Mine Clearance for the 21st Century

As estimated 90% of world trade is transported by sea, meaning that securing waterways is crucial for many countries. And where there are waterways of strategic importance, there is a need for preparing to deal with hostile underwater assets, such as underwater vehicles, surveillance systems, divers and even naval mines. After looking into modern naval mines and into underwater surveillance in our previous pieces, we are concluding this mini-series with the look into countermeasures against naval mines with the focus on mine clearance.

There are two distinct strategies to mine countermeasures (MCM): Mine Hunting and Mine Clearance. The aim of neither is to find every last mine, but to enable friendlies to successfully conduct their operations.

When naval mines were mostly floating or moored contact mines or rudimentary influence mines, these were relatively straightforward to clear. Post-conflict clearance is another topic on its own and while hugely important, most of the hurdles can be nowadays negated by using safe, even remotely controlled mines with predetermined lifetime in water after which they become inert.

But when it comes to countering active mine fields comprised of modern influence mines with multi-sensor detection systems, it is another story. Modern mines can distinguish between the signatures of a real ship and that of a clearing device, as not all ship signatures are feasible to fake. This results in a situation, where it is beneficial to "know your enemy" in the form of understanding the workings of an influence mine first-hand, so that an effective clearing solution can be found. With the profound knowledge about modern influence mines such as TURSO MM30, we at DA-Group are developing the mine clearing capabilities for the 21st Century.

Naval Warfare has come a long since its humble beginnings over 3000 years ago. Throughout the human history the waterways have played an existentially critical role for survival, development and prosperity in the form of sustenance. Fast-forward to 20-century and to the advent of wide-scale use of both submersible vessels and underwater weaponry, we see the focus and the true dominance of sea areas being controlled not by what can be seen in the horizon but what happens beneath the surface.

Naval Mines are in public view seen as the spiky balls of terror that cause havoc to ships without scrutiny, thus posing threat not only to the aggressor but also to any vessel sailing in the area – much like the dreaded anti-personnel mines that to this day render past conflict areas unusable on land. While this has been historically the case with naval mines, it is not where we are today and especially not the future.

Modern or modernized naval mines are safe to produce, store and handle logistically due to its inert explosives and multi-sensor fuse. They are also safe to operate, as modern target detection system both detects and identifies the vessel, making the mines highly selective and specific of their targets.

DA-Group provides the industry-leading naval mine and underwater surveillance solutions including modernization of legacy systems, mine field planning, minelaying, logistics and training.

In the coming issues we will take a look into underwater surveillance and naval mine clearance.

DA-Group provides the industry-leading naval mine and underwater surveillance solutions including modernization of legacy systems, mine field planning, minelaying, logistics and training.

In the coming issues we will take a look into underwater surveillance and naval mine clearance.