This Is How The US Navy Will 'Box In' Chinese And Russian Subs

Sailors aboard the USS Winston S. Churchill maneuver a Mark-54 torpedo to the flight deck. 

Breaking Defense: Navy Plans Hammerhead Mines To Box In Chinese, Russian Subs 

The Hammerhead mine would be delivered to sites by underwater drones, and “detect, classify, and defeat” manned or unmanned submarines, the Navy says. 

WASHINGTON: The Navy is inching closer to fielding a new anti-submarine mine designed to deploy from underwater drones and loiter for weeks at a time around critical chokepoints, looking for enemy submarines to sink. 

The idea behind the Hammerhead mine system is to give the Navy’s crewed ships more distance from increasingly capable Chinese and Russian fleets, while potentially making choke points no-go zones, complicating their ability to move at will near areas where US ships are operating.

Late last week, the Navy issued a draft request for proposal for final designs. The RFP comes six months after a virtual industry day laid out some of the specifics of the program, including incorporating an MK 54 lightweight torpedo with a mooring module, an energy module, a sensor module, and a command and control system that would allow it to detect threats and act autonomously. 

The Hammerhead would be delivered to sites by underwater drones, and “detect, classify, and defeat” manned or unmanned submarines, according to the Navy. 

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WNU Editor: More detains on US anti-submarine mines can be read here .... U.S. Is Betting Big On Naval Mine Warfare With These New Sub-Launched and Air-Dropped Types (Warzone/The Drive), and here .... Navy Hosts Virtual Industry Day to Keep Hammerhead Mine on Accelerated Acquisition Path (USNI News).

The U.S. Navy Wants Unmanned Underwater Vehicles That Can Scatter Anti-Submarine Mines

An unmanned underwater vessel (UUV) astern of the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf

Braking Defense: PRC, Russian Subs May Soon Face UUV-Launched US Sea Mines

Head of the Unmanned and Small Combatants office, Rear Adm. Casey Moton, said the industry day was meant to, “stress the importance of the program to the fleet – they want it today, they need it today.”

WASHINGTON: Unmanned underwater vehicles will scatter anti-submarine mines as a new way to protect US Navy ships at sea, part of a larger push to screen the fleet from increasingly sophisticated Chinese and Russian subs prowling the seas.

This marks an important shift in US naval warfare, as the head of the Navy’s mine warfare division, Capt. Chris Merwin, outlined at a conference last year. “Basically we have Quickstrike mines, air-delivered dumb bombs, and we have a few submarine-launchable mines. That is what we have now,” but “that is changing big time.”

The future “of mining,” Merwin said, will be [unmanned underwater vehicle] clandestinely-launched mines.”

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WNU Editor: The U.S. Navy has been behind in the development of unmanned systems when compared to the US Air Force. But it looks like they are trying to catch up.

Chinese Naval War-Fighting Doctrine Emphasizes The Use Of Mines To Push Back The U.S. Navy

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).

The U.S. Navy's Minesweeper Fleet Is In Disrepair

The USS Devastator, a Navy minesweeper, is pulled into position as it arrives in Bahrain in 2012. (Jayme Pastoric/U.S. Navy)

ProPublica: Iran Has Hundreds of Naval Mines. U.S. Navy Minesweepers Find Old Dishwashers and Car Parts.

As tensions heat up in the Persian Gulf, the Navy’s minesweeping fleet may once again be called into action, but its sailors say the ships are too old and broken to do the job. “We are essentially the ships that the Navy forgot.”

The U.S. Navy officer was eager to talk.

He’d seen his ship, one of the Navy’s fleet of 11 minesweepers, sidelined by repairs and maintenance for more than 20 months. Once the ship, based in Japan, returned to action, its crew was only able to conduct its most essential training — how to identify and defuse underwater mines — for fewer than 10 days the entire next year. During those training missions, the officer said, the crew found it hard to trust the ship’s faulty navigation system: It ran on Windows 2000.

The officer, hoping that by speaking out he could provoke needed change, wound up delaying the scheduled interview. He apologized. His ship had broken down again.

“We are essentially the ships that the Navy forgot,” he said of the minesweepers.

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Update: The Forgotten Navy: U.S. minesweeper fleet in disrepair as Iran drops more explosives in Strait of Hormuz (War Is Boring)

WNU Editor: Unbelievable.

The U.S. Military Has Successfully Tested Delivering A 2,000lb Naval Mine From A B-52 60 Kilometers Away From The Target

U.S. Air Force Airmen with the 96th Aircraft Maintenance Unit prepare a Quickstrike mine to be loaded onto a B-52 at Andersen Air Force Base, Sept. 16. Air Force photo.

Strategy Page: Submarines: The Long Arm Of The Hidden Threat

In September 2018 the U.S. successfully used a JDAM glide and satellite navigation kit to deliver a 2,000 pound (909 kg) Quickstrike naval mine to a location over sixty kilometers from where the B-52 bomber was. This Quickstrike had no explosives, just inert material to maintain the proper weight. The Quickstrike had its naval mine sensors and other electronics plus a locator device. That enabled a ship to locate and recover the Quickstrike, which was found to be functioning properly. These tests began in 2015, using a 500 pound (228 kg) Quickstrike and later a 1,000 pound (456 kg) Quickstrike. Now the air force or navy can deliver all three sizes of these Quickstrike ER (extended range) mines using JDAM. In addition to GPS JDAM also has an unjammable (but somewhat less accurate) INS (inertial guidance system). This less accurate INS is precise enough for Quickstrike.

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WNU Editor: Here are two excellent articles that describe this successful test and what it means:

B-52 Tested 2,000lb Quickstrike-ER Winged Standoff Naval Mines During Valiant Shield (Warzone/The Drive)
Navy, Air Force Test Deploys 2,000-Pound Mine at Stand-off Range (USNI News)

Turkish Drone Manufacturer Claims To Have Developed A 'Mobile Naval Mine'

Defense News: This remote controlled ‘naval mine’ attaches to ships, explodes on command

ANKARA, Turkey — A leading Turkish drone manufacturer says it developed a “mobile naval mine” that can blow up warships of all types.

The Wattozz program has been jointly undertaken by Albayrak Savunma, a drone maker, and Karadeniz Technical University in Turkey’s Black Sea region. Wattozz is named after “vatoz,” which translates to stingray.

The Wattozz features the shape of a stingray and is made of titanium and aluminium. It has two cameras fitted into the eye sockets of the “stingray” and can cruise at a maximum speed of 5.5 knots for up to 12 hours. The drone features three integrated engines.

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WNU Editor: In their promo video the Turkish drone company is using a U.S. aircraft carrier as their target.

The U.S. Navy Has A Plan To Make Sea Mines Nearly Obsolete

Kris Osborn, National Interest: The Navy Has a Plan That Could Make Sea Mines Nearly Obsolete

The US Navy plans to deploy fast, high-tech surface drones equipped with advanced wireless technology able to find, attack and ultimately destroy underwater enemy mines, all while operating at safe distance from a larger manned surface host ship such as a Littoral Combat Ship, service officials said.

Naval Sea Systems Command is currently working with industry to develop, assess and analyze mine-neutralization technologies for its emerging Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MCM USV) - a multi-mission surface drone countermine platform slated to be operational by 2019. Capt. Jon Rucker, Program Manager, Unmanned Maritime Systems, PEO LCS, told reporters recently at the Surface Navy Association Symposium.

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WNU Editor: Faster please.

A New Age In Naval Mines Is Upon Us

A MK 62 Quick Strike mine is deployed from the starboard wing of a P-3C Orion. Credit Photo: US Navy

National Interest: Get Ready, China and Iran: American Naval Super Mines Are Coming

The stand-off mine concept has slipped its tether. Naval warfare may never be the same.

Mines are the ninjas of warfare: silent, deadly and a bit unsavory. Sneaky weapons that are extremely effective not just for the damage they cause, but also for the fear and uncertainty they sow.

Naval mines are especially potent. American air-dropped mines in Japanese waters in 1945--chillingly but accurately code-named Operation Starvation--sank more ships than U.S. submarines in the final months of the war. The 1972 mining of Haiphong harbor helped drive North Vietnam to the peace table, while Saddam Hussein's underwater booby traps threatened U.S. naval supremacy in Desert Storm. “In February 1991 the Navy lost command of the sea—the North Arabian Gulf—to more than a thousand mines that had been sown by Iraqi forces. Mines severely damaged two Navy warships, and commanders aborted an amphibious assault for fear of even more casualties,” says a U.S. Navy mine warfare history.

WNU editor: This U.S. advantage is not going to last long. I would not be surprise if the Russians/Chinese/Iranians/etc. start to develop the same type of naval mine in the coming years.