The US Navy has an important new mission in the Strait of Hormuz: to find and destroy any Iranian sea mines before they throw the world economy into further chaos.
The threat is real: Iran’s stockpile of thousands of mines, while reduced by the US-Israeli campaign, has not been completely destroyed. And US military intelligence believes that some of the mines have already been sent into the sea, according to a US official briefed on the matter, who did not want to be named to discuss ongoing operations.
The mere threat of Iranian aggression against commercial shipping was enough to paralyze the sea, and subsequently plunge the energy market into turmoil. If a mine were to damage or destroy a commercial vessel, oil truck traffic would slow down even more – if not stop altogether – exacerbating the world’s energy crisis.
More than a dozen US warships are already in the area, and more are on the way. They are primarily responsible for enforcing President Donald Trump’s embargo on Iranian shipping in and around the Persian Gulf.
But they also serve as minesweepers by deploying surface ships, helicopters and underwater drones in dangerous missions aimed at destroying these hard-to-find weapons before they explode.
Mine hunting “is like picking dandelions in your yard so you can make a path that you can walk in your yard and not step on a dandelion,” said Steven Wills, a Navy officer at the US Navy League Center for Maritime Strategy.
But it’s also like mowing the lawn, Willis said, because an area that has been cleared can one day be easily re-mined by small Iranian boats, making for a time-consuming and endless effort.
So far, the Navy has not found any Iranian mines. But waterway traffic has dwindled to almost nothing because commercial operators remain cautious, making it even more important for the U.S. military to demonstrate clear and safe passageways.
“Today, we started the process of establishing a new passage and we will soon share this safe passage with the maritime sector to encourage the free flow of trade,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, over the weekend.
A recent war game by Bryan Clark, a retired Navy officer at the Hudson Institute, found that shipping lanes could be cleared in a matter of weeks using new technologies used by US warships. “And if it’s not mined and you’re just looking to build a safe passage where you’re going to lead the ship, that can only take a few days,” Clark added.
Iran is capable of laying several types of mines, including variants that sit on the sea floor and release a charge when a ship passes overhead. Some are chained to the ocean floor while the mine floats below the surface, and others move with the currents.
US drone technology could be a key advantage in the hunt for these weapons. Launched from Navy ships, Knifefish and Kingfish underwater drones use sonar to detect devices on the sea floor or floating near the surface.
“CENTCOM has been doing this long enough to probably have a good set of low-surveillance maps” of the sea floor, Wills said. “So they can send an unmanned system and look and say, ‘Okay, this looks different. This shows that something is going on.'”
More ships are on their way to the area to help with mine countermeasures and prevention missions, according to publicly available data and ship trackers.
Two Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships – USS General and USS Pioneer – left Singapore on Friday, heading west towards the Middle East. And three Bahrain-based Littoral Combat Ships with mine-hunting mission packages – which were taken out of the Gulf before the initial strikes on Iran – could soon return to the region.
The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group – with 2,200 Marines aboard – is currently in the Pacific and is also heading to the Middle East. When the Marines arrive, the total number of Marines in the area will be around 5,000.
In total, these new arrivals will push America’s presence in the Middle East to more than 20 ships even though Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that he considers the war “very close to being over.”
