offboard systems to sweep/hunt. The LCS has CUSV with Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) for sweeping and AQS-24B Mine Hunting Sonar for hunting.
"'wild walrus'
DeleteCute name, by the way"
My first thought was "wild weasel" but that has already been taken.
Bottom line, the USN knows little and cares less about mine warfare, and that has been the case for at least 50 years. They're not interested in having a serious mining or MCM capability. At least not enough to do the work required to develop it.
In regards to the idea of 'area bombardment'...
ReplyDeleteWould it be possible to use a scatterable submunition that floats down from the surface and uses magnetic detection to steer itself towards metallic objects?
It floats down and lands on top of the object and triggers a simple HEAT round that functionally destroys the target.
Lutefisk
I seem to recall that in the "Tanker war" of the 80's (when we were caught with no minesweeping capability and the Iranians were laying mines) that there was an occasion where a large merchant ship did minesweeping the hard way actually taking a hit but relying on it's size to not sink. Again this is a vague recollection of 1987-ish not an article I've read recent.
ReplyDeleteBut my point is could we in fact rig a large but cheap mineproof vessels to basically plow a corridor ahead of a convoy?
"But my point is could we in fact rig a large but cheap mineproof vessels to basically plow a corridor ahead of a convoy?"
DeleteHow about using the Edsel?
It's not like they're about to start flying combat missions from it.
Lutefisk
"But my point is could we in fact rig a large but cheap mineproof vessels to basically plow a corridor ahead of a convoy?"
DeleteThat was what we tried to do with the MSS-1 (minesweeper, special) back in the 1970s. Bought an old merchant, filled the hull with styrofoam, sealed all hull penetrations so propulsion came from outboard props driven by diesels on the main deck ("the world's largest outboard"), put a control room on shock absorbers topside, and the idea was that you drove it through a minefield and set all the mines off but did not sink.
Imagine a modern spin on this idea, further equipped with speakers to play "Burke travelling at 15 kts" noises and some 19" tubes to fire about a hundred Mk 70 MOSS or some work-alike. You might be able to sweep magnetic-, pressure-, and acoustic-triggered mines all at the same time.
DeleteIf it fails in trials, at least the explosion(s) will look cool!
As near as I have been able to find, the torturously long description you gave of finding and killing a mine is longer than that used by the Avenger class. The ship's sonar detects a mine and an ROV is sent to disarm it. They just add an extra step or two. That in no way invalidates your point that the process is too freaking slow for combat. That is dead on.
ReplyDeleteDrones could play an important part, just not the one on one multi-step approach described. Tell me if this sounds like a better approach:
The mothership deploys two large drones before they arrive at the area to be swept. (Hence being large for the action radius) The first drags a magnetic sweeper sled like the MH-53E. This is followed by the second drone. The second carries the same sweeping sonar as the MCM and relays the data to the MCM on a tight link. The MCM drops multiple simple cheap drones (refurbished topedoes?) that go to where the MCM suspects are mines and drop explosive charges to destroy them. No verification, if it turns out to be an an old boat or a dead whale they blew up, its just cheap explosive. The MCM follows the small drones scanning again and dropping another drone if need be. It is followed by the Mothership/Tender which is big and and has a reinforced hull.
"That in no way invalidates your point that the process is too freaking slow for combat...
Delete"Drones could play an important part, just not the one on one multi-step approach described."
I suspect drones will be rendered useless in many combat situations, due to enemy jamming, hacking, and other electronic warfare techniques and technology. Countering enemy electronic warfare, will require a massive investment in communications systems hardened against jamming, our own hackers to counter enemy efforts, our own electronic warfare units searching for and destroying their enemy counterparts, and "guardian angel" units (armed, mobile) to defend our electronic warfare units from enemy counterparts trying to search for and destroy them...
Has the USN made any statements about the need for all that? Or have our admirals fallen to the trap of assuming "The drone- our drones will always get through! The enemies' will simply fall out of the sky, due to cheap Chinese manufacture!" which will cost the lives of many US military service members, and a victory we could've had if the admirals were more cautious?
Another pertinent question would be how many of these disposable Seafox drones does each MCM have and how many exist in the national inventory?
ReplyDeleteIran alone laid over a 1,000 mines in 1990-91 and has an inventory between 2,000-5,000 mines.
Do they have enough of these Seafox drones to destroy even a small percentage of the potential minefield of a medium power like Iran?
If not and they run out...what then?
You've cut to the heart of the matter and, unfortunately and unwisely, the answers are exactly what you fear.
DeleteIn the Red Sea it took us a month to simply do a single sweep using RH-53 helos with the Mk106 sleds and the MOP. Most of the flights conducted by HM15 DET on LaSalle were visual sweeps only of deep water northbound shipping channel so the IO battle group could exit through the Suez Canal.
ReplyDeleteIn the lead up to Praying Mantis and after the USN sweeps hunted the actual minefields from Rostam up to Kuwait including Shah Allum. The RN sweeps out of the UAE conducted sweeps but I don't believe they actually drove around in any of the minefields, certainly not any of the 4 that I was in.
Hunting is done at 3-6 knots and on good days works very well. On other days when the acoustics are dismal, we stay at anchor.
When we practiced in SOCAL we did sweeps with Ogear and the Magnetic and Acoustic sweeps. We rarely practiced hunting. When we did we would rig the zodiac with a 200 pound bomb and vector it over the mine on the bottom and bomb it. It, as your readers commented, takes a few hours/bomb and I'm not sure the zodiac would have survived more than a single attempt with a real explosive bomb.
It is a very very bad idea to machine gun drifting/floating mines. Resist the temptation. You're unlikely to explode them with gunfire but they will sink to neutral bouyancy beneath the waves if breached and lurk there out of sight in the water column about 12 feet down where you cannot see them.
We no longer really have any capability at all to do a hostile denied entry over the beach using assault boats, boat waves, landing craft etc. Forget about it. The Marines realized the cruel reality in 1990 when they couldn't risk destruction in the Iraqi minefields. China's minefields will be far more dangerous, orders of magnitude more dangerous and lethal and contain serious anti-sweep defensive mines.
You don't want to go there.
I might be late to the comment section but the Marines need to seriously look at this issue as it pertains to their Force Design 2030 concept. How are they expecting landing (and possibly exiting) these remote islands if they will become basically main mining areas for the Chinese in a conflict? The Chinese Navy isn't blind to the clear desire of the US Marines to capture these islands, what stopping them from launching or dropping naval mines to blockade these islands?
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons the sweeps were scattered to all fleet concentration areas except Pearl Harbor, was so they could conduct occasional route surveys of the shipping channel to see just what was there on the bottom before it got covertly mined. That was why we had a heavy concentration of MSO by the TSF on each coast. God only knows what they plan to do now.
ReplyDeleteWondering if the Atlas SWEEP system would have been the better buy than the Atlas Sea Fox meet your CONOPS for a fast combat mine clearance system
ReplyDeleteJanes reported RN contracted for 3 Atlas Elektronik UK (AEUK) SWEEP minesweeping systems. An autonomous 11m surface vessel tows its sensor units behind it, the unit uses magnetic, acoustic and electric technology for minesweeping by generating a realistic influence with high-output power generation modules, which can produce four current controlled outputs and the acoustic source power in order to seduce a mines to activating it in such a way that it causes no damage? The system is controlled by a portable command centre which can be based on mother ship or on land, The Atlas pdf puts emphasis on COLREGS, Regulations for Prevention of Collision at Sea, applicable to a restricted water traffic environment for sweeping in difficult environments, both inshore and offshore.
https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/uk-signs-for-new-influence-sweep-systems
https://www.atlas-elektronik.com/fileadmin/user_upload/01_Images/Solutions/ARCIMS/Sweep_Brochure.pdf
Consider this ... China has a reported inventory of well over 100,000 mines. NKorea has a reported inventory of tens to hundreds of thousands of mines. And so on. Does it seem logical for us (the West) to focus on one-at-a-time mine hunting when we'll be facing tens of thousands of mines per minefield in a war? Our one-at-a-time approach is fine (is it really?) for peacetime use when some country decides to get pissy and drop a dozen mines in some channel but that's not war, is it?
Delete