Image: Reuters
National Interest: Chinese Sea Mines Are Threatening the U.S. Navy
Chinese naval strategists want to push the United States Navy as far away as possible.
Key point: The navy's record dealing with sea mines is not very encouraging, despite recent technological advances.
In the closing phases of the Pacific War, American military strategists ingeniously combined two weapons systems, the revolutionary long-range B-29 bomber and the comparatively simple parachute-retarded influence sea mine with magnetic or acoustic exploders, to wreak havoc on the Japanese economy and Japanese morale. The effort to sow Japan’s waterways thoroughly with thousands of mines was named, aptly enough, Operation Starvation and this effort proved highly effective in helping to reduce Japan to its knees. Nevertheless, the U.S. Navy has also been on the “receiving end” of skillfully employed mine warfare and these cases are more recent. The classic case is from the Korean War when mines laid off North Korea prevented U.S. forces from making an efficient invasion at Wonsan. A number of allied mine warfare ships were sunk in that operational fiasco. During the Persian Gulf War, two U.S. Navy ships, the Tripoli and also the Princeton, were both seriously damaged by Iraqi mines.
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WNU Editor: The U.S. Navy mine sweeper fleet has problems .... The U.S. Navy's Minesweeper Fleet Is In Disrepair (August 6, 2019).
6 comments:
I think the logical next step for China is to just release thousands of mines in the south China Sea that will go off if you don't have the right code/permission to do business there. ..they way it goes right now this will happen..
Every Ship is a Mine Sweeper, at least once.
Thank you anon @529 that was funny :)
The reason why they haven't done it is for several reasons
1. Difficult to implement.. you'd have to have all ships legally (to Chinese standards /perception) coming in abide to this standard/upgrade their ships with whatever it is that gives them free passage
2) it could be a huge PR distaster and backfire. .imagine all these Chinese ships deploying mines in contested waters; but then something happens. .the international community says fuck that! And just deploys mine sweepers. .
It's like this decade long ball dance where no one is wanting to make the first move but we all know eventually it'll happen over time
It is safe to assume that our forces and allies are using these stealth approaches to mine laying and Anti mine warfare, given the heads up that we have on the Chinese. Time will tell. But usually after the fact, we find that our services have planned and adequately countered many a foe.
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