UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

Out of Sight, Out of Mind:

The United States Navy and Mine Warfare in the 21st Century

by

Timothy Hiu-Tung Choi

A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

CENTRE FOR MILITARY AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

CALGARY, ALBERTA
SEPTEMBER, 2013

Timothy Hiu-Tung Choi 2013

ii

Abstract
This thesis analyzes the adequacy of the United States Navy (USN) when facing an
enemy employing naval mines in a narrow waterway in the 21st century. Recent threats
by the Islamic Republic of Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz and its oil traffic make the
issue of mine warfare especially poignant, given the significant role mines have played in
that region over the last thirty years. This thesis argues the USNs technological efforts at
improving its mine countermeasures (MCM) capabilities since the end of the Cold War
have been insufficient. An examination of MCM development efforts seeks to explain
why such a crucial warfare capability remains lacking, and a historical comparative
approach with the Dardanelles campaign in the First World War is used to illustrate the
strategic significance of naval mines, as well as challenges the USN may face in
attempting to reopen a mined Strait of Hormuz.

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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Rob Huebert, for his patience and expertise in
bringing this thesis to completion. His astute observations of what elements are truly
necessary to include were invaluable. The historical sources vital to the use of history in
this paper would not have been possible without Dr. Holger Herwig at the University of
Calgary and Dr. Ian Speller at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. I would also
like to thank Drs. Terry Terriff and John Ferris for challenging some of my assumptions
in earlier drafts of the thesis, which have been addressed (hopefully to their satisfaction).
Finally, many thanks to Dr. David Taras at Mount Royal University and Dr. James
Keeley for being a part of my examination committee. The Centre for Military and
Strategic Studies and the University of Calgary also deserve a great deal of gratitude for
their generous funding opportunities which made research for this thesis possible.
And of course, where would this be without some close support? To my parents, Betty
and Chuen Yee: the debts I owe you go beyond the loans Ive taken from the bank of
mom and dad. Maria, thank you for being there from the get-go and my go-to source for
all things relating to orthography and grammar, as well as providing some much-needed
board game relief! Shaiel, your ceaseless yet jovial criticisms were and continue to be an
inspiration, pushing this thesis towards its end. Bill and Marshall, as the other naval guys
in my cohort, its good to know there will be some people who will appreciate this work!
To the cohort of my second year - especially Brock, Steph, and Anastassia - thank you for
making it all that much more bearable! And last but definitely not least, endless gratitude
to Sveta, for your ceaseless confidence, faith, and unwavering friendship.

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Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. ii
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. iv
Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1
1.1: The Threat and the Question .......................................................................... 1
1.2: Methodology and Outline .............................................................................. 4
Chapter 2: United States Naval Strategy and Mine Countermeasures ............................. 8
2.1: Core Tenets of CS-21..................................................................................... 9
2.1.1: Continuity with Previous Strategies .............................................. 12
2.2: Core Capabilities and NOC 10..................................................................... 14
2.2.1: Sea Control .................................................................................... 17
2.3: MCM Capabilities: Post-Cold War to Present ............................................. 24
2.4: Conclusion ................................................................................................... 34
Chapter 3: Obstacles to the Development of Next-Generation MCM ............................ 36
3.1: Part One: Upcoming Tactical Solutions to the MCM Problem ................... 37
3.2: Part Two: Obstacles in MCM Mission Package Development.................... 40
3.2.1: Remote Minehunting System ........................................................ 41
3.2.2: Airborne Minehunting Systems .................................................... 44
3.3: Part Three: Littoral Combat Ship Procurement ........................................... 49
3.3.1: Applicability of the RAND Analysis to the LCS Program ........... 53
3.4: Conclusion ................................................................................................... 61

Chapter 4: Learning from the Past .................................................................................. 65

4.1: Part One: An Historical Overview of the Dardanelles Experience, 1915 .... 67
4.1.1: The Ottoman Steam Navy ............................................................. 67
4.1.2: The Dardanelles Campaign ........................................................... 71
4.1.3: A Brief Note on Mine Warfare in the Black Sea .......................... 87
4.2: Part Two: Applying Lessons ........................................................................ 88
4.2.1: Currents ......................................................................................... 91
4.2.2: Airborne Reconnaissance .............................................................. 94
4.2.3: Beyond MCM................................................................................ 96
4.2.4: Other Lessons to be Learned ......................................................... 98
4.2.5: Amphibious Lessons ................................................................... 102
4.3: Caveats ....................................................................................................... 105
4.4: Conclusion ................................................................................................. 107
Chapter 5: Conclusion................................................................................................... 111
Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 118

Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1: The Threat and the Question
Metres below the surface it waits,
Patient and vigilant, dark and cold.
Decades pass, black skin to orange-red,
Tethering chain weakening its hold.
Long forgotten,
Out of sight and out of mind,
Until washing on sun-gilded beaches,
A relic from a past age, perhaps,
But no less deadly.
Nearly one hundred years since the First World War, naval mines from that period
continue to wash up on beaches around the world or entangle themselves in fishermens
nets.1 Despite the best mine-clearing efforts by the worlds foremost navies2, these deadly
weapons remain elusive, threatening seaborne and coastal traffic long past the conflicts
for which they were deployed. If these ancient devices are so difficult to locate and
neutralize during peacetime, then one can claim that it certainly would not be any easier
in times of war.

Examples include the following:

Erkan Gven, Gllk Krfezinde mayn, Posta.com.tr, February 10, 2011,
http://www.posta.com.tr/turkiye/HaberDetay/Gulluk_Korfezi_nde_mayin.htm?ArticleID=60952.
Rafet Reisin ana 100 yllk mayn takld, NTVMSNBC, February 24, 2012,
http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25325168/.
Sea mine found in Altinkum, Didim Today, June 3, 2012, http://www.didimtoday.com/news/1651sea-mine-found-in-altinkum.html.
Reshad Suleymanov, World War I-era mine found on Turkish coast of Black Sea, APA, August 3,
2013, http://en.apa.az/news/197206.
Pembrokeshire seaweed forager finds World War I mines, BBC News, February 3, 2013,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-21307108.

For example, the annual Historical Ordnance Disposal exercises conducted by the North Atlantic Treaty
Organizations Standing NATO Mine Countermeasure Groups in the Mediterranean, Black, and Baltic
Seas. See: NATO countermeasures groups making seas safer, Admiral Danish Fleet, March 20, 2009,
http://forsvaret.dk/SOK/eng/International/SNMCMG/News/Pages/2009-03-20.aspx.

The recent and repeated threats by the Islamic Republic of Iran to close the
Strait of Hormuz (SOH) provide a real-world impetus for examining the adequacy of
modern mine countermeasures.3 By some estimates, only 300 mines are required to close
the SOH, and Iran has as many as 5,000 in its inventory.4 While recent discussion
regarding an Iranian closure of the SOH often emphasize swarm attacks by numerous
lightly-armed fast boats5, mines have historically had the greatest success in harming the
warships of modern navies: since the end of the Second World War, nearly 80% of all
United States naval ship casualties have been the result of mines6 victims include not
just simple wooden minesweepers, but also advanced combat units like the missile
cruiser USS Princeton, damaged in the 1991 Gulf War.7 This effectiveness makes mining
an attractive option in any attempt to close off the Strait of Hormuz and emphasizes the
importance of quick, safe, and reliable mine-clearing capabilities in a potential opposition
force.
Whether such capabilities exist in the potential opposition force is thus an
extremely crucial question and is the main subject of this thesis, which examines the
ability of the United States Navy (USN) to conduct mine countermeasure (MCM)
3

Yeganeh Torbati, Iran renews Hormuz closure threats, Reuters, July 15, 2012,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/15/us-iran-hormuz-idUSBRE86E0CN20120715.
4

Sabahat Khan, Iranian Mining of the Strait of Hormuz Plausibility and Key Considerations, INEGMA
Special Report No. 4, January 2010, 1.
5

Thom Shanker, Iran Encounter Grimly Echoes 02 War Game, The New York Times, January 12, 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/washington/12navy.html; Jon Stock, Little boat, big danger: how a
British-made speedboat has become a weapon in Irans standoff with the US, The Telegraph, August 20,
2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9486815/Little-boat-big-danger-how-aBritish-made-speedboat-has-become-a-weapon-in-Irans-standoff-with-the-US.html.
6

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare: Ensuring Global Access and Commerce, U.S. Navy
(PDF primer, June 2009), http://www.navy.mil/n85/miw_primer-june2009.pdf, 8.
7

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare, 6.

activities. The primary research question is as follows: To what extent will the USN be
constrained by an adversarys use of mines in the coming years? Answering this will
require addressing three other questions: How may mines hinder the United States
ability to carry out its strategic and operational visions? Is current MCM technology
sufficient for speedy, safe, and reliable clearance of mines and if not, why? What
challenges and obstacles would an American force encounter in an attempt to clear mineinfested waters during times of war?
The decision to examine the United States Navy stems from the fact that they are
a consistent and major presence in and around the Strait of Hormuz not just in the form
of the 5th Fleet headquartered in Bahrain, but also by the rotating presence of its aircraft
carrier strike groups. In the event that mines should again threaten international seaborne
traffic, it is a reasonable assumption that the United States will contribute its forces to
ending or mitigating that threat, such as it did during the Tanker Wars between Iran and
Iraq in the 1980s.8 Furthermore, the USN is generally considered the largest and most
powerful naval force in the world.9 Should its MCM capabilities be found wanting, then
there is little hope for other navies around the world and mines would continue to be the
bane of naval forces for years to come. Conversely, if American MCM capabilities are
found to be adequate, then it is highly likely it would be proliferated to the fleets of allied
countries, decreasing the utility of mines. Either way, choosing the USN as the object of
8

Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham Wagner, XIV: The Tanker War and the Lessons of Naval
Conflict, in Lessons of Modern War Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War (Digital Version: September 26,
2003), 2, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/9005lessonsiraniraqii-chap14.pdf.
9

Definitional problems admittedly exist with such measures, but ship for ship, plane for plane, the USN
is certainly at the forefront. James Holmes, The Top 5 Navies of the Indo-Pacific, The Diplomat, January
21, 2013, http://thediplomat.com/the-naval-diplomat/2013/01/21/the-top-5-navies-of-the-indopacific/comment-page-2/?all=true

study will provide results that best represent the broadest technical trend regarding the
continued relevance of the mine threat.
However, the technology at ones disposal is just as important as how one uses it.
In this regard, history can provide some vital lessons. This introductory chapter began
with references to naval mining in the First World War. Mines played a central role in
that conflict, particularly in the Ottoman Empires littoral regions. As will be discussed
later in this thesis, there are many lessons to be learned from the Ottoman defence of the
Dardanelles that can apply to a counter-mining operation by the USN in the Strait of
Hormuz. It is often debated within the field of strategic studies as to whether
technological change can render strategic concepts obsolete: Chapter Four puts one
hundred years of technological change to the test against not just strategic concepts, but
operational and tactical as well.
1:2: Methodology and Outline
In terms of geography, this thesis is constrained to narrow waterways. Also called
maritime chokepoints, they are defined for the purposes of this thesis as limitedcapacity waterbodies through which seaborne traffic must travel between the producer
and consumer of particular commodities/resources.10 There are three reasons for limiting
the thesis scope to this geographic feature. Firstly, some such waterways are home to a
significant portion of the global waterborne traffic. The Strait of Hormuz sees 20% of the

10

For a more detailed discussion on possible defining characteristics of chokepoints, see Jean-Paul
Rodrigue, Straits, Passages and Chokepoints: A Maritime Geostrategy of Petroleum Distribution,
Cahiers de Gographie du Qubec 48(135), 2004, 359-360.

worlds oil traffic11 any disruption would likely have disastrous consequences on the
global economy. Maritime chokepoints, as one scholar termed it, truly are the
geographical Achilles heel of the global economy.12 A second reason is that maritime
chokepoints are optimal for the use of mines: favourable characteristics include limited
maneuvering room for an intruding navy in the area and fewer amounts of mines
necessary for a comprehensive closure. Finally, the choice of narrow waterways allows
for a historical cross-comparison. A closure of the Strait of Hormuz via mines would not
be the first time such a situation has occurred in history the Ottoman defence of the
Dardanelles Strait in the First World War bears marked similarities (e.g. a small navy
defending against a larger navy within a relatively narrow waterway) that can provide
many lessons for what to expect in the SOH scenario. The thesis emphasis on narrow
waterways should not be interpreted as its inapplicability to other types of waterbodies,
however just that they are not within the scope of this study.
The body of this thesis begins with Chapter Two, which analyses how mine
countermeasures fit into the overall US naval strategy. It starts by summarizing A
Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Sea Power and Naval Operations Concept 2010.
These two documents form the core of current American maritime and naval strategy,
laying the groundwork for how mines can impede US sea power, and thereby the
importance of activities to counter the threat. Key themes from these two documents will
be drawn out and assessed in terms of how much importance the US naval establishment
has placed upon the themes. This assessment will be based primarily upon an
11

World Oil Transit Chokepoints, U.S. Energy Information Administration, August 12, 2012,
http://www.eia.gov/countries/regions-topics.cfm?fips=wotc&trk=p3.
12

Rodrigue, Straits, Passages and Chokepoints, 365.

examination of capabilities development. The chapter will establish the state of USN
MCM to date and its direction towards the future and how they have developed vis--vis
other capabilities in the USN i.e. where USN research, development, and operational
priorities truly lay. The main sources for this information will come from Ronald
ORourkes Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports.13
Chapter Threes discussion centres upon the problems faced by MCM
development and problems there are, as a detailed overview of the platforms and
equipment involved will reveal at the beginning of the chapter. The basic question posed
is why these setbacks are being experienced. Essentially, are the delays and difficulties
due to technological or financial constraints, or some combination of both? To conduct
this investigation, RAND Corporations 2006 monograph that looks into the question of
Why has the Cost of Navy Ships Risen? will be used to provide a blueprint for why the
next generation of MCM vessels have been so expensive. To assess why individual
pieces of equipment have been difficult to bring into service, their research and
development (R&D) period will be examined in depth it aims to find correlations
between technical difficulties and the continuation or cessation of funding for a particular
program. The primary sources for this will be the yearly DOT&E, or Office of the
Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, reports on equipment and platform
development progress.

13

Mr. ORourke is the resident Specialist in Naval Affairs at the CRS and whose reports on the latest US
naval development issues are arguably the most authoritative and comprehensive available to the public.

Finally, Chapter Four employs a comparison of two scenarios in which mines and
mine countermeasures feature prominently: the Ottoman defence of the Dardanelles in
1915 and a potential Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz in the near future. The
chapter seeks to uncover strategic, operational, and tactical lessons from the former that
can be applied to the latter. The chapter argues that similarities between the two
situations go beyond that of mines, and in fact the past example can provide a very wide
set of lessons for the near future. The analysis will draw from the elements found in the
first two chapters, bringing them together into a cohesive policy-relevant compilation of
findings. The first half of the chapter will be an historical overview of the Dardanelles
campaign, viewed primarily as a function of the Allied fleets inability to pass through
the Dardanelles and that fleets eventual demise on March 18th, 1915. The second half of
the chapter identifies several key factors that prevented the Allies success in 1915, and
applies those factors to the modern near-future scenario in the Strait of Hormuz. It
finishes with some key lessons that the United States will have to keep in mind during its
planning stages in order to minimize its chances of failure as well as offer a criticism of
current US naval strategy in the context of mine countermeasures. Concluding the thesis,
Chapter Five brings together the key findings of Chapters Two through Four, integrating
them to provide a concise answer to the research question.

Chapter 2: United States Naval Strategy and Mine Countermeasures

To truly appreciate the role of naval mines in modern warfare, and therefore the
role of mine countermeasures, it is necessary to situate them in the modern strategic
context. This chapter seeks to provide that linkage by detailing current United States
naval strategy and mine countermeasure capabilities. The former will be examined
through a comprehensive overview of the core ideas espoused in A Cooperative Strategy
for 21st Century Seapower (CS-21) and Naval Operations Concept 2010 (NOC 10),
which form the nucleus of current US naval strategic thought. However, other documents
and historical strategic patterns will also be discussed to assess just how different (or
similar) these newer strategic guides are, which will provide some suggestions for how
substantive the current strategy actually is. As will be made clear in the coming
paragraphs, CS-21 and NOC 10 are mutually-supporting, and therefore they share
common themes, or strategic components. One of these themes Sea Control will form
the analytical core and context for the chapter. Within Sea Control, there are several
elements involved, of which one heavily involves mine warfare. To provide a
comparative perspective of how much the United States Navy actually emphasizes each
of these elements, hardware investment will be main factor examined. Because this thesis
is about mine warfare, and mine countermeasures in particular, forces and equipment
dedicated to that aspect will be examined with greater detail than those specializing in
other areas of naval warfare. This chapter will conclude with observations on mine
countermeasures role within the US Navy, both its strategic importance and its state of
competency.

2.1: Core Tenets of CS-21

In October 2007, the United States published its first new major maritime strategy
since the Cold War: A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.14 As another
first, CS-21 is a unified creation by all three US maritime services: the Navy, Marine
Corps, and Coast Guard. The basic premise of the piece is that preventing wars is as
important as winning wars.15 The titles cooperative refers to not only synergy
between the three sea branches, but also between the United States and other countries
around the world. In essence, the stipulation is that while the sea services, particularly the
Navy and Marine Corps, need to have the hard power needed to defeat a potential enemy
through violent force, it is equally important that the three services utilize their assets for
soft power actions. The overarching strategy is referred to as the Maritime Strategic
Concept (MSC) and consists of six strategic imperatives split into two categories.16
The first category is Regionally Concentrated, Credible Combat Power. To
show the United States commitment to security and stability17 or be present where
tensions are high, a strategy echoing Alfred Thayer Mahans endorsement of a
concentrated combat fleet was declared. As the category title suggests, this aspect of
strategy will employ powerful combat-ready naval forces in high quantities within a
specific geographical region. These forces would then be used to conduct three strategic
imperatives: Limit regional conflict with forward deployed, decisive maritime power;
14

Andrew Erickson, New U.S. Maritime Strategy: Initial Chinese Responses, China Security 4 (2007):
42.
15

U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandants of the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard,
A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, October 2007, 4.
16

U.S. CNO, CMC, and CCG, A Cooperative Strategy, 8-12.

17

Ibid., 8.

10

deter major power war; and win our Nations wars.18 In some ways, these three
imperatives can be considered stages of escalation: each imperative takes hold when the
preceding one fails. They focus on minimizing conflict and what the maritime services
must be ready to do when significant conflict does occur. The relevance here to mine
warfare is fairly straightforward MCM capabilities must be available in forward
locations, must be sufficient to deter an enemy from using mines, and should deterrence
fail, must be able to win in a countermining operation.
In contrast, the second category, Globally Distributed, Mission-Tailored Maritime
Forces, emphasizes the soft power aspect of CS-21, which is something that is fairly
novel in US naval strategy. Although similar to the first category in terms of its
escalatory nature, the imperatives here are focused on cooperation in the pre-conflict
period: Contribute to homeland defense in depth, Foster and maintain relationships with
more international partners, and Prevent or contain local disruptions before they impact
the global system.19 In essence, CS-21 appears to encourage increase engagement in
partnerships abroad so as to better protect the United States: it is a strategy that
emphasizes people-to-people and organization-to-organization relationships, rather than
one based around Americas platforms, weapons, and other material elements of power.
While this second section of the Maritime Strategic Concept appears to have little
direct relevance to the issue of mine warfare, it is actually quite salient. Perhaps the most
important is the fostering and sustainment of positive relationships with allied and partner
countries. As will be demonstrated in Chapter Four, knowledge of local geographical
18

Ibid., 9-10.

19

Ibid., 10-12.

11

conditions can be absolutely vital to the conduct of successful mine-clearing operations.

Such knowledge requires long-term familiarity and is likely most extensively held by
local forces, making high levels of mutual understanding and cooperation between those
and American forces paramount. As well, the idea of homeland defence in depth can
relate to defending American ports and coastal regions from the threat of unconventional
mine laying methods. It is conceivable that an enemy may load mines onto civilian cargo
vessels destined for the US homeland, intending to deploy the mines upon entering US
waters. One way to prevent this from happening would be to ensure personnel at foreign
ports are on the lookout for such attempts to load suspicious items onboard US-bound
vessels.
Another major section in CS-21 is that of Implementation Priorities, which sets
out three important areas of improvement that are necessary for implementing the above
strategic components: improving integration and interoperability, enhancing awareness,
and preparing our people. The first of these is premised upon the increasingly diverse
roles that the maritime forces have and will adopt. It requires the Navy, Marine Corps,
and Coast Guard to increase their skills in working in each others presence and
environments.20 This would provide commanders with a greater variety of tools to use in
possible future scenarios that may require a combination of each services skills. The
second area of improvement revolves around increasing maritime domain awareness
(MDA) and expanding intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)
capabilities.21 This is especially poignant in the realm of mine countermeasures, as part of
20

Ibid., 15.

21

Ibid., 16.

12

the challenge is to identify where and when mines are deployed so that they can be more
easily found; furthermore, increased MDA and ISR capabilities will assist with
identifying what ships are minelayers, as will be discussed in Chapter Four. Finally,
preparing our people is centred upon giving junior officers greater command
responsibilities and authority, allowing them to make crucial decisions in the absence of
higher-ranking officers.22 This is again poignant in MCM, the platforms for which are
commanded by fairly low-ranking officers. But as Chapter Four will also suggest,
preparing our people should involve not just responsibility and decision-making, but also
the more visceral aspect of self-discipline in the face of enemy fire.

2.1.1: Continuity with Previous Strategies

The strategy outlined in CS-21 is at the same time both familiar and novel. The
first half, that of Regionally Concentrated, Credible Combat Power, shares much of the
same elements as previous US naval strategic documents and approaches. In particular,
forward presence, deterrence, and war-winning were already present in the previous
strategy, the 1992 From the Sea and 1994 ForwardFrom the Sea documents. The 1994
document best reflects the continuity in hard power naval strategy through the post-Cold
War period: forward-deployed naval forces manned, equipped, and trained for combat
play a significant role indefending shared interests[and] if deterrence fails during a
crisis and conflict erupts, naval forces provide the means for immediate sea-based
reaction.23
22
23

Ibid., 17.

U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and Commandant of the Marine Corps, ForwardFrom the Sea,
November 1994, 2.

13

But this approach to naval power for the United States was not new even in 1992.
In fact, much of it was already articulated during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) moved away from a strategy that focused
almost solely on nuclear deterrence to one that had to be prepared for flexible response
i.e. non-nuclear armed conflicts. Being prepared for flexible response meant,
essentially, conventional deterrence capability.24 This new strategic approach had severe
implications for NATOs maritime forces configuration as it meant a shift from simply
maintaining sufficient control of the sea for the launch of nuclear strikes to a much more
temporally and spatially extensive control over the oceans and littorals.25 As this thesis is
not an essay on NATOs Cold War maritime strategy, it will dispense with further details.
It suffices to state that the shift in strategy appeared to have a long-term effect, altering
Allied (including American) attitudes towards the purpose of forward-deployed maritime
forces and how they could be used, despite the apparent primacy of nuclear weapons.
Maritime forces would not be used as simply launchers for nuclear warheads, but would
have to be prepared for a sustained war effort exploiting and defending key sea lines of
communications while being ready to support forces and project (non-nuclear) firepower
onto land.
Essentially, then, the forward presence, deterrence-oriented, and war-winning
aspects of CS-21 are entirely in keeping with pre-existing US naval strategic approaches.

24

Joel J. Sokolsky, Anglo-American Maritime Strategy in the Era of Flexible Response, 1960-1980, in
Maritime Strategy and the Balance of Power: Britain and America in the Twentieth Century, ed. John B.
Hattendorf and Robert S. Jordan (London: The Macmillan Press LTD, 1989), 305.
25

Sokolsky, Anglo-American Maritime Strategy, 308.

14

The other three strategic imperatives of CS-21 homeland defence in depth, greater
cooperative relationships with more international partners, and preventing local
disruptions however, are much more novel. Although previous strategic documents and
approaches have mentioned partnerships and coalition cooperation, those were limited to
the military aspect. For example, in ForwardFrom the Sea, partnerships are mentioned
only in the context of being prepared to respond to emergency situations and crises. 26 In
contrast, CS-21 advocates for such partnerships and cooperative engagements to improve
security outside of military crises situations. Most notably, CS-21 recognizes that the
conditions potentially leading to violent conflict often start with localized insecurity.
Referencing the need for enforcing the rule of law in the maritime domain, the
imperative is to focus on capacity-building, humanitarian assistance[and] improving
maritime governance amongst international partner states.27 By reducing local
insecurity, the odds of a large-scale violent escalation potentially leading to interstate war
is, in theory, reduced. Thus, CS-21differs significantly from previous maritime strategies
in that it seeks to proactively improve security long before it has a chance to escalate into
large-scale kinetic violence.

2.2: Core Capabilities and NOC 10

To enable to strategic imperatives outlined above, CS-21 called for six core
capabilities that the US maritime services had to possess or develop. They are, in order
of appearance in CS-21, as follows: Forward Presence, Deterrence, Sea Control, Power
26

U.S. CNO and CMC, ForwardFrom the Sea, 3.

27

U.S. CNO, CMC, and CCG, A Cooperative Strategy, 11.

15

Projection, Maritime Security, and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response. One
can make the observation that there appears to be no particular rationale for the way these
capabilities are listed the relationship between them is not clear.
This is fixed in Naval Operations Concept 2010, however. In that document,
they are relisted as follows: Forward Presence, Maritime Security, Humanitarian
Assistance and Disaster Response, Sea Control, Power Projection, and Deterrence. This
revised order represents how these core capabilities, or operational activities, are building
blocks that all contribute to expanded Deterrence. 28
In essence, all six of these capabilities work towards the end goal of preventing
war, which is why deterrence is set as the last, or ultimate, capability. Within the
context of mine warfare, the most obvious capability for setting the discussion would be
sea control. However, it can be argued that all six capabilities relate to mine warfare in
some way. It was mentioned earlier that one possible method of transporting and
deploying mines would be via innocuous civilian-flagged commercial vessels that would
deploy the mines once in US waters. One method for countering this would be to
encourage international partners to increase security checks at the ports of origin. This, in
turn, means increased local law enforcement capacity in the maritime context i.e.
increasing maritime security, one of the six core capabilities. Thus, even though maritime
security is explicitly discussed in NOC 10 as dealing with such issues as drug and human
smuggling, it is also applicable to mine warfare, and mine countermeasures specifically.

28

U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandants of the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard,
Naval Operations Concept 2010, 2010, 3, 73.

16

Mine countermeasures is also an element that is relevant when establishing the

Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) capability. Often, humanitarian
assistance is delivered through naval assets, as demonstrated by Operation Tomadachi in
the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami off Japan.29 But natural disasters
arent the only sources of pain and suffering that merit HA/DR operations wars and
violence is another. As illustrated in the introductory chapter, mines laid during the
course of a conflict remain a threat even after the cessation, temporary or otherwise, of
hostilities. Should the US maritime services be called upon to deliver humanitarian
assistance in such a context, they would need to be able to locate and avoid or neutralize
mines left from the conflict in order to safely approach the shore and deliver assistance.
Even in peaceful situations, natural disasters may result in the accidental deployment of
mines a flood that hits a storage area for the weapons may wash them out towards the
ocean, requiring mine countermeasure forces before HA/DR activities can be conducted.
But mine warfare has a more direct and conventional relationship with the rest of
the core capabilities, which are much more combat-oriented. The foundation of it all is,
of course, Forward Presence, which allows US maritime assets to be in place when and
where they are needed without having to wait for the long transit time from the
continental US. This has been especially important for MCM assets, such as the current
MCM-1 Avenger class vessels, which do not have the range necessary for transoceanic
journeys. Therefore, the forward prepositioning of these ships (in Manama, Bahrain, and
Sasebo, Japan) is absolutely crucial to providing the next core capability: Sea Control.

29

U.S. 7th Fleet Public Affairs, Japanese Family Thanks U.S. 7 th Fleet, U.S. Navy,
http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=65182.

17

2.2.1: Sea Control

Sea Control is the first hard power capability mentioned in NOC 10 and the one
of greatest concern to the topic of mine warfare. In terms of challenges that the maritime
services are expected to face, there are four of particular concern: increasingly capable
blue water adversaries, theatre anti-access weapons, area denial weapons in the littoral,
and technologies that disrupt space and cyberspace capabilities.30 For the purposes of
this thesis, however, the primary focus will be on the third challenge, though the first two
will also be briefly covered to provide the appropriate context.
An enemys exploitation of those challenges can occur at three different stages:
opposed transit, anti-access, and area denial. In the first, the main concern is an enemy
employing a naval strategy based on Sir Julian Corbetts advocacy for attacking the
enemys supply and trade elements, rather than main battle force. The NOC takes as its
basis that there are very few opponents, if any, that can effectively challenge U.S.
combatants in the open ocean thus, they are likely to conduct operations that would
seek to destroy the United States lesser or undefended maritime transportation assets.
These assets are needed for carrying large amounts of troops and equipment that are
needed for extended land operations. To address this threat, the NOC suggests the timehonoured method of employing convoys with USN escorts and/or sea routes that grant
the vessel land-based cover. Allies and partners knowledge of their local waters and
conditions would also be leveraged to reduce the risk to vulnerable transports.31
However, procurement trends do not appear to reflect any serious considerations of this
30

U.S. CNO, CMC, and CCG, Naval Operations 2010, 52-53.

31

Ibid., 54-55.

18

concern. While the FFG 7 Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates were designed and built for
ocean convoy work, they are rapidly entering retirement.32 There are no planned
replacements that would numerously (necessary for convoy systems) and adequately
fulfill the deep-water anti-submarine warfare role. While the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)
is a replacement in theory, only sixteen ASW mission packages are to be bought for
them, far fewer than the dozens of FFG 7s that have been in the fleet.33 The alternative
choice for ocean escort work would be the Arleigh Burke class destroyers, but they are
high-end combatants with an emphasis on anti-air warfare it would not be economical
or practical to employ them in the numbers necessary for convoy escort given the roles
they would play in other areas of the conflict. As it exists, then, there appears no serious
consideration by the US maritime services to actually counter threats during the opposed
transit stage.
Closer to the area of conflict, anti-access challenges are the combination of
capabilities the enemy can bring to bear upon American naval forces to prevent them
from entering the area of operations. Such weapons are generally long-ranged or can be
deployed far from the shore, including short-to-medium-ranged ballistic missiles, antiship cruise missiles, and diesel-electric submarines. To counter these threats, the Navy is
aggressively enhancing existing systems and platforms while developing new ones so

32

William Browning, Retiring frigates leave stamp on Mayport, NavyTimes, October 27, 2012,
http://www.navytimes.com/article/20121027/NEWS/210270313/Retiring-frigates-leave-stamp-Mayport.
33

U.S. Navy, Littoral Combat Ships Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Mission Package, U.S. Navy,
October 25, 2012, http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2100&tid=412&ct=2.

19

as to be able to defend against them.34 Unlike the opposed transit phase, anti-access has
indeed been receiving significant attention.
The two anti-access threats about which the NOC are most concerned are antiship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) and advanced diesel submarines (SSKs).35 The threat of
the latter is, though serious, well-acknowledged by the US naval establishment. The
multi-mission capabilities of all USN surface combatants (provided the LCSs are
equipped with the ASW package) ensure that they have the best possible chances for
countering this threat. The combination of various sonar systems on surface warships and
their organic MH-60R helicopters should be a fairly potent opponent for any enemy
submarine.36 Whether these individual systems themselves, or together, are qualitatively
sufficient to find and destroy enemy SSKs is up for debate; while SSKs are very quiet
and can be difficult to detect in the littoral area due to various acoustic complications37,
the relatively open waters of the anti-access stage removes some of that protection for the
SSK, making it easier for ASW operations. But regardless, the important point is that
ASW is seen by Navy planners as something that all surface combatants will face and for
which they should be equipped. In this regard, the future surface force is as adequate as
possible for countering the ASW threat to USN sea control capability.
The other major anti-access threat perceived by NOC 10 is the anti-ship ballistic
missile. Most prominently discussed in the context of Chinas DF-21D recent
34

U.S. CNO, CMC, and CCG, Naval Operations 2010, 55.

35

Ibid., 53.

36

Adam J. Thomas, Tri-Level Optimization for Anti-Submarine Warfare Mission Planning, (Masters
Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, 2008), 4.
37

Milan Vego, The Right Submarine for Lurking in the Littorals, Naval Institute Proceedings 6 (2010),
17-18.

20

deployments, this is a concern that is relatively new to USN planners. Up to now, the
main aerial threats were either long-range cruise missiles or aircraft. The introduction of
the DF-21D ASBM threatens the ability of American forces, especially aircraft carriers,
to enter a potential operational area near Chinese shores. While it is uncertain as to what
exact capabilities this missile will have (or indeed if it will work as advertised, so to
speak), a relatively simple quantitative analysis of the number of ASBMs available to the
Chinese and anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) to the Americans can serve as a baseline for
deducing the adequacy of the future force structure in overcoming the ASBM threat.
Marshall Hoyler runs through a logical and comprehensive assessment in a Naval War
College Review article on this very issue. He goes into not only how many ballistic
missile defence (BMD)-capable ships that the USN has, but also how many SM-3
interceptor missiles will be in the US inventory. He uses 2015 as the date of a
hypothetical Sino-American conflict involving ASBMs versus a BMD-equipped aircraft
carrier strike group (CSG). Each BMD AEGIS combatant would carry only a maximum
of twenty-five SM-3s as a result of limited numbers of total missiles and the need to
distribute them between all the AEGIS vessels. Firing two SM-3s per ASBM target and
assuming a 100% hit rate, each BMD warship could only handle twelve or thirteen
ASBMs. With as many as eighty DF-21Ds available by 2015, China can thus easily
overwhelm the ability of an AEGIS BMD system by saturation alone.38 DF-21Ds are
fired from mobile erector-launchers39, and thus can be redeployed closer to the target
CVN as necessary, meaning all eighty of those DF-21Ds can be, in theory, brought to
38

Marshall Hoyler, Chinas Antiaccess Ballistic Missiles and U.S. Active Defense, Naval War College
Review 4 (2010), 89-91
39

Hoyler, Chinas Antiaccess Ballistic Missiles and U.S. Active Defense, 98.

21

bear on a single aircraft carrier. However, Hoyler does not mention the almost-certain
possibility of multiple BMD escorts in the CSG. Given that CSGs usually consist of four
or more surface combatants, it is not impossible that two or more of them are BMD
capable. This will be especially likely in the subsequent decades as more Arleigh Burke
and Ticonderoga class ships are upgraded with BMD ability.40 Of course, the advantage
that the CSG gains in the amount of ABMs available in the future is counteracted by both
increased numbers of ASBMs and improved counter-ABM systems on the ASBMs, such
as decoys to waylay interceptor missiles and heat shielding to reduce signatures.41 Given
this race, it seems possible that Hoylers pessimistic view of USN BMD defence
against Chinese ASBMs will continue into the 2020s. Carrier vulnerability to ASBMs
would only be increased if the adversary were to employ discreet intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) resources and integrating them with ASBM
guidance; Hoyler notes that the challenge for ASBM users is the change in location of the
CSG in the time between the ASBM is fired and the time that it looks down to search
for the CSG with the missiles onboard radar. Multiple missiles may be needed to
comprehensively cover all possible locations to which the carrier may have sailed in that
period of time.42 One way in which this problem can be resolved is if an SSK within
passive sonar detection range of the CSG were to transmit the CSGs location to the
ASBM in flight; this would increase the latters probability of finding and hitting the
CSG. Of course, all of this depends on the ASBMs ability to out-range a CSGs ability
40

Missile Defense Agency, AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense, Missile Defense Agency, July 30, 2013,
http://www.mda.mil/system/AEGIS_bmd.html.
41

Hoyler, Chinas Antiaccess Ballistic Missiles and U.S. Active Defense, 91.

42

Ibid., 92.

22

to preemptively strike the launch platforms. While the Tomahawk cruise missiles and
current carrier aircraft do not have the range to strike ASBMs like DF-21Ds (which have
a range of around 1500 nm43), it is quite possible that future systems, such as the
production follow-on to the X-47B unmanned carrier drone with its unrefueled range of
1600 nm, will be able to strike ASBMs before they launch. However, the mobile nature
of the DF-21D makes it very difficult to know whether all such missiles will have been
neutralized before the CSG enters waters within the ASBMs range. In sum, it would
appear that the Navys force structure will not be adequate for defeating the ASBM threat
so long as it is dependent upon the use of current and projected AEGIS/SM-3-based
systems for BMD; this may be mitigated in the future as longer-ranged land-attack
weaponry become available to take out launchers before the carrier enters range of the
ASBM, though it is likely the latters range will also be increased over time. That being
said, it can be safely concluded that the United States Navy fully recognizes the threat
posed by ASBMs and is actively working towards countering them, putting significant
monetary resources towards BMD development.
Finally, once U.S. naval forces are able to get past opposed transit and anti-access
threats, they face a combination of land, sea, and air short-and-medium-range threats.
These area-denial weapons include mini-submarines, mines, fast attack craft, shorebased cruise missiles, and even coastal artillery. The NOC acknowledges that mines are
the greatest area-denial challenge in the maritime domain and that current American
systems and procedures are slow and requires exposing the mine-clearing platform to
43

Hu Yinan, Li Xiaokun and Cui Haipei, Official confirms China building aircraft carrier, China Daily, July
12, 2011, accessed December 29, 2011, http://www2.chinadaily.com.cn/china/201107/12/content_12881089.htm.

23

enter the mined area.44 This is historically and empirically supported by the fact that of
the twenty-one ships that have been victims of successful enemy hostile actions since
1950, sixteen of them were the results of mines.45 Therefore, it is justified that the NOC
emphasizes the area denial capabilities of mines. That said, naval developments in the
years since NOC 10s introduction have not reflected its emphasis on mines, as the
coming paragraphs on the current state of MCM capabilities will show. One might argue
that this means perhaps the US does not serious see mines as a threat. However, it is also
possible that the relative freedom with which US naval forces have operated on the world
oceans over the last decade have made the naval establishment take a somewhat
lackadaisical attitude towards the problem. Certainly, the success of MCM efforts in the
2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom would appear to suggest that there is nothing to worry
about, that US forces are perfectly capable of neutralizing the mine threat.46 However,
Iraqi Freedom took place when the US had the initiative to take the first steps; it is likely
that any future enemy that decides to take the mine warfare initiative would make things
much harder for American MCM efforts, if simply by deploying mines before the US
forces are fully aware of such activities. In any case, the NOC expects USN mine
countermeasure weaknesses to be fixed by new capabilities that are quicker and less
risky. It is thus within the area-denial context that this thesis situates its discussion on
mine warfare. The following section will cover the force structure of the USNs mine

44

U.S. CNO, CMC, and CCG, Naval Operations 2010, 56.

45

N852 Mine Warfare Branch, Branchs Brochure, U.S. Navy, October 13, 2007,
http://www.navy.mil/n85/pdfs/n852_FINAL.pdf.
46

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare: Ensuring Global Access and Commerce (PDF
primer, June 2009), http://www.navy.mil/n85/miw_primer-june2009.pdf, 6-7, 14-15.

24

countermeasure assets over the last two decades before concluding with how this affects
the USNs sea control capability

2.3: MCM Capabilities: Post-Cold War to Present

Mine countermeasures has, since the end of the Cold War, been mainly the
domain of smaller surface vessels. The exception to this was the brief experiment with
Arleigh Burke class destroyers DDG 91 through to DDG 96. These ships were built to a
slightly modified Flight IIA design that incorporated a hangar on the starboard side that
was to store and operate the AN/WLD-1 Remote Minehunting System (RMS). The RMS
involved the use of a remotely-operated underwater vehicle that would be equipped with
a variety of acoustic and electro-optical sensors. This would be used to go into mineinfested waters and locate and identify mines without risking the mother vessel. The
RMS proved insufficiently reliable, however, especially given that these Burkes could
only carry one such vehicle. Since these ships commissioning, it appears that almost all
of them have had the RMS hangar welded close. The decision has been made, however,
to continue development of the RMS for the Littoral Combat Ships MCM mission
package, which will be discussed further below.47
The exception with these six unique Burkes aside, mine countermeasures since the
1990s have been left to the MCM 1 Avenger and MHC 51 Osprey classes. The two
classes are similar in function and equipment, though the latter is newer and 300 tons
smaller, making it a coastal mine hunter. Despite the Ospreys younger ages, however,
they have all been decommissioned, the last being in 2007 most have been sold to
47

Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, FY 2008 Annual Report (2008), 107-108.

25

foreign navies and the remainder are slated for such.48 This leaves the Avenger class as
the sole vessel for MCM activities in the US fleet. The fourteen-ship fleet has recently
been reduced to thirteen after USS Guardian infamously grounded on a reef near the
Philippines, which required its in situ dismantlement and removal.49 Currently, six
Avengers are stationed out of Manama, Bahrain, though recently there were as many as
eight following a redeployment of four MCM ships from the continental US.50 The
reduction in number from eight to six is at least in part due to the loss of Guardian, as
one of the two ships leaving the Gulf is destined for Guardians homeport in Sasebo,
Japan.51 Quite aside from the decreasing numbers of forward-deployed MCM vessels,
there is one significant drawback to vessels like the Avengers they require sailing into
the minefield itself before the localization and neutralization of mines can begin, with
clear safety risks to the sailors and ships. Although advances in sonar technology mean
that detection of mines can now be accomplished with more finesse than the blind
mechanical sweeping of the past, technical limitations to current sonar technology
reduces its reliability in cluttered environments. Furthermore, the Avenger classs SLQ48 mine neutralizer, despite several upgrades since the ships commissioning in the early

48

Naval-Technology.com, Osprey Class, United States of America, Naval-Technology.com, 2012,

http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/osprey-class-minehunter/.
49

The Associated Press, Last of USS Guardian removed from Philippines reef, CBSNews, March 31,
2013, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57577162/last-of-the-uss-guardian-removed-fromphilippines-reef/.
50

Christopher Cavas, Pictorial: Units of the U.S. Navys Naval Forces Central Command, Intercepts:
The Official Blog of DefenseNews, March 18, 2013,
http://blogs.defensenews.com/intercepts/2013/03/pictorial-units-of-the-u-s-navys-naval-forces-centralcommand/#more-5107.
51

U.S. Navy, 130255-N-PV215-044, U.S. Navy, February 25, 2013,

http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=144953.

26

1990s, remains unreliable.52 This unsatisfactory performance compounded by increased

difficulty in keeping the system operational has meant that the USN is turning to the
United Kingdoms Seafox system. This process has only recently begun, suggesting some
familiarization will be needed before they can be effectively employed. 53 As well, not
only are the individual systems lackluster, the ships themselves are old and difficult to get
underway. The Avengers located in San Diego have been cannibalized for parts to
maintain the ones deployed overseas.54
The Littoral Combat Ship is set to become Americas replacement for both the
MCM 1 Avenger class mine countermeasures vessels and the FFG 7 Oliver Hazard Perry
class frigates. There are twenty-three of the latter remaining in the USN as of November
2012, and more are slated to be decommissioned as they approach the end of their service
lives in the next few years.55 The Perry class is currently armed with only a 76mm gun
and Phalanx Close-In-Weapons-System (CIWS), plus two organic MH-60R helicopters
and two sets of triple torpedo tubes. Originally fitted with the MK 13 single-arm missile
launcher for use with SM-1 surface-to-air and Harpoon anti-ship missiles, the launcher

52

Christopher P. Cavas, U.S. Navy Prepares for Extended Mine Force Presence in Arabian Gulf,
DefenseNews, November 15, 2012,
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20121115/DEFREG02/311150005/U-S-Navy-Prepares-ExtendedMine-Force-Presence-Arabian-Gulf.
53

Christopher P. Cavas, U.S. doubling minesweepers in Persian Gulf, NavyTimes, March 15, 2012,
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/03/dn-us-doubling-minesweepers-in-persian-gulf-031512/.
54

Tom Gough, Rahul Banerja, and Kirby Hobbs, Analyzing and Improving Mine Countermeasures
(MCM) Class Readiness (paper presented at the 2011 Fleet Maintenance & Modernization Symposium,
San Diego, California, August 30-31, 2011), accessed April 11, 2012,
https://www.navalengineers.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/2011%20Proceedings%20Documents/FMMS20
11/Papers/Gough.pdf.
55

U.S. Navy, Frigates FFG, U.S. Navy, November 7, 2012,

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=1300&ct=4.

27

was removed as the remaining SM-1s were no longer sustainable.56 In recent months,
Americas FFG 7s have begun to be fitted with a remote-controlled 25mm machine gun
on a bandstand on top of the old MK 13 launcher area.57 Given these limited armaments,
the Perry class is not expected to engage significant surface and air opponents, though
they do appear to be adequate in ASW and countering small boats. That said, once they
are all taken out of service, the USN will have lost a large number of blue-water ASWcapable hulls, since the LCS is only meant to conduct ASW in littoral regions. This may
severely handicap any future convoy system should an enemy decide to oppose the transit
of US forces into a region of conflict, as described above in NOC 10.
The roughly 3,000-ton Littoral Combat Ship, on the face of it, appears even less
capable a single 57mm Bofors gun on the bow and a RAM or SeaRAM launcher.58
RAM, or Rolling Airframe Missile, is a twenty-one-round point-defence weapon against
incoming cruise missiles, and the SeaRAM variant is an eleven-round RAM launcher
mounted within the Phalanx CIWS frame so as to provide radar guidance in the absence
of a separate guidance radar on the LCS 2.59 Two versions, then, of the LCS exist: the
LCS 1 Freedom monohull design and the LCS 2 Independence trimaran. Despite the

56

Richard R. Burgess, Guided Missiles Removed From Perry-class Frigates, Seapower Magazine,
September 2003, http://www.navyleague.org/sea_power/sep_03_34.php.
57

For examples, see the following photos:

FFG 59 USS Kauffman
http://www.navsource.org/archives/07/images/59/075942.jpg (July 15, 2010);
FFG 61 USS Ingraham
http://www.navsource.org/archives/07/images/61/076139.jpg (May 19, 2011) and
http://www.navsource.org/archives/07/images/41/074143.jpg (June 11, 2011)
58

Ronald ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background and Issues for Congress,
Congressional Research Service, 2013, 23, 29.
59

Chase D. Patrick, Assessing The Utility of an Event-Step ASMD Model by Analysis of Surface
Combatant Shared Self-Defense, (Masters thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2001), 5.

28

drastically different hull forms, they are both nonetheless fairly similar in terms of naval
capabilities. The aforementioned weapons are standard to both, as well as room for
organic helicopter: two MH-60 Seahawks and a number of unmanned aerial vehicles,
though the LCS 2 design can more comfortably accommodate and operate multiple
aircraft. The major innovation with the LCS is the concept of mission-specific plug-andfight mission packages. These are separate systems which offer a variety of capabilities:
mine countermeasures (MCM), surface warfare (SUW), and anti-submarine warfare
(ASW). Twenty-four each of the MCM and SUW packages and sixteen of the ASW
modules are planned to be procured. These will be distributed amongst a planned total of
fifty-two LCS hulls, though recent developments suggest this may be reduced by as much
as one half.60 Depending on the mission, an LCS can swap out its modules (or have them
added in) within, in theory, two days. Additionally, the LCS was built for very high
speeds: over forty knots for short durations.61 Their structural forms were also designed
to be stealthy against radar emissions.
The mine-hunting package is currently undergoing revision as the original mineclearing system is not performing as well as the Navy would like; instead, the Navy is
looking into a pair of new helicopter-mounted systems called the Airborne Laser Mine
Detection System (ALMDS) and Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS) as a
basis for modification into carrying out the mine-hunting mission. Another part of this
mission package is the unmanned vehicles that would operate on and under water, such
60

Christopher P. Cavas, U.S. Navy Weighs Halving LCS Order, DefenseNews, March 17, 2013,
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130317/DEFREG02/303170001/U-S-Navy-Weighs-Halving-LCSOrder.
61

Ronald ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background, Issues, and Options for
Congress, Congressional Research Service, 2012, 1-2.

29

as the AN/WLD-1 Remote Minehunting System mentioned above.62 The idea behind all
these new technologies is to primarily remove the sailor from the minefield, and
secondarily to increase the rate of mine removal. However, these systems have yet to
demonstrate efficacy in realistic conditions or have yet to be proven sufficiently
reliable.63 More details on these complications and the reasons behind them will be the
subject of Chapter Threes discussion. But despite such complications, it is hard to
disagree with the expectation that the LCS MCM system will be more effective than the
old Avengers if nothing else, the LCSs are armed with self-defence weapons, while the
Avengers had little more than deck-mounted machine guns. As Chapter Four will suggest,
a well-protected (or at least, better protected) minehunter can be absolutely vital to the
MCM effort.
The anti-surface warfare module currently consists of two 30mm cannons added
to slots located on top of the hangar. These would be used in conjunction with the stock
57 mm Bofors, which has a range of seventeen kilometers.64 The Navy has recently
decided to settle on the Griffin missile as an extra means of providing defence against
small boat swarms. The Griffin missile is currently very short-ranged a mere 2.7nm.
This is supposed to be a short term solution until a longer-ranged weapon of comparable
size can be found.65 This may not seem like a lot of reaction time, but the LCSs high
sprint speeds may well provide the extra time needed to address the threat. Running away

62

John Keller, Ocean mines have nowhere to hide, Military & Aerospace Electronics 8 (2007), 16.

63

ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program, 2012, 28.

64

Bofors 57 Mk3 Naval Gun System, last modified 2006,

http://www.baesystems.com/BAEProd/groups/public/documents/bae_publication/bae_pdf_57mk3.pdf
65

ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program, 2012, 10-11.

30

from threats may not be very glamourous, but the tactical advantage this may provide
cannot be ignored: it may allow the LCS to run ahead of the swarm, allowing it to
address each enemy one-by-one instead of being surrounded.
Finally, the following equipment would be added to comprise the anti-submarine
mission package: a Light-Weight Tow Torpedo Countermeasure, a Multi-Function
Towed Array System, and a Continuous Active Sonar Variable Depth Sonar. In
conjunction with the MH-60R (presumably equipped with torpedoes), this should give
the LCS a decent ASW capability.66 In the ASW context, the LCSs speed once again
provides a defensive advantage. Most torpedoes are incapable of sustained high speeds67
should one be targeted at the LCS, the ship can attempt to run away, hopefully buying
enough time until the torpedo loses fuel and ceases to be a threat.
While the Anti-Surface (ASuW) and Anti-Submarine (ASW) mission packages
do not initially appear to be related to mine countermeasures, they can, in fact, have a
large role to play. Iran has been known to practice deploying mines from small
speedboats. One of the more effective MCM strategies is to prevent the mines from being
deployed in the first place. Ergo, LCSs equipped with the ASuW package would
theoretically be suitable for engaging such smaller minelayers. In regards to the ASW
suite, Iran is also known to possess submarines that can deploy mines.68 Naturally, an
LCS equipped with its littoral ASW equipment would be well-suited (as long as all

66

Victor S. Gavin, Program Executive Officer Littoral and Mine Warfare, (Unclassified brief at Sea-AirSpace 2011, National Harbour, Maryland, April 12, 2011), 15.
67

See speed listings in the torpedoes section of: Norman Friedman, The Naval Institute Guide to World
Naval Systems (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006).
68

Khan, Iranian Mining of the Strait of Hormuz, 6.

31

systems are functional) for countering such threats as well. In Chapter Four, more
discussion will be paid to the roles submarines and small boats can play in mine warfare.
But despite these positive observations, the LCS program has received significant
criticisms based on their cost, low survival standards, and construction defects. The Navy
initially desired 55 LCSs over the next few decades as a relatively cheap way to bolster
its force numbers. The original price for the LCS seaframes (without mission packages
and modules) was to be $250 million, but has since nearly doubled. Congress appears to
have become resigned to the inevitable fact that the $250 million figure was too
optimistic and has settled for instituting a cost cap of $480 million.69 The dynamics of the
LCS cost issue will also be a subject of study in Chapter Three.
Concerns have also been voiced regarding the survival standard to which the
LCSs are built. To minimize cost and leverage existing civilian infrastructure, the ships
are built only to a Survivability Level 1+ standard enough to allow the crew to
evacuate after a hit, nothing more. In other words, despite the fact that it is termed a
combat ship, it is not expected to maintain mission capability in a hostile combat
environment.70 That is not to say it is going to be a write-off at the first sign of combat,
however. Some fragmentation armour protection and automated damage control systems,
plus a shock-hardened hull, means that it has a chance to reposition after being hit.
That the LCS will heavily employ remote-controlled vehicles for its various missions also
means that it does not have to approach threats, particularly mines, as closely and thereby
reduce its risk exposure. Further, it appears that the LCS is expected to operate as part of
69

ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program, 2012, 5-6.

70

Ibid., 19

32

a networked group of combatants, either other LCSs or large surface combatants and
aircraft, if the threat expected is to be of high intensity. When operating by itself, it is
to be in only low-to-medium threat environments where it can outgun small boat
threats and defend itself from sudden ambushes with its RAM. The design principle
appears to based on the acceptability of a mission kill, which is a tactical loss, so long
as the ship survives and thereby maintains theatre-level strength.71
Of course, to get to the point where combat survivability is an issue, a basic
structural integrity under non-combat conditions has to be initially present. Yet, LCS 1
USS Freedom has suffered from significant hull cracking during its trials. In February
2011, heavy sea conditions resulted in a six inch crack below USS Freedoms waterline
on the outside hull, with a three inch crack on the inner side of the bulkhead and resultant
leaking. The crack appears to have been the result of a poor-quality weld between steel
plates, rather than a design defect. However, other smaller cracks had also appeared
earlier on the vessels aluminium superstructure, which have since been addressed via
design changes.72 Problems with the first-ship-of-class notwithstanding, these appear to
be problems that are well on their way to being addressed as the follow-on hulls have yet
to demonstrate the same problems.
Despite the problems outlined in this section, the Littoral Combat Ships are likely
to be effective so long as they keep within the strict confines of the operational concepts
that justified and defined their development. The only problem - one that has not been
mentioned - that appears likely to plague the LCS fleet in the future is the same one that
71

Ibid., 14-19.

72

Ibid., 24-26.

33

threatens the relevancy of the Arleigh Burke class: room for growth. The need to attach
ad hoc buoyancy tanks to USS Freedom and subsequent lengthening of other LCS 1 hulls
means that they are already reaching their maximum usable displacement.73 This may
severely limit the extent to which future technologies can be integrated with the LCS 1
seaframe.
The general trend in mine countermeasures, as seen above, is to, above all,
increase the safety of sailors and ships doing the MCM mission. To this end, efforts have
been made to leverage unmanned and aerial technologies, allowing sailors to stay outside
known minefields and conduct mine-clearing safe from the mines themselves. Another
trend is the increase in speed with which MCM activities can take place, as seen in the
various helicopter-borne technologies. As will be seen in Chapter Three, however, this
second trend has a relatively low priority when faced with developmental challenges. In
the mean time, USN MCM capabilities are severely handicapped by outdated technology
and ill-maintained vessels, both having essentially remained the same since the early
1990s. As a result, American naval forces will have difficulty establishing effective sea
control where mines have been deployed. This break in the NOC 10s capabilities chain
means that American naval strategy may not be able to anchor itself upon the idea of
conventional deterrence as it heavily depends upon effective power projection
capabilities, which in turn hinges upon successful control of the sea.

73

Lockheed Martin, Anchors Aweigh for LCS 3, Lockheed Martin LCS Team, August 7, 2012,
http://www.lmlcsteam.com/archives/2145.

34

2.4: Conclusion
Unlike anti-submarine warfare and ballistic missile defence, the ability to clear
waters of the threat of mines is currently limited to only a few vessels in the Navy, as
established above. Unfortunately, not only are these vessels few in number, their
individual capabilities are lacking it is a dire sign when the worlds most powerful navy
has to resort to buying key equipment from another country (i.e. SeaFox). With its
various aerial and remote systems the LCS will, in theory, be able to clear mine fields
without exposing the ship itself to mines, thus avoiding the drawbacks of the current
Avenger class. Although problems continue in these various systems reliability and
performance, it should be safe to assume that so long as the need for effective MCM
capability exists, then these systems will continue to be improved and developed until
they reach full operational capability. The twenty-four MCM packages planned on being
procured mean, theoretically, that a maximum of twenty-four MCM LCSs can be put to
task, minus those out of service due to maintenance. This will be a quantitative increase
in MCM capability compared to the current thirteen-ship Avenger fleet.74 While it can be
argued that it is unlikely that nearly half (twenty-four of fifty-two) of the entire LCS fleet
will be configured for the MCM mission, the fact remains that major surface warships
can conduct ASW and ASuW missions to varying degrees, but not MCM at all. Thus, it
makes the most sense that the LCSs will take on a role that is not already covered. If the
various subsystems of the MCM mission package can be made reliable and operational,
then the USN will have an adequate, though perhaps not stellar, force for establishing sea
control in the littorals.
74

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare, 15.

35

For the US naval strategys end goal of deterring conflict, sea control in and of
itself achieves little. Rather, sea controls purpose is to establish a safe operating area
from which US maritime forces can project power ashore. This capability is what
demonstrates Americas ability to win wars, thus deterring conflict from erupting in the
first place. To put it simply, CS-21 and NOC 10 envision a capabilities chain with
deterrence as its anchor. However, an anchor is useless if any link in the chain is broken,
and the Sea Control link is perhaps the most vulnerable of all at the current time, as
demonstrated in this chapters coverage of US mine countermeasures capability. With the
inability of US forces to clear a waterway of mines, sea control cannot be established,
and thus power projection options are limited as US naval forces will not be able to freely
maneuver into optimal positions. This thus results in a decreased credibility in deterrence,
jeopardizing the feasibility of American naval strategy as currently set. In Chapter Four,
an historical case study reveals a challenge to even the basic adequacy of CS-21 and
NOC 10s strategy, for this capability chain may not even be suitable when facing the
threat of naval mines. But first, in the next chapter, the question of why such a capability
gap exists will be asked and some answers developed.

36

Chapter 3: Obstacles to the Development of Next-Generation MCM

On March 15, 2012, the United States Navy (USN) announced that it would
drastically increase the amount of mine countermeasure (MCM) assets in the Persian
Gulf.75 Presumably in response to the recent threats by Iran to close the Strait of
Hormuz, this announcement indicates a recognition on the part of the American military
that it has a quantitative shortfall in its ability to conduct MCM missions in that region.
However, this move does nothing to address the qualitative deficiencies in current MCM
systems, which, as noted in the previous chapter, have changed little since the end of the
Cold War. These deficiencies will prevent American forces from effectively and quickly
neutralizing the threat of naval mines. As a result, the United States would not be able to
directly deter Iran from carrying out its threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz.
So if these tactical inadequacies have such great importance on Americas ability
to prevent war, why have they still not been addressed? This question is the overarching
query behind this chapter. It will look for reasons behind the cancellation and/or delays of
various next-generation MCM capabilities. More specifically, the focus will be on two
distinct elements that comprise naval hardware: equipment and platform. That is, the
individual system components (such as weapons, engines, radars) and the ships that field
them, respectively. Complementing research on these two elements is the recognition that
they each belong in two distinct stages of acquisition: Research and Development (R&D)
and Procurement. The research will assess whether it is excessive monetary costs,

75

Cavas, U.S. doubling minesweepers in Persian Gulf.

37

insurmountable technological obstacles, or both that are the prime factors behind these
individual elements developmental difficulties.
The decision to focus on R&D and Procurement instead of Operations and
Maintenance is a result of the recognition that the latter is irrelevant until the hardware
has been successfully developed and entered into USN service. It is essential to first
examine the basic preconditions (i.e. the successful physical procurement of hardware)
before exploring the costs that would be relevant only after those preconditions have been
met. This is due to the difficulty in, if not impossibility of, assessing operational and
maintenance costs when there is no operational experience to reference in the first place.
This chapter will be comprised of three sections. The first will briefly review the
hardware solutions that are so necessary to resolve the current MCM deficiency. In
particular, the next generation mine countermeasure capability of the USN will be
covered. The second section of the paper will examine obstacles facing the Navy in the
R&D stages of the various hardware equipment and systems needed for this capability.
The last section will explore the complications involved in successfully procuring (i.e.
purchasing) the ships that will field the items resulting from the R&D process i.e. the
Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The chapter concludes with analysis on what appear to be
the constraints on the US Navys ability to develop and field the hardware it needs.

3.1: Part One: Upcoming Tactical Solutions to the MCM Problem

Chapter Two ended with an overview of the Avenger class MCM ships in the
USN inventory today. A combination of tactical and technological problems (physical
presence in the minefield and problems with existing gear) have made them somewhat

38

outdated for the ideal MCM mission. To address some of these concerns, the USN has
two other major systems for MCM. MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters are used to tow a
decoy sled through the water that is meant to set off any mines in the nearby area. To
address the limitations of sonars in finding mines in cluttered littoral regions, the Navys
marine mammal program enlists dolphins.76 The animals echolocation is much more
capable of distinguishing objects in cluttered environments than man-made sonars. Once
mines are found, these dolphins can also place explosive charges upon them in order to
neutralize the threat. Complementing the marine mammals are human divers, which
conduct similar duties using hand-held sonars and their own eye sight.77
However, these methods still have their drawbacks. The helicopter only works
against certain mines that can be set off by the stowed leds signatures and cannot
guarantee the removal of all mines. Dolphins and divers are slow and are exposed to great
risk. The decision to deploy four more Avenger vessels and four more MH-53s does
nothing to resolve these problems. Thus, better methods that are fast, effective, and above
all, safe need to be developed.
To this end, the USN is focusing its efforts on developing unmanned and airborne
vehicles. This will allow the MCM platform and its sailors to stay outside of the
minefield, addressing the safety factor. To increase the speed of finding the mines, a
helicopter-borne laser detector is supposed to be able to scan wide swaths of the sea and
locate mines quickly and comprehensively. Once found, a 30mm cannon on the
helicopter would fire a projectile through the water, disabling the mine. However, these
76

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare, 18.

77

Ibid.

39

systems are effective only against simple mines that are near the surface of the water. For
deeper mines, there are also to be remotely-operated surface and subsurface vehicles that
either locate and classify mines or set them off if locating is too difficult. Once one of
these unmanned vehicles finds a deep water mine, the helicopter will then deploy a
disposable neutralizer into the water.78
However, in May 2011, the 30mm anti-mine cannon (RAMICS) was cancelled,
the reasons for which will be discussed in the next section.79 Instead, the disposable
neutralizer (AMNS Airborne Mine Neutralization System) would be modified for use
against shallow and surface mines as well. This will likely reduce the speed at which the
USN can clear shallow mines, as the AMNS is much bulkier than the 30mm rounds on
the RAMICS, requiring more frequent reloads as the neutralizers are used up. The
advantage to using AMNS for both shallow and deep mines is that it results in there being
only a single system for mine neutralization, potentially reducing costs.
Another of the unmanned technologies being developed is the AN/WLD-1
Remote Minehunting System, or RMS. This was briefly mentioned at the end of Chapter
Two in the context of their prospective use onboard six of the Arleigh Burke class
destroyers. The RMS consists of a remotely-controlled diesel-powered sub-surface
vehicle (referred to as the RMMV) towing an AQS-20A variable-depth sonar, along with
their associated deployment/recovery systems. The RMS is a mine-detection and
identification system, with no neutralization equipment.
78

Raytheons AN/AQS-20 Mine Detection Sonar (AMCM), Defense Industry Daily, December 22, 2009,
accessed April 9, 2012, http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/raytheons-new-aqs-20-mine-detection-sonar03764/.
79

Sam LaGrone, US Navy halts RAMICS development, Janes Defence Weekly, May 26, 2011,
http://www2.janes.com/janesdata/mags/jdw/history/jdw2011/jni74448.htm (accessed April 9, 2012).

40

The platform upon which these various systems are to be deployed is the Littoral
Combat Ship (LCS), a fast, stealthy, and shallow-drafted vessel that will serve as the
USNs next generation small surface combatant. The premise of its design is that it is
meant to employ different mission packages as necessary for a particular mission. One
of them is the MCM mission package, which plans to consist of all the systems
mentioned in the previous paragraph. 52 LCSs are to be built, with 24 MCM packages to
be developed. This will provide the quantitative increase in MCM capability that the
USN desperately needs as well as the qualitative improvement resulting from the new
systems.
This all sounds excellent, but significant problems remain on the part of both the
systems development and the ships construction. Together, this means that the earliest
deployment date of a working LCS-based MCM capability will not occur until around
201880, providing Iran with a large temporal window during which it can threaten
international shipping.
The next parts of this paper will look into why development of these systems has
taken so long and what implications there are for American naval acquisition in general.

3.2: Part Two: Obstacles in MCM Mission Package Development

This section focuses on the various elements that make up (and were to have
made up) the LCSs MCM mission package and the obstacles they have faced so far. It
will try to trace the broader factors that led to these problems and some lessons they may
80

LCDR Brian Armador, U.S. Navy Funding Goals for Future Mine Warfare Capability (Presentation
slides presented at 16th Annual Expeditionary Warfare Conference, Panama City, Florida, October 24-27,
2011), 13, accessed April 9, 2012, http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2011expwar/MondayAmador.pdf.

41

hold. Some may argue that it is dilatory to examine the reasons behind the mission
package delays since there are hardly enough LCS platforms to host them even if the
packages have finished development. However, given the abovementioned problems that
exist in the current MCM fleet, it is absolutely imperative that replacements are made
available to the fleet as soon as possible certainly earlier than the 2018 date currently
projected for LCS MCM operations. At the current rate of mission package development,
the Navy will not have a single fully-capable mission package (MCM or otherwise) until
2016, at which point there should already be nine LCSs in service.81 If the MCM systems
could be made ready before this, then clearly some of those nine LCSs could join the
MCM assets in the Strait of Hormuz, providing much-needed capability. Furthermore,
many of the components that make up the MCM mission package can be moved from
ship to ship; the helicopter-based systems, for example, can be redeployed on board one
of the existing ships in the region not necessarily an LCS. Thus, it is relevant to explore
why the mission package components have not progressed past the developmental and
testing stages.

3.2.1: Remote Minehunting System

The RMS is one of the MCM mission package (MP) components that continues to
experience problems despite having been in development for a long time. The focus of
this examination is the RMMV, or Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle, which tows the AQS20A sonar used to find and identify mines.

81

Government Accountability Office. Defense Acquisitions[:] Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs,

GAO-12-400SP, March 2012, 109.

42

The RMMV, after many years in testing, appears to be finally on track for
operational use. The whole RMS completed the first of three phases of reliability
testing on November 17, 2011.82 This five-month-long test validated reliability
improvements made to the RMMV Design. According to the program manager of the
RMS program, all testing and program objectives were met or surpassed.
This progress is commendable, but it should be placed within the context of a
half-decades worth of costly and troublesome development. Initially expected to be used
on at least six Arleigh Burke class destroyers and housed in a specialized hangar, the
RMS reliability has been so undependable that by 2007, only one of the six destroyers
built with RMS facilities actually retained the ability to employ the system.83 By
December 2009, cost growth in the program (85.1% by one metric)84 had far exceeded
the cancellation cap placed by the Nunn-McCurdy Act, resulting in a review of the
reasons behind the cost growth.85 The findings of the review, authored by Bailey et al.,
are summarized in the following paragraph.
The RMMV was originally to be used in both the LCS MCM and anti-submarine
warfare (ASW) mission packages. However, it was decided in January 2009 that it is now
only to be used for the MCM mission, as a more advanced system was selected for the

82

LCS Remote Minehunting System Reaches Reliability Milestone, Naval Sea Systems Command,
accessed April 10, 2012, http://www.navsea.navy.mil/Newswire2011/15DEC11-02.aspx.
83

Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, FY 2007 Annual Report, Office of Director, Operational
Test and Evaluation, 103.
84

John W. Bailey et al., Remote Minehunting System: Root Cause Analysis (Alexandria, VA: Institute for
Defense Analyses, June 2010), S-2.
85

Bettina H. Chevanne, Minehunting System Breaches Nunn-McCurdy, Aviation Week, December 21,
2009, accessed April 9, 2012,
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/RMS122109.xml.

43

ASW package.86 In effect, this halved the number of RMMVs the Navy will be buying,
from 106 to 52.87 In accordance with economy of scale trends, this drastically drove up
the per-unit cost. Not only would there be less units produced overall, the rate at which
they will be produced was also changed: no new units would be produced between 2009
and 2014, and once production does resume, it will be only at a rate of four per year
instead of the original twelve.88 The five-year production gap is a result of the need to
implement the Reliability Growth Program (RGP)89, which seeks to improve the mean
time between operational mission failures90 of the RMMV basically, a critical redesign
of the vehicle in order to make it more operationally viable. The cost associated with the
RGP is thus yet another factor that has driven up the costs of the RMMV. Finally, the
initial baseline cost estimates only accounted for the costs of RMMV hardware
production, ignoring all of the engineering, integration and testing, and management
costs.
Bailey et al. concluded that of these factors, the decision to cut procurement
quantities in half contributed the most to the Program Acquisition Unit Cost (PAUC)
increase 43%.91 PAUC is the cost-per-unit including all development, procurement, and

86

John W. Bailey et al., Remote Minehunting System, 8.

87

Bailey et al., Remote Minehunting System, 6.

88

Ibid., 7.

89

Ibid.

90

George I. Seffers, Lockheed Martin to Improve Remote Vehicle Reliability, SIGNALscape, December
19, 2011, accessed April 9, 2012, http://www.afcea.org/signal/signalscape/index.php/subject/remote-multimission-vehicle-reliability-growth-program/.
91

Bailey et al., Remote Minehunting System, 13.

44

construction costs.92 This is an interesting example of the impact that the pursuit for more
advanced and capable systems has on higher equipment costs. While it is known that
higher costs usually accompany more advanced and specialized technologies, it is rarely
considered in light of cross-program impacts. That is, while the Navy may have
considered how much more it would cost to develop an advanced separate ASW vehicle
instead of using the RMMV, it would appear that they failed to anticipate the reverse
impact that this would have on the RMMVs own unit cost; alternatively, the Navy may
have expected the cost increase, but deemed it acceptable in light of the increased
capabilities that the separate ASW vehicle would bring. This latter explanation is fairly
unlikely, however, given the prospect of cancellation under the Nunn-McCurdy
arrangement due to too high a cost increase. But regardless, RMMV development appears
to be on track: as of June 2013, it has managed to remain operational for 115 hours before
breaking down, far exceeding the 75 hours required by the Reliability Growth Program. 93
It seems likely that the RMMV, and thus RMS, will succeed in becoming a staple
component of the LCS MCM mission package in the coming years.

3.2.2: Airborne Minehunting Systems

Helicopter-mounted mine countermeasures whose development are currently
ongoing consists of two components: the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System
(ALMDS) and the Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS). While the ALMDS
92

Moshe Schwartz, The Nunn-McCurdy Act: Background, Analysis, and Issues for Congress,
Congressional Research Service, 2.
93

Andrea Shalal-Esa, Testing shows big improvement in Lockheed unmanned minehunter, Reuters, June
20, 2013, accessed August 2, 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/lockheed-navyminehunting-idUSL2N0EW0HB20130620.

45

description is fairly self-explanatory (it uses laser pulses to search the water for mines),
the latter system requires some clarification.
In MCM nomenclature, neutralization and sweep have very distinct
meanings. The neutralization of mines refers to the precise removal of a mine as a threat,
usually via an explosive charge placed directly on the mine. In past, current, and nearfuture systems, this is done one mine at a time. The precise nature of this activity requires
the MCM actor to know exactly the location of the mines, which up to now has been (and
continues to be) an extremely time-intensive pursuit.94
The sweeping of mines, on the other hand, is a quicker and broader activity.
Usually used against contact mines that would explode only if touched, mechanical
sweeps involves sailing a minesweeper into a minefield, with chains and/or cutters that
would cut the cables that keep buoyant mines moored to the ocean floor; cutting the
cables allow the mines to float to the surface, where they can be more easily disposed of.
However, with the advent of mines that can be triggered by non-contact means such as
acoustic signature or wave influence, mechanical sweeping becomes very dangerous even
for minesweepers made of non-metallic materials. In such cases, it is easier to sweep for
these advanced mines via the use of some kind of signature emitter. This device would
mimic the various acoustic, magnetic, and wave signatures of a ship and thereby set off
mines that are sensitive to such inputs.95 The MK 105 tow-sleds currently used by the
MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters are one such example of this method.

94

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare, 13.

95

Ibid., 14.

46

Thus, the AMNS is meant to disable individual mines; it is effectively a small

helicopter-dropped torpedo equipped with various sensors that allow an operator to guide
it against a mine and explode, neutralizing the mine. An SH-60 helicopter can carry up
to four AMNS at a time.96 Clearly, being able to destroy only four mines per sortie is not
exactly a swift process, especially if Iran deploys all of the 300 mines (or more) that are
necessary for closing the Strait of Hormuz. So while the AMNS is an improvement over
existing neutralization methods in terms of range (a helicopter being able to go much
farther distances than the current neutralizer deployed from the Avengers) and safety (no
need for dolphins and divers; the ship can keep far out of the minefield), it does not
appreciably speed up the mine-clearing process. This is because the AMNS was not
originally conceived to be the only next-generation neutralization system.
The AMNS was in fact supposed to be only used against mines located far below
the surface of the water, such as ones that would rise up before exploding and ones that
are buried or sit on the ocean floor. Shallower mines were to have been the domain of the
Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System, or RAMICS. This was a 30mm cannon mounted
on a helicopter that would fire supercavitating rounds, allowing them to travel some
distance through the water. In theory, this would allow the helicopter to quickly blow up
mines one-by-one from the air without having to go through the lengthy process of
deploying and guiding the AMNS vehicle to the mine. However, the RAMICS was
cancelled in the summer of 2011 as a result of technical difficulties.97 While the gun itself

96

LCS & MH-60S Mine Counter-Measures Continue Development, Defense Industry Daily, April 5,
2012, accessed April 10, 2012, http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/mh60s-airborne-minecountermeasures-continues-development-01604/.
97

ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program, 2012, 15.

47

appears to have performed well, the targeting system for it was considered too difficult to
perfect. This appeared to have been primarily a software problem. While it is
theoretically possible to compensate for the effect that refraction would have on the
perceived versus actual location of the mine under the waters surface, it appears that the
role that waves had on this drastically increased the difficulty involved. The cost involved
in coming up with the necessary corrections was deemed too high, thus eliminating the
Navys only method for quickly clearing an area of mines.98
The RAMICS program is an excellent example of the classic technology versus
cost constraints on successful systems development. Was the technology just not there to
make it work? Or was it simply too expensive to make work? In a typical chicken-andegg fashion, the answer is unclear. Few documents exist that mention the RAMICS
cancellation, much less possible reasons behind it. Yet, there may be an answer if we
look at similarly advanced systems and seeing whether they have been successful.
The Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS) is a good candidate for
comparison. As was with the RAMICS, it is also meant to be able to look down into the
water and identify sub-surface objects. The difference is that the ALMDS does not have
to do complex calculations necessary for a physical object to be able to strike the subsurface mine. In this way, then, the ALMDS is a simpler system. However, despite the
apparent simplicity of the ALMDS (how hard could it be to shoot a laser beam into the
water and see how it reflects?), it is not without problems. One of the major obstacles has
been the amount of false positives seeing mines when there are no mines. While this
is a better situation than finding no mines when there are mines, it is hardly conducive
98

Ibid., 15-16.

48

towards a speedy and efficient mine-clearing operation. The bug that appears to be
responsible for the false positives is, as with RAMICS, environmental physics. In this
case, it is reflections off the water as a result of light sources such as the sun.99 Like the
problems involved with RAMICS refraction compensation, the ALMDS reflection
problem is holding back its success. Unlike RAMICS, however, the ALMDS has not
been cancelled100 and it has been determined that the reflection issue is resolvable.
The conclusion, albeit tenuous, that can be drawn from this is that there is a
tolerance point, one where the technological hurdle is present but deemed sufficiently
manageable by little to no increase in funding costs. The ALMDS problem managed to
just barely fit on the tolerable side of this point, while the RAMICS was deemed to be on
the other. This tolerance point is difficult to pinpoint, but asides from the cost required to
make the system work, there also appears to be considerations of alternative means. In
the case of RAMICS, it was cancelled only once it was demonstrated that the AMNS
could be adapted to also counter shallow mines with minimal cost and difficulty.101 Thus,
one significant factor that appears to impede the development of technologically
advanced systems is the availability of good enough alternatives so long as an
alternative is available that works better than current systems, then it is acceptable even if
it is less capable than the most theoretically capable option.

99

LCS & MH-60S Mine Counter-Measures Continue Development.

100

John Keller, Navys laser-based Airborne Laser Mine Detection System enters final development
before full-scale production, Military & Aerospace Electronics, April 8, 2012, accessed April 10, 2012,
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2012/04/almds-lrip.html.
101

ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program, 2012, 14.

49

There is one further element to the MCM mission package an unmanned surface
vehicle (USV) towing a surface sweep device. This Unmanned Influence Sweep
System, or UISS, is to be similar in function to the tow sled currently used by the MH53 helicopters. There are conflicting reports regarding the status of this element. On the
one hand, the Government Accountability Office Assessments of Selected Weapon
Programs states that the USV has been cancelled, citing certain design deficiencies that
will require a six-year period to resolve.102 However, the actual budget request by the
Navy for Fiscal Year 2013 indicates that the USV is still very much to continue
development and in fact procures two more USVs. No mention is made of whether these
two USVs for FY 2013 are to be of the existing design that the GAO report indicates is
deficient.103 It would be interesting to look further into the deficiencies implied by the
GAO, but the recent nature of the alleged cancellation makes it difficult to find sources.
Thus, we will continue on to the Littoral Combat Ship itself.

3.3: Part Three: Littoral Combat Ship Procurement

In discussing the cost growths associated with the various MCM elements, it
should be noted that they are quite minor in comparison to that of the Littoral Combat
Ship platform upon which they will be deployed. At slightly less than $500 million per
ship, the LCS has failed to meet the original conception of a low-cost small combatant.
This is made especially glaring in light of the fact that many foreign warships that are

102

Government Accountability Office. Defense Acquisitions[:] Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs,

110.
103

Department of the Navy, Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Presidents Budget Submission, Justification Book
Volume 2: 436.

50

available at that price (or less) are often much more capable in terms of combat power.
One example is the Danish Iver Huitfeldt class, which some sources state costs as little as
$333 million per ship (including sensors and weapons!) despite displacing nearly twice as
much as an LCS.104 So why has the LCS cost so much? This section seeks to answer that
question with a review of some literature on the general subject of shipbuilding costs
before testing those findings for the LCS case.
Perhaps the most salient starting point is the RAND Corporations study on Why
Has the Cost of Navy Ships Risen? In sum, RAND concludes that the answer to their
books title is that cost growth in the US Navy can be explained mainly by the desire for
ever-increasing complexity on Americas warships. In particular, two warship
characteristics were identified as proxies most strongly correlating with increased ship
costs beyond annual inflation: power density and Light Ship Weight (LSW).
Power density is quantified as the amount of electrical power available to a ship
(in kilowatts) per cubic foot. Power density in and of itself does not explain the increased
costs of ships. Nor is it merely the cost of more powerful electrical generators. Rather, the
connection between power density and increase ship costs is via the implication that
greater power density means that there are increasing amounts of power-intensive
systems on board ships. These systems are the drivers behind the need for (and thus
presence of) increased power density of ships over the last decades, and thus the true
sources behind increased ship costs.

104

An Overview of Current, On-Going Danish Naval Projects 2005-2009, Canadian American Strategic
Review, March 11, 2010, http://www.casr.ca/id-danish-naval-projects-frigate.htm.

51

LSW is the weight of a ship with all non-permanent items removed.105 Increases
in LSW are a result of larger ships. As with the power density proxy, LSW itself does not
result in increased costs. It is once again a reflection of how well LSW represents the
various complex systems being put on the ship. Here, instead of the equipments costs
being related to their power consumption, it is a matter of larger ships being able to fit
more and larger (and thus costlier) systems on board.
Both of these proxies are manifestation of the general trend towards increasingly
complex ships. This can be traced back to the last decade of the Cold War, when the
design and construction of what would become the current US surface fleet began. The
two major designs to have survived into the 21st century, the CG 47 and DDG 51 classes,
were both multi-mission warships. They are now responsible for every traditional
combat mission anti-air, anti-submarine, and anti-surface. Added into this mix is the
ballistic missile defence mission, thanks to the flexibility of the AEGIS combat system
and the ships Vertical Launch System. Not only do their missions run nearly the full
gamut of warfighting capabilities, they are also expected to conduct them to the best
ability that the US Navy can put into operational status. That is, whereas earlier Cold War
force structure saw a mix of high end and low end vessels with varying weapon
types, ranges, and effectiveness, todays major surface combatants are more-or-less equal
in capability. What this has meant is that for a guided-missile destroyer (RAND compares
a 1961 DDG 2 with a 2002 DDG 51, compensating for inflation), there is an 81%
increase in LSW and an 88% increase in power density, with a net result of some 2.1%

105

Mark V. Arena et al., Why Has the Cost of Navy Ships Risen? A Macroscopic Examination of the Trends
in U.S. Naval Ship Costs Over the Past Several Decades (Santa Monica: RAND, 2006), 34

52

cost increase in each intervening year. RAND concludes that rising ship costs are thus the
result of Navy requirements for more complex multi-mission vessels.
But what about factors like labour, materials, and procurement processes? Should
not they also play a role in affecting ship costs? RAND finds that while they do factor in
to cost increases, they play a much less significant role than the requirements mentioned
earlier. RANDs methodology separates possible factors into two broad categories:
economy-driven and customer-driven. The former refers to costs outside of the Navys
control such as labour, construction materials, and contractor-furnished equipment.106
The latter applies to costs that the Navy, as the customer, can directly influence
complexity requirements and procurement practices being two main ones. It was found
that economy and customer driven factors contributed roughly equally to the annual cost
increase of ships: 4.5%107 and 4.4%108, respectively, for surface combatants. Because
annual inflation is roughly equal to half of the annual ship cost increase, RAND
considered the cost escalation associated with economy-driven factors to be the result of
normal inflation. Thus, they come to the conclusion that customer-driven factors are the
reason why ships have been getting more expensive.
With that established, it then becomes a question of which customer-driven
factor(s) is responsible for the bulk of the cost increase. The answer to this was already
laid out in previous paragraphs Navy requirements for more complex ships. By itself,
the complex nature of modern ships is responsible for 2.1% of cost increases. Adding

106

Mark V. Arena et al., Why Has the Cost of Navy Ships Risen?, 24.

107

Ibid., 31.

108

Ibid., 47.

53

another 2.0% is the effect of standards and regulations on shipyard practices, in addition
to improved ship performance in areas such as habitability. Finally, the remainder 0.3%
that makes up the customer-driven contribution to cost escalation results from
procurement practices. To examine the impact of procurement practices, RAND looked
at both procurement rates and the number of shipyards. It was concluded both those
factors contributed only minutely, relatively speaking, to the overall annual cost
increases.

3.3.1: Applicability of the RAND Analysis to the LCS Program

The RAND analysis, despite its clinically neat and tidy conclusions, may not
necessarily apply for all surface combatant programs. We will now examine its premises
and conclusions in the context of the LCS program.
RANDs finding that the main reason for increased ship costs has been the
increased complexity of ships, and in particular the insertion of more numerous combat
and non-combat systems, resulted in their recommendation that perhaps ships should be
built separate from their systems. In particular, they cite the Littoral Combat Ship
program and its approach of developing the mission packages separate from the hull.
RAND at the time of their report suggested that this may be one way of reducing the
costs of ships. The logic behind this proposal is that the Navy would only have to buy
enough mission packages for the ships that are operating in the packages role for
example, instead of buying 55 massive ships capable of holding the MCM, ASW, and
anti-surface warfare mission packages all at the same time (and thus require 55 units of
each of those packages), the Navy could settle for 55 small LCSs and a reduced quantity

54

of those packages based on the operational vision that there would never be 55 LCSs
needing the same mission package type at any given time.109
This logic certainly is sound, and though there is much truth that the LCSs and
their mission packages are extremely expensive relative to traditional combat capability,
this does not take away from the expected cost-savings for the LCS program as a whole
versus building the same amount of multi-mission combatants. The one caveat here is
that a situation similar to that faced by the RMMV may also apply: that an increased unit
cost for the mission packages may exist due to the reduced amount of mission packages
needed in the LCS concept compared to a prospective program of 55 large combatants
that requires 55 of every package.
In any case, RANDs suggestion for ship-systems separation rests upon the
finding that systems do in fact contribute significantly to ship costs. This chapter will
now examine briefly the validity of this by looking at other shipbuilding industries
around the world. Stuart Young and Jonathan Davis noted in their study on United
Kingdom warship procurement methods that for the UK, systems held the dominant
percentage of the price of a warship: 70% compared to 30% for the hull.110 This is in
stark contrast to commercial vessels, where the reverse is true 20% systems, 80% hull.
The same trend holds true in Australia, as noted by Stefan Markowski and Robert Wylie:
33% for Platform design, hull, machinery, and equipment versus 41% for combat

109
110

Ibid., xviii.

Stuart Young and Jonathan Davies, United Kingdom Warship Procurement Strategies, in National
Approaches to Shipbuilding and Ship Procurement, ed. Douglas L. Bland (Kingston: Defence Management
Studies Program, School of Public Policy Studies, Queens University, 2010), 7.

55

systems.111 Logistical support and training and project management make up the
remainder costs. Markowski and Wylie do not use the same metric as Young and Davis,
so these numbers should not be taken as directly analogous to each other. Nonetheless, if
we isolate Markowski and Wylies Platform design, hull, machinery, and equipment
and combat systems sections, we can start to do a more direct comparison with the
dichotomous British example. The British systems element probably includes the
machinery and equipment costs that are in the Australian studys Platform design, hull,
machinery, and equipment section. Thus, if we shift the percentage composition of those
non-combat systems (machinery and equipment) into the combat systems section, we will
have a hull versus systems dichotomy that much better reflects the duality used in Young
and Davis study. Though the exact percentages of this shift are unclear, it stands to
reason that the relative percentage composition of systems versus hull in the Australian
case would more closely reflect the British case. In sum, RANDs conclusion that
systems contribute most significant to ship costs is a valid observation.
Another factor that RAND concluded would result in increased ship costs was the
use of multiple shipyards for the same class of vessels. RAND suggests that further
consolidation of shipbuilding industries and eliminating competition between shipyards
would result in cheaper ships. Certainly, historical practice appears to bear out the
economic validity of this suggestion. Throughout the Cold War, the British shipbuilding
industry continually merged shipyards in rationalization schemes. The 1950s began
with fifteen different shipyards building only twenty-six ships less than two ships per
111

Stefan Markowski and Robert Wylie, Australian Naval Shipbuilding Strategy 2009, in National
Approaches to Shipbuilding and Ship Procurement, ed. Douglas L. Bland (Kingston: Defence Management
Studies Program, School of Public Policy Studies, Queens University, 2010), 87.

56

yard. This was part of the strategic requirement that the UK maintain maximum
warship-building capability.112 However, providing fifteen warship yards with
continuous work was a very costly endeavour and with tightening defence budgets, the
Admiralty had to look for ways to reduce costs. One method was to return to
competitive tendering with fixed prices in order to encourage efficiency and
economy.113 The known side-effect of this was the closure of shipyards which did not
submit a successful bid thus the elimination or merger by 1965 of ten of those fifteen
yards. Even then, there were still more shipyards than Royal Navy ship construction
schedules required; this overcapacity became yet the subject of further
rationalization. The end result of this trend was the reduction to three naval shipyards
in the whole of the United Kingdom, each specializing in particular classes of warships.
By September 2009, defence industry giant BAE Systems finished acquiring majority
shares in all three shipyards, putting them all into the hands of a single company.114
The effect this consolidation had on the costs of Royal Navy warships is unclear
a comprehensive study on the topic has yet to be done or been made publically available.
Nonetheless, as a countrys budget is a zero-sum game, money that is spent on upkeeping
idle yards would be money that could not be spent on new ship production. Thus, it
would stand to reason that the UKs consolidation strategy was overall in agreement with
RANDs suggestion that doing so would be more cost-efficient.

112

Young and Davies, United Kingdom Warship Procurement Strategies, 2.

113

Ibid.

114

Ibid., 3.

57

RAND notes that although competition amongst shipyards should theoretically

result in cost savings, there is little evidence that this holds true in practice.115
Furthermore, competition amongst shipyards may well result in economic ruin, or at least
hardships, for one or more of the yards. During Imperial Germanys dreadnought
construction program, for example, the highly competitive climate then present resulted
in major shipbuilders like Blohm & Voss to actually lose significant sums of money for
every ship they built.116 The LCS program provides us with a very interesting case study
of the impact of using competing shipyards may have on ship costs.
At least one Navy official has publically stated that the decision to buy both
versions of the LCS, and thus two separate shipyards and companies, has resulted in a
$600 million net savings over buying only one design. The Navy in September 2009 had
originally wanted to carry a Down Select Acquisition Strategy; this would have saw a
decision in late 2010 deciding which of the two LCS builders would win the contract to
build the first ten ships. The LCS design of the winning bidder would from then on be the
only design built, regardless of which shipyard wins build contracts after the first ten
ships.117
As it turned out, the Navy decided in late 2010 to go ahead with buying both the
Lockheed Martin monohull and the General Dynamics trimaran designs, awarding each
company ten ships. The justification for this was the expectation that the act would save

115

Arena et al., Why Has the Cost of Navy Ships Risen?, 65

116

Holger H. Herwig, Imperial Germany: Continental Titan, Global Aspirant, in China Goes to Sea:
Maritime Transformation in Comparative Historical Perspective, ed. Andrew S. Erickson et al. (Annapolis:
Naval Institute Press, 2009), 186.
117

ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program, 2012, 8.

58

$600 million in total procurement costs versus going with the Down Select strategy.118
This figure already accounts for the $300 million in extra costs associated with
maintaining two designs worth of spare parts, simulators, and differing components.119
Information is scarce regarding how is it exactly that buying and supporting two
drastically different ship designs, each with their own different radars, engines, and other
hull-specific components,120 can end up being cheaper than going with just one design.
Nonetheless, if the Navy is honest (and accurate) in its savings estimation, then it
threatens to completely reverse the consolidation suggestion put forth by RAND.
One possible explanation for why there were cost-savings involved in this
particular scenario may rest, ironically, in the very distinct differences between that the
designs of the two LCS versions. RANDs assertion that expenses increase when the
same ship design is being built by two or more different yards was due to the observation
that multiple producers may not make it as far down the learning curve as a single one
will during a constant production run.121 That is, a single design spread over multiple
yards means fewer hulls built by each, and consequently each yard may not have the
opportunity to gain sufficient familiarity with the design to find areas where savings can
be attained (i.e. learning). In contrast, a yard that is responsible for building all of the
hulls can gain the experience necessary to benefit from that learning and still have new
118

Ibid., 8-9

119

Grace Jean, Buying Two Littoral Combat Ship Designs Saves the Navy $600 Million, Official Says,
NationalDefenseMagazine.org, January 12, 2011, accessed April 10, 2011,
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=7c996cd7-cbb4-4018-baf88825eada7aa2&ID=283.
120

Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, FY 2011 Annual Report, Office of Director, Operational
Test and Evaluation, 139
121

Arena et al., Why Has the Cost of Navy Ships Risen?, 47.

59

hulls on which to apply those cost-cutting lessons, resulting in lower total procurement
costs. This is essentially an economies-of-scale argument, in which each shipyard is
treated as a self-contained producer.
So why not go with the original down-select strategy of building a single design
of the LCS at one yard? Simply put, the $600 million figure may well be a potential or
expected, rather than actual, cost savings a relative savings dependent on a
comparison with the possibility of awarding the second (and/or subsequent) batch of LCS
builds to a company that did not have the experience of working on the initial 10 ships. In
such an event, that second company would have had to be paid for retooling all of its
construction equipment and facilities to conform to the winning design. As well, this
second company would have to relearn areas in which cost-savings had already been
achieved by the first company. Finally, the second company may experience delays in
restarting construction since it will have to rehire some of the workers that would leave
while there was little or no work to be had during the construction of the first batch by the
first company. This outcome runs the risk of costing the Navy more money than if it had
chosen the current option of both designs and both shipyards. In purchasing both designs
for the first twenty ships, there is work stability in the likelihood of the Navy continuing
to award both shipyards a roughly equal distribution of the remainder of the 55 total
hulls. This stability means that there is less potential risks of cost increases due to any
switching back-and-forth between two shipyards to build a single design, as may have
been the case under the initial down-select procurement plan.
Of course, much of this could have been mitigated had the Navy insisted on there
only being one design to reach the physical stage. A more rigorous analysis of the two

60

radically different designs could have avoided the problems involved in paying for the
establishment and disestablishment of physical equipment and manpower to build both
designs. In short, the $600 million in relative savings, and probably more, would have
already been covered had the Navy decided to build all 55 ships in one shipyard with the
same design.
One final suggestion that RAND put forth for reducing ship costs was to Build
Commercial-Like Ships.122 This would see naval vessels being built more towards
civilian survival standards. Navies other than the USN have already been doing so
RAND cites examples like HMS Ocean of the Royal Navy and the ships of the Royal
Dutch Navy. In theory, building ships towards a lower, civilian, standard would result in
significant cost savings. However, unlike the previous two suggestions, the LCS appears
to throw a proverbial wrench into the works.
The LCS, despite the word Combat in its name, was never conceived to be a
true combatant. To the extent that a combat-capable warship is usually able to absorb
some battle damage while continuing to fight, the LCS fails this criterion.123 The Navy
decided that the LCS should be built with only the minimal amount of durability what
the Navy colloquially terms Level 1+.124 The lowest level of survivability being 1 and
the highest 3, 1+ implies a Level 1 basis while incorporating additional sources of
protection that falls short of a full Level II survivability. This puts the LCSs at a rank that

122

Ibid., 68.

123

ORourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program, 2012, 17.

124

Ibid., 19.

61

is lower than the FFG 7 class frigates they are nominally replacing.125 The additional bit
of protection that the LCS has is meant to allow the ship to retreat from the area of
hostilities if it is damaged by hostile forces. Part of the reason behind this choice of lesser
protection was that, in line with RANDs suggestion, it would be cheaper, since Level 1
survivability is little more than what commercial ships have. Yet, the LCS, originally
supposed to cost $220 million and now nearly half that of a Level III Arleigh Burke
destroyer, has shown that the efficacy of this cost-saving measure suggested by RAND is
not evident.

3.4: Conclusion
This chapter has outlined the issues behind the difficulties and resultant delays in
developing and building the US Navys next generation of mine countermeasure systems.
It has focused on the Littoral Combat Ship and its prospective Mine Countermeasures
mission package, stressing the factors that affect the costs of the program. The papers
separation into the elements of the MCM mission package and the LCS itself reflects not
only the ontological differences between the two, but also the literature available (or not
available) on the topic. This latter determined the research approach that was taken and
the factors that were unveiled for the dichotomous components.
The dearth of secondary-source literature on the development and progress of the
MCM mission package components dictated that much of the information come from a
wide variety of disparate sources. Complicating the analysis is the lack of a framework
from which to proceed. Regardless, two main conclusions were arrived at, one for the
125

Ibid., 26.

62

waterborne MCM systems and the other for the airborne. For the former, it was found
that the halving the number of orders for the RMMV resulted in drastically increased perunit costs. The desire to improve the anti-submarine warfare package by itself was a
positive thing, but it failed to take into account of how it would, or could, affect the costs
of the MCM package. The lesson of this incident, and one that should be remembered for
future procurement projects, is that seemingly unrelated (or minimally related) projects
can have unexpected feedback effects on each other. On the airborne side of the MCM
mission package, the continuation of the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System and the
cancellation of the Rapid Airborne Mine Clearing System shows us that the combination
of technical difficulties that are too expensive to resolve and the availability of a good
enough alternative can stall the development of advanced systems. This last point
echoes a broader trend noted by naval scholar Geoffrey Till, who observed that naval
innovation tends to proceed at a slither, rather than as a big bang, due to the fact that
older technology were better at what they did than the most cutting edge experiments.126
The lack of an analytic framework present in the mission package section was not
the case in the examination of the Littoral Combat Ship itself. This section heavily
employed RANDs study on factors behind the cost increases of US Navy warships. The
paper sought to test the validity of RANDs suggestions for reducing ship costs in the
LCS context. Three of RANDs suggestions were examined: the separation of ships hull
from ships systems, the consolidation of industry shipyards, and the use of commercial
standards in warship construction. This chapters findings concluded that RANDs
suggestions appear to be valid for some parts. The suggestions that did not appear to meet
126

Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 138-139.

63

expected cost-savings were the use of commercial construction standards and, though it
cannot be confirmed, the use of two designs and two shipyards. Roughly speaking then,
this section of the paper actually found sources of savings, however dubious some of
those may be, for the LCS program, rather than the original intention of uncovering
sources of costs.
All of the conclusions arrived at in this chapter should be read with the caveat in
mind that the LCS and its mission packages are still at the early stages of production.
Cost estimates at this point of the program are still relatively fluid and it would not
inconceivable for the conclusions in this paper to drastically change within the next
twenty years of the LCSs prospective construction program. Once the production
matures, we can reasonably expect the costs of the LCS itself to go down, though new
technologies may well result in higher mission package costs. This latter possibility
should be tempered, however, with finding in this paper that advanced and prohibitively
expensive technologies may be discarded in favour of good enough solutions (.e.g.
RAMICS and its modified AMNS replacement).
This chapter examined a very particular subset of the overall US Navy
establishment. It is far from an overview of the costs associated with maintaining a navy
superior to all others the cost of seapower, to quote the title of Philip Pughs
eponymous book on the subject. Yet, the complex interplay between technology, ship
design, and shipyard dynamics partially explored in here are absolutely essential to
understanding why costs and delays are present in the first place. Only by understanding
this is it possible to fully appreciate the complexity of the answer to the question that
sparked this chapter why has the US Navy yet to field a capability that is so crucial to

64

its strategic goals? The findings here thus have greater utility than just for MCM issues
and can be applied to the greater naval procurement regime.
But for the area of mine countermeasures, this chapter has illustrated the
difficulties involved in fielding rapid and safe methods for neutralizing naval mines.
Although one hundred years of technological advances separate the modern day from the
First World War, it is clear that the simple mine remains difficult to counter and that
technology on its own has yet to be the panacea for this threat. Yet, as the next chapter
illustrates, these technological problems must be solved, lest the United States Navy
wishes to remain vulnerable in times of crisis when operational and strategic challenges
further complicate mine countermeasures.

65

Chapter 4: Learning From the Past

On March 18th, 1915, a combined fleet of British and French battleships

attempted to force their way through the Dardanelles, the southern half of the Turkish
Straits that connected the Mediterranean with the Black Sea. Attempted is the key
word, for it was a spectacular failure. Two of the greatest navies in the world had failed
to enforce their will upon the puny and seemingly obsolete forces of the Ottoman Empire,
sparking the infamous and bloody land campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula.
Nearly a century later to the southeast, the United States Navy (USN) is building
up its forces in Persian Gulf.127 Though never directly admitted, the nature of these forces
makes it clear that they are meant to dissuade the Islamic Republic of Iran from following
through on its threats to close the Strait of Hormuz (SOH). Should this dissuasion fail,
those same forces are expected to be able to swiftly end any attempt at following through
on that those threats. Commonly viewed as being the worlds most powerful, many
observers expect the USN to easily overpower its Iranian counterpart.
But is that actually the case? One is reminded of the clich adage that those who
do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. It is worth considering whether a
scenario similar to the one the United States may face in the Strait of Hormuz has already
occurred in history. Such a historical comparison may well reveal some valuable lessons
for America and her allies in the near future. It is in this context that this chapter
examines the Ottoman defence of the Dardanelles in World War One. The similarities

127

Cavas, U.S. doubling minesweepers in Persian Gulf.

66

between that campaign and a potential Iranian attempt at closing the Strait of Hormuz
should be apparent. In sum, both involve a power with a small navy trying to prevent a
power (or powers) from using its large navy to successfully force its way through a
narrow body of water.
This chapter thus seeks to assess the extent to which Ottoman area-denial
operations in the Dardanelles can provide a rough outline for Iranian actions in the Strait
of Hormuz, as well as what the United States and her potential allies can learn from the
mistakes of the British and French forces. The chapter will be split into two main parts:
the first will examine the details of the Dardanelles campaign as it was conducted by both
sides, while the second will analyse the applicability of part ones conclusions to the
modern-day Strait of Hormuz scenario. Because the premise of this section is dependent
upon the initial similarities between the respective parties despite their temporal distance,
the first part will begin with a historical overview of the Ottoman Navys development
and its force structure by World War One in order to establish its status as a relatively
minor force.
The term area-denial, as mentioned in Chapter Two, is used here to describe the
stage of military operations during which the objective of the defender is to hinder the
attackers ability to freely operate within a given area of operations. This is in contrast to
anti-access, in which the defender is trying to keep the attacker from entering the area
of operations in the first place. For our purposes, the area of operations in the Dardanelles
campaign is the Dardanelles itself. This focus on the waterway does not preclude
discussion of the shore and coastal land regions, of course, and both sea and land will be
discussed. Similarly, the area of operations for the discussion in part two will be the Strait

67

of Hormuz. Also for the purposes of clarity, the combined German and Ottoman forces in
World War I will be referred to as simply the Ottomans and the joint Anglo-French
forces the Allies unless otherwise stated.
4.1: Part One: An Historical Overview of the Dardanelles Experience, 1915
4.1.1: The Ottoman Steam Navy
The end of the 19th century was a tumultuous period for the world naval
community. The evolution brought on by the introduction of coal-fired engines and
armoured hulls continued to make its effects felt throughout the navies of the world.
Generally speaking, all countries adopted the products of the industrial revolutions, but to
differing degrees of success. On one end of the spectrum, those navies which pioneered
the new technologies were also the ones in the best position to exploit them to the fullest.
For example, the Royal Navys numerical and technological superiority continued to
ensure that the sun will not set on the British Empire. On the other end, countries that
were merely receiving the fruits of this naval evolution found themselves unable to foster
the seeds that would allow them to fully profit from it. China, for example, purchased
several modern warships from both Great Britain and Germany, but was unable to
maintain them at optimal strength, much less build its own128. Furthermore, the quick
pace of developments at the turn of the century meant that ships were often made
obsolete soon after their completion.
It is in this context that the Ottoman Navy, or Osmanl Donanmas, found itself

128

Bruce Elleman, Chinas New Imperial Navy, Naval War College Review 55, no.3 (Summer 2002):
146-147.

68

struggling to maintain relevancy as a tool of the Sultan. Although the Ottomans had been
trying to produce a modern navy since Sultan Mahmut IIs initial flirtations in the late
1830s, its efforts remained just that never amounting to anything permanent and
reliable. Though more and more of the Ottoman fleet became composed of steam ships,
the process was slow and fraught with low reliability. Much like Imperial China, the
Ottoman Empires industrial capabilities in the 1800s were primitive, requiring the
purchase of advanced engines and cannons from the British while hiring trainers from
that country to help maintain those acquired products. The 1861 succession to the
Ottoman throne by Sultan Abdlaziz initially appeared to be a positive gain for the navy,
as he had quite an interest in naval affairs since his youth. However, his enthusiasm for
new technologies, combined with a lack of education in that field, caused him to waste
money on ships that the navy did not need. This vulnerability of Abdlaziz resulted in
even higher foreign debts and an ever-increasing reliance on foreign capital.129
Sultan Abdlhamid, who eventually replaced Abdlaziz on the eve of the 1878
Russo-Ottoman War, feared that the military would revolt against him as it did against
his predecessor. As a result, he severely curtailed the power of the military and, in the
navys case, forbade its ships from being completed (several were in construction at the
time) or sailed.130 The navys indecisive contribution to the 1878 war (mainly serving as
troop transports) may have also played into this decision.131 The net effect of all this was

129

Bernd Langensiepen and Ahmet Gleryz, 1828-1923 Osmanl Donanmas The Ottoman Navy 18281923, trans. James Cooper and Renan Meng (Istanbul: Denizler Kitabevi, 2000), 60-61.
130

Sir Edwin Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople 1873-1915 (New York: D. Appleton and Company,
1916), 106, 170-171.
131

Langensiepen and Gleryz, The Ottoman Navy, 63.

69

that the Osmanl Donanmas was ill-prepared to fight in the Greco-Ottoman War of 1897.
Although the Ottoman army was very successful in the Greco-Ottoman War, the
navy was severely less so. Due to it having been essentially locked up in the Golden
Horn, or Hali, for the preceding nineteen years, the ships were poorly maintained with
missing and immobile parts aplenty. Further, the sailors were so out of practice (those
that had any to begin with) that in some cases it took them over two hours just to load and
aim an Armstrong gun.132 Thus, though they made some token forays into the Aegean
Sea, they were kept under the protection of the Dardanelles forts. 133
This dismal performance finally convinced Abdlhamid to put resources towards
rebuilding the fleet. The various skirmishes between Ottoman forces and minority groups
during the 1890s proved to be a way to get the ships built. In order to compensate for
damages incurred by Italian, American, French, and British property within the Empire, it
was decided that the Osmanl Donanmas would order its new ships from those
countries.134 With the exception of the American-built cruiser Mecidiye, most of the
purchases (primarly torpedo boats and destroyers) turned out to be a cheap way to acquire
reliable modern fleet additions.135 This fleet was augmented in 1910 by two German
predreadnought battleships of the Brandenburg class, as well as a few more destroyers.136
This was the fleet with which the Ottoman Navy entered the First World War.

132

Turkeys Bad Navy, New York Times, November10, 1889, 16.

133

Langensiepen and Gleryz, The Ottoman Navy, 64.

134

Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople 1873-1915, 172.

135

Langensiepen and Gleryz, The Ottoman Navy, 64-65; Turkish Cruiser Rushed, The Washington
Post, February 22, 1904, 3.
136

Langensiepen and Gleryz, The Ottoman Navy, 67.

70

Though she was very close to acquiring two state-of-the-art dreadnoughts from the
British, the imminent outbreak of war caused them to be commissioned under Royal
Navy service. As an aside, the funding for these two ships, which commissioned as HMS
Erin and HMS Agincourt, was raised in part by civilian subscriptions that is, everyday
Ottoman citizens donated money to the navy in order to pay for them.137 The Agincourt,
as the largest battleship in the world at the time, was regarded [by the Turkish people] as
a panacea for all the [Ottoman Empires] troubles and injuries, a view clearly
demonstrated in the populaces eagerness to fill the many For our Fleet fundraising
boxes around the country some women went as far as to sell their hair.138 Thus, when
the ships did not end up in Ottoman hands, the last vestiges of pro-British sentiments in
the the Ottoman government (particularly of the Minister of Marine) was transformed
into mental anguish.139 There was little sympathy for the British side now - the
Ottomans, at best, would be neutral, and at worst, join the side of Germany.
Despite this, the Ottomans managed to acquire a dreadnought of their own. Or
more appropriately, it was an irreversible fait accompli of one Enver Paa, the Ottoman
minister of war.140 Though the mid-August handover of the battlecruiser SMS Goeben
(renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim, or just Yavuz) and protected cruiser SMS Breslau (renamed
Midilli) was essentially free for the Ottomans in the immediate financial sense, this
singular action would lead to bringing the Ottomans onto the side of the Central Powers

137

Robert K. Massie, Castles of Steel (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), 22-23.

138

Richard Hough, The Big Battleship: or The Curious Career of H.M.S. Agincourt (London: Michael
Joseph, 1966), 97-98.
139

Hough, The Big Battleship, 127-128.

140

Massie, Castles of Steel, 48-50.

71

and all the costs that decision would eventually incur. With a navy as small as the
Ottomans was, it would appear that this was a cost the navy could ill-afford, even with
the addition of the two powerful German ships. There appeared to be absolutely no
chance that the Osmanl Donanmas would be able to challenge, never mind defeat, any
of the enemy powers in the coming war. As it turned out, however, the Ottoman Navy
would not need to act alone in this endeavour.
4.1.2: The Dardanelles Campaign
The Allied attack on the Dardanelles defences began on November 3rd, 1914, with
the British battlecruisers Indomitable and Indefatigable as well as the French predreadnoughts Suffren and Vrit conducting a show of force against the outer forts of
the Dardanelles.141 There were both strategic and tactical objectives to this action: to
convince the Ottoman Empire to comply with the British ultimatum that it remove the
German crew from Yavuz and Midilli (and therefore render them useless as no Turkish
crew are trained to operate them)142, and to discover the forts gun ranges143for eventual
use should that strategic objective fail to be accomplished. Constantinople refused to
comply with the British demand, thus effectively announcing the activation of their
alliance with Germany. Soon afterwards, war was formally declared by the Allies (Russia
may have done so earlier, on November 2nd sources differ144), but detailed plans for
141

Ibid., 428.

142

Ibid., 50, 429.

143

George H. Cassar, The French and the Dardanelles: A Study of Failure in the Conduct of War (London:
George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1971), 43. Trumbull Higgins, Winston Churchill and the Dardanelles: A
Dialogue in Ends and Means (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963), 91.
144

Massie, Castles of Steel, 50. George Nekrasov, North of Gallipoli: The Black Sea Fleet at War 19141917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 26.

72

further actions against the Dardanelles did not form until several months later.
The overall military objective of the Allies was to bring Constantinople within
range of British and French naval guns (but not to actually bombard that historic city). 145
It was hoped that doing so would convince the Ottomans to capitulate and cease further
operations on the side of Germany. An Ottoman surrender would also, in theory,
encourage the undecided Balkan states to side with the Allies. Opening the Turkish
Straits would also, of course, re-enable trade between Russia and the Western allies. This
would be consistent with Britains historical strategy of using her sea power to attack the
enemy at vulnerable points away from the primary battlefront (in this case, France).146
The impetus for the Dardanelles campaign was initially the desire to assist the Russians,
who were facing a significant challenge in the Caucasus against Ottoman troops. Grand
Duke Nicholas, commander in chief of the Russian army, asked the Western allies as to
whether they could, somehow, draw away the Ottoman troops. Winston Churchill, then
the First Lord of the Admiralty, became enamoured of the mental image of a line of
Royal Navy battleships sailing up the Dardanelles to hold Constantinople hostage, and
thereby give the Russians some much-needed reprieve.147 This certainly sounded easy
after all, with the combined might of the British and French navies, how could the tiny
and less-than-stellar Ottoman fleet resist? Yet, the Ottomans had one ace up their sleeve:
geography.

145

Robin Prior, Gallipoli: The End of the Myth (London: Yale University Press, 2009), 42.

146

Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 109-110.

147

Massie, Castles of Steel, 431-433.

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Despite the massive advances in naval armament since the onset of the Industrial
Revolution, naval guns remained insufficiently powerful to fire a shell from the Aegean
Sea that could hit the Ottoman capital. As the crow flies, the distance from the
northeastern-most point of the Aegean Sea to Constantinople is over 180 kilometers, far
beyond the capabilities of naval rifles at the time; the famous HMS Hoods unique 15
Mk. II gun mounts could only fire some twenty-seven kilometers, and that was with the
benefit of ten extra degrees of gun elevation that ships during the Great War did not
enjoy148. Thus, it would only be via the extremely onerous task of breaching the
Dardanelles defences and reaching the Sea of Marmara could Allied guns be brought to
bear on The City.
Broadly speaking, two major obstacles prevented the Allies from reaching the Sea
of Marmara: naval mines and the fortresses that lined the Dardanelles on either side.
These two elements, when put together, made it extremely challenging for an enemy fleet
to successfully sail through the Strait. As the Admiralty saw it (though First Sea Lord
Fisher soon realized its foolishness149), it would only be a matter of reducing the forts
using naval artillery (the largest of which had greater range than the fortress guns) and
then sending in minesweepers to clear a path for the fleet while the ships secondary
batteries engaged the mobile howitzers on the shore. Churchill was especially inspired by
the Germans ability to silence the great modern Belgian forts with their land howitzers in
a matter of days.150 If those guns, so puny compared to the great battleship rifles, could
148

John Roberts, Anatomy of the Ship: The Battlecruiser Hood (London: Conway Maritime Press, 2001),
16.
149

Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 111.

150

Massie, Castles of Steel, 435-436.

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do it, then why not the Royal Navy against the ancient Turkish kaleler and hisarlar, the
castles and fortresses?151 However, the Clausewitzian fog of war has always plagued
military conduct, and this situation was no different.
The brief bombardment on November 3, 1914, may have been insignificant in its
immediate effects, but the ultimate consequences were substantial. The action persuaded
the Ottomans that an Allied attack up the Dardanelles was a real possibility and to accept
German suggestions to bolster the forces lining the strait. Of particular note was the
arrival of twenty-four mobile 6 howitzers, as well as increased amounts of searchlights
covering the minefields against potential Allied night minesweeping operations.152
However, these additions would not see any use for several more months, as the Allied
blockade outside of the Dardanelles continued without any more offensive actions.
The next attack by the Allies was the beginning of the real attempt at forcing
through the Strait, occurring on February 19, 1915. This was aimed at reducing the outer
fortifications that guarded the entrance to the Dardanelles: Kumkale and Seddlbahir on
the Asian and European shores, respectively. The attack on the 19th was, despite the
expenditure of some 140 twelve-inch shells, inconclusive.153 While it was easy to hit the
stationary and fairly large fortresses, these hits had nowhere near the same impact as a
similar hit would on a floating battleship: a land fortress cannot take on water and be
sunk. The only way to reduce a fortress is to directly destroy its guns or otherwise
prevent its crews from safely operating the guns. This drastically increased the accuracy

151

Cassar, The French and the Dardanelles, 45.

152

Massie, Castles of Steel, 445.

153

Ibid., 446.

75

demanded of the Allies gunfire. However, the very nature of land bombardment makes
precision corrections to naval gunfire difficult: the massive clouds of dirt and dust thrown
into the air by exploding ordnance tend to linger, hindering the ships fire control systems
from seeing where shells are landing and where targets are. Not even the introduction of
aerial spotting from airplanes and balloons was able resolve this problem, as noted in
H.M. Denhams recollections from his time on board HMS Agamemnon, one of the predreadnoughts at the Dardanelles.154
Despite these challenges, however, the outer forts were cleared with relative ease.
After a period of inaction due to stormy weather, the fleet re-engaged the forts six days
later, on the 25th. Keeping in mind the lessons learnt from the 19th, a two-tier attack plan
was developed. For the purposes of destroying the individual fortress guns, one group of
battleships would move into close range so that the ships secondary weapons could be
brought to bear. This was probably expected to increase the efficiency of the
bombardment in two ways: more shells will be landing on the forts, as well as making it
easier for the ships fire control systems to spot specific enemy gun targets. To prevent
this group from being attacked by the forts, another group of battleships will sail outside
the range of fortress guns and bombard the forts using their main batteries. This longrange bombardment would keep fortress troops in hiding while the closer group of ships
conduct their attack in safety.155 After several hours of bombardment, the ships retired to
anchor off Tenedos, an island to the south of the Dardanelles mouth. The next day, the
forts guns appeared to be silent and a white flag was spotted at the top of a minaret; it
154

H.M. Denham, Dardanelles: A Midshipmans Diary 1915-16 (London: John Murray Ltd, 1981), 26.

155

Massie, Castles of Steel, 446.

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was decided to send in demolition parties over the next few days to ensure the permanent
destruction of those guns.156
These landings first took place on the 26th and were not conducted again until
March 4th due to windy and foggy weather. The landing parties were able to approach the
shores with no problems, but did meet significant resistance once they made landfall.
This was especially the case for those who landed on the 4th, when Turkish and German
snipers would fire upon the landing parties from concealed positions such as village ruins
and cemeteries. Midshipman Denham recalls that enemy infantry were also spotting
from windmills and the church at Yeniehir village south of Kumkale, which resulted in
those structures being fired upon by the battleships.157 Throughout this amphibious
action, mobile artillery guns that were not located in the forts continued to fire upon the
land parties, preventing them from permanently securing either of the forts.158 The Allied
parties, in their haste to retreat, had to leave behind their Maxim machine guns, which
had to be retrieved later in the evening by other volunteers.159
Despite being ejected from the Turkish shores, the objective of the first phase of
the Dardanelles campaign had been completed. The outer forts and their (permanent)
guns have been taken out of action, allowing the Allied ships to safely begin sailing into
the Dardanelles itself. With less than a hundred casualties thus far, it was no wonder that
spirits ran high in the Admiralty and the War Council in London. Admiral Carden,
commanding the fleet off the Straits, expected that he could be through to the Sea of
156

Denham, Dardanelles, 38.

157

Ibid., 46.

158

Higgins, Winston Churchill and the Dardanelles, 147.

159

Denham, Dardanelles, 47.

77

Marmara within two weeks.160

Yet, the ease with which the Ottomans were driven from the outer forts was
perhaps less due to the ferocity and efficacy of the naval attacks and more to do with their
defence strategy. The outer forts were not meant to be the only line of defence. Should
they fail (and they were likely expected to), the Ottomans could fall back to the inner
forts located at the Narrows where the Dardanelles is less than 1500 meters wide. The
Narrows were where the Ottomans concentrated the placement of their naval mines. If the
Allies want to reach Istanbul, they will have no choice but to get past both the forts (more
numerous and with larger guns) and the mines.
The minefields that blocked the Narrows were comprised of a series of lines, ten
in total, spanning perpendicular to the long axis of the Dardanelles. The first three lines,
numbering 88 mines total, were laid down at the very beginning of the war in August
1914. The end of September and beginning of October saw another two lines laid with 29
mines each. On November 9th, another 16 mines were laid in a new line likely in
response to the British bombardment earlier that month. Two more lines, 78 mines total,
were laid on December 17. The final line for the year was laid the day before New Years
Eve, with 39 mines. Throughout this period, extra mines had been appended to the first
three lines, thus adding 45 more to the total count. However, before the Allies
minesweeping could begin, a final line of 53 mines was laid down on the same date as
when the demolition parties first made landfall: the 26th of February.161

160
161

Massie, Castles of Steel, 448.

Piotr Nykiel, Minefield in the Dardanelles (August 4, 1914-March 9, 1915),

http://www.navyingallipoli.com/teksty/mines.pdf.

78

With a grand total of 377 mines, this was the barrier that the Allies faced when
they began their minesweeping operations in earnest. The mines were laid by the three
Ottoman minelayers responsible for the Dardanelles region: the Selanik, ntibah, and
Nusret.162 Selanik and ntibah were both originally built as mere tug boats, but were
refurbished into minelayers by the Ottomans shortly before the war. Nusret was built in
Germany from the outset as a minelayer and could thus carry more mines per
displacement unit than the other two as well as being marginally faster.163 From the
beginning of March all the way through to the 18th, the Allies made many attempts to
sweep the mines but most being of only limited success. Several factors were responsible
for this difficulty.
The primary reason was the vulnerability, both actual and perceived, of
minesweeping ships to gunfire. Being little more than fishing trawlers fitted with
minesweeping gear, the minesweepers could very easily be destroyed by hostile action.
Though steel plate protection...saved many lives, they could not protect the exposed
kites, wires, and winches.164 Worsening the situation were the weak engines of the
trawlers that allowed them to go no more than 3 knots relative to land due to the strong
currents of the Dardanelles; the slow speed made them nearly stationary targets. Thus, the
trawlers were easily driven off or destroyed by the mobile howitzers that lined the shores
of the Dardanelles. The rapid fires from these guns, though less powerful than those from

162

Piotr Nykiel, Minefield in the Dardanelles.

163

Langensiepen and Gleryz, The Ottoman Navy, 233.

164

Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes, 66. Keyes to his wife, in 1914-1918, ed. Paul G. Halpern, vol. 1 of
The Keyes Papers: Selections from the Private and Official Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Baron
Keyes of Zeebrugge (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979), 106.

79

the heavy fortresses at the Narrows, were especially effective against the civilian crews
who initially operated the trawlers. Many of these men had minesweeping experience
from their time spent on the North Sea coast of Britain, and thus the Admiralty assumed
they were the optimal choice for mine-clearing in the Dardanelles. However, the North
Sea setting did not expose those civilian crews to incoming enemy gunfire and they were
therefore unprepared for what they faced in the narrow waters of the Dardanelles.165 This
caused them to turn back on numerous occasions before even reaching the mines, even
though only a very few trawlers were actually sunk. This problem of the civilians
attitude towards taking fire was fixed to some extent by the placing of volunteer Royal
Navy sailors onboard the minesweepers, providing some moral encouragement to the
regular crew. The co-employment of RN battleships bombarding the forts also somewhat
improved the morale of the trawler crews, despite the forts not being the primary sources
of gunfire.166 Eventually, the trawler crews were persuaded to sail on in the face of
danger.
However, while human bravery can be induced with a bit of extrinsic
encouragement, such is not the case with the forces of Mother Nature. The strong current
of the Dardanelles and its effect on making the trawlers easy targets for shore guns has
already been mentioned. Nonetheless, the historical record indicates that hitting the small
trawlers was not, in actuality, a very easy task, especially at night when all minesweeping
operations took place. Even though the Ottomans had many powerful searchlights to
illuminate the targets, the lighting was very concentrated, likely making it difficult for
165
166

Massie, Castles of Steel, 450-451.

Piotr Nykiel, Minesweeping Operations in the Dardanelles (February 25 March 17, 1915),
http://www.navyingallipoli.com/teksty/minesweeping.pdf, 3.

80

gunners to see where their shell splashes were in the surrounding darkness. So the
trawlers had a fairly reasonable chance of getting to the minefields as long as they kept
going forward. But once they reached the mines, the persistent Dardanelles current again
made itself known. With a total forward speed of no more than 2-3 knots, the trawlers
could not apply enough force upon the mines mooring cables; the mines could not be
dragged up to the surface where they could be destroyed, nor could they be pushed into
the wire cutters that would allow the mines to float freely to the surface.167 The solution
to this was to sweep with the current, using the trawlers full speed of some 6 knots plus
the Dardanelles 4-knot current to apply the necessary force for dragging the mines to the
surface. 168
But sweeping with the current, as opposed to against it, presented a corollary
problem: increased exposure to gunfire. In order to sweep with the current, the
minesweepers had to first go past several lines of mines before turning around with the
current. This meant bringing them closer to the fortresses and their artillery. Thus, they
became even more susceptible to shore fire. The with-current attempt on the night of
March 13 saw delicate minesweeping gear blown away by near-misses; another trawler
had all of its above-decks crew killed, including the captain; and two of the trawlers,
amidst the confusion of exploding shells and dazzling searchlights, collided and remained
stuck as they floated through the minefields. Surprisingly, none of the seven trawlers
used that night were sunk, though the damage was sufficient to put them out of action for

167

Lord Keyes, 66. Keyes to his wife. 106.

168

Lord Keyes, 66, Keyes to his wife, 106-107; Robin Prior, Gallipoli, 35.

81

the remainder of the campaign.169

All of the sweeping attempts up to now took place at night, when it was hoped
that the trawlers would remain undetected or, failing that, the Ottoman fires would be less
accurate. However, the presence of many powerful searchlights along the Narrows made
this tactic less useful than it otherwise would have been. Not only did the searchlights
light up the trawlers for artillery fire, they also blinded the trawler crews, whose eyes had
been accustomed to darkness during the trip up to the minefields. It became obvious that
the searchlights had to be taken out, and the only way to do so would be by
bombardment. Thus, the March 13th attempt saw the trawlers being accompanied by the
cruiser HMS Amethyst, which provided fire support from the edge of the minefields.
However, the difficulty in destroying searchlights echoes that of destroying the fortress
guns: the lights themselves had to be destroyed with a direct hit and anything less would
be insufficient. Although some shells managed to sever the electric cables that powered
the lights and shatter the lens themselves, those things were easily and quickly repaired or
replaced by the next night.170 To further complicate the Allies ability to hit the
searchlights, the Ottomans appeared to have switch back and forth between them, turning
some of them off and others on; to quote Admiral Cardens Chief of Staff: for all the
good we did towards dowsing the searchlights we might as well have been firing at the
moon.171 Amethyst paid for her actions on the 13th with a hit to her steering gear,
jamming her rudder for twenty minutes and thus enabling a shell to strike her full mess

169

Lord Keyes, 66. Keyes to his wife, 107; Massie, Castles of Steel, 453.

170

Piotr Nykiel, Minesweeping Operations in the Dardanelles, 8.

171

Massie, Castles of Steel, 452.

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deck, killing twenty-four and wounding thirty-six.172 While paling in comparison to the
killing fields on the Western Front, this was nonetheless a stark reminder that the Turks
and their less-than-modern equipment would not be so easily defeated.
The attempt on the 13th persuaded Admiral Carden that nothing short of a full out
bombardment of the forts and flanking artillery before sending in the minesweepers
would be sufficient. Thus the planning began for the great concentrated attack on the
Narrows. The entire fleet of Allied battleships would take turns bombarding the inner
forts until the minesweepers could take advantage of the forts state of distraction (and
hopefully silence) to conduct their sweeping operations. This operation had to take place
during daylight, as it would have been impossible to conduct accurate fires at night, given
the Allies inability to precisely spot the Ottoman forces in the dark.
So it was that on the morning of March 18, 1915, the superdreadnought HMS
Queen Elizabeth led the battlecruiser Inflexible and the two newest predreadnoughts
Agamemnon and Lord Nelson into the Dardanelles. These four ships formed Line A the
first line of bombardment vessels, responsible for suppressing the forts from long
range. In their eaves were the four French predreadnoughts (Gaulois, Charlemagne,
Bouvet, Suffren), their curved tumblehome hulls standing out in odd contrast to their
British counterparts. These four (Line B) would take up the vanguard and attack the forts
from close range once Line A has sufficiently suppressed the fortress guns. A third line
(Line C) of four old British predreadnoughts would sit near the entrance of the
Dardanelles to be ready to relieve the French. To protect the eight attacking battleships
from the mobile shore howitzers, four predreadnoughts were assigned: one to each side of
172

Lord Keyes, 66. Keyes to his wife, 107; Massie, Castles of Steel, 454.

83

each line.173
The thunder of the battleships, forts, and howitzers rang and reverberated through
the Dardanelles, echoing off of the cliffs and hillsides in a great cacophony celebrating
mankinds deadliest creation to date. Not for nothing were battleships called castles of
steel, for despite multiple hits on every single vessel in attendence by noon, there were
fewer than twenty casualties.174 Though the decks of the predreadnoughts had not been
built to withstanding plunging fire from other battleship guns, they were generally more
than adequate to protect against the 6 and smaller howitzers that lined the shores.
Meanwhile, the heavy side armour protected them from the forts larger guns. However,
there were crucial areas of the ships that were not armoured, such as the fire control
stations high up on the masts and the bridge. Though narrow in profile, any hit on the
masts was sure to cause severe damage to the crew operating in the spotting tops.
Inflexibles, for example, was perforated and her bridge had caught on fire, which made
recovery of the men on the forward spotting top difficult. 175
It was the French, however, who suffered the most disproportionate amount of
damage on the 18th. At 12:30 pm, Gaulois was hit below the waterline near the bow by a
large-calibre shell fired from one of the forts. Though she did not sink, she was down
heavily by the bows, with her hawse pipe nearly at the waterline. She had to make her
way out of the Dardanelles, beaching herself on a small island off Tenedos just in case

173

Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes, 69. Keyes to his wife, in 1914-1918, ed. Paul G. Halpern, vol. 1 of
The Keyes Papers: Selections from the Private and Official Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Baron
Keyes of Zeebrugge (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979), 111.
174

Massie, Castles of Steel, 460.

175

Lord Keyes, 69. Keyes to his wife, 111.

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she took on more water than could be handled. But the greatest tragedy for the French
occurred one-and-a-half hours later, when Admiral de Robeck, who took over from the
suddenly sick Carden just a day before, ordered the relieving of Line B by Line C. The
remaining three French ships turned to starboard, with Suffren leading the way. As they
passed Line A, Bouvet, which was behind Suffren, struck a mine. A big cloud of smoke
poured from her funnels as she continued to move forward, rolling over onto her
starboard side. In less than two minutes, she had capsized and sank, taking with her 640
men, including the captain.176 In less than two hours, half of the French battle fleet had
been removed due to enemy action.
This was not the end of the Allied fleets setbacks, however. Inflexible, having
recovered somewhat from her fire earlier, now ran into, quite literally, another problem.
Two hours after Bouvets sinking, Inflexible also struck a mine, flooding her bow
compartments and drowning twenty-nine crew members. She was able to sail back to
Tenedos, but was out of the action for the foreseeable future nothing but a full
drydocking would fix the gash in her hull.177
These deadly weapons would claim two more ships before the day was over.
Irresistible, one of the predreadnoughts in Line C, lost her engines to a mine, causing her
to drift towards the Asiatic shore. The Ottoman gunners, spotting an easy target, aimed
their guns to pepper her decks as her crew climbed out to be rescued. A destroyer was
sent to retrieved them, leaving Irresistible crewless and adrift. Two hours later, HMS
Ocean, also of Line C, struck yet another mine, and the scenario with Irresistible was
176

Lord Keyes, 69. Keyes to his wife, 112; Massie, Castles of Steel, 461. For images of Bouvets sinking,
see photographs 37 and 38 in Denham, Dardanelles, 62.
177

Massie, Castles of Steel, 462.

85

repeated. Both ships sank later that evening before they could be recovered by towing
parties. 178
To add insult to this grievous injury, a brief failed attempt at sweeping the mines
at the Narrows occurred shortly before Inflexibles mining. Though the fortress guns were
mostly silent, the shore howitzers and small guns were, again, active. Much like the
previous few nights, the trawlers were once again driven off with only three mines swept
for their trouble.179
But from where did the mines that sunk and injured so heavily the Allied fleet
come? After all, the fleet had been basically operating in the Dardanelles for the last
several weeks without encountering any of the mines why on this day did they rear their
ugly heads? As it turned out, and it wouldnt be known until after the war was over,
August 8 saw the Nusret, that purpose-built minelayer, enter the Dardanelles. She carried
with her a load of 26 mines, with which she proceeded to create Line 11 of the
Dardanelles minefields. However, unlike the other ten lines that blocked the Narrows,
this one was in a drastically different location. Line 11 was placed parallel to the
shoreline at Erenky Bay, the large indent that makes up most of the Asiatic shore before
the Narrows. The Allies, having already swept this location several days earlier, did not
think that the Ottomans would be so brazen as to construct another minefield right under
the noses of the Allied ships operating there. Interestingly enough, the night of August
15/16 saw a few minesweepers actually finding and catching up to seven of those mines.
However, their crews were not able to note the location in which the mines were found,
178

Lord Keyes, 69. Keyes to his wife, 112-115; Massie, Castles of Steel, 462-463.

179

Lord Keyes, 69. Keyes to his wife, 112; Massie, Castles of Steel, 461.

86

and little thought was given to the event, much to the Allies regret two days later.180 One
last chance for the Allies to find the Erenky Bay mines was offered when seaplanes
conducted a last-minute reconnaissance mission over the area prior to the attack on the
18th, but they reported nothing. Given their ability to spot mines down to eighteen feet in
the trial waters of the Aegean, it was assumed that the planes would also be able to spot
mines in the Dardanelles as well an erroneous assumption. 181
Thus it was that the great March 18th naval attack on the Narrows ended with a
third of the Allied fleet sunk or too heavily damaged to continue operations. In return,
practically nothing substantive of the Ottoman defences was destroyed. The Dardanelles
campaign was supposed to be the dynamic success that would lift up the heart of a nation
tired of the brutal and bloody stalemates on the Western Front.182 Alas, the Dardanelles,
too, turned out to be a futile endeavour. It was determined that the paramount obstacle
facing the Allies were the mobile howitzers, which were able to so effectively drive off
the minesweeping trawlers. By hiding behind hills and gullies, the howitzers could
remain undetected and protected by earthworks while firing at the ships. The only way to
destroy the howitzers would be by ground troops, hence the great Gallipoli land
campaign.
The Ottoman defence of Gallipoli was primarily an action between land forces,
and thus detailed examination would be outside the scope of this paper. However, the
Allies did continue to use their battleships for naval gunfire support missions during this
180

Nykiel, Minesweeping Operations in the Dardanelles, 11..

181

Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 115; Massie, Castles of Steel, 462.

182

Lisle A. Rose. The Age of Navalism, 1890-1918, vol. 1 of Power at Sea (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 2007), 210

87

time, remaining in the Dardanelles. This provided the Ottomans with some opportunity to
conduct area-denial activities, the most spectacular of which was the torpedoing of the
battleship Goliath in the early morning of May 13, 1915. Anchored in the first small bay
(Morto Bay) on the Gallipoli side of the Dardanelles, she was struck and sunk by three
torpedoes fired from the Ottoman destroyer Muavenet-i Milliye, which had managed to
elude the patrolling British destroyers and sneak into firing range. With cover fire from
the shore providing adequate distraction, she launched her German Mark A/08
Schwarzkopf torpedoes. These successfully detonated against Goliath, which promptly
capsized and sank within a matter of minutes, highlighting the vulnerability of those old
predreadnoughts when facing underwater explosives. Muavenet-i Milliye managed to get
away amidst the confusion and her crew was well-awarded with gold and watches.183
Torpedoes would cause the death of two more predreadnoughts: Triumph and Majestic
were sunk within days of each other by torpedoes launched from German submarines,
despite countermeasures such as anti-torpedo nets.184
4.1.3: A Brief Note on Mine Warfare in the Black Sea
This concludes the first part of the chapter on the Ottoman defence of the
Dardanelles against the combined British and French forces. It should be noted that this
wasnt the only example of area-denial strategies being applied to a narrow waterway by
the Ottomans it was also used against the Russians in the north on the Bosphorus,
though the Black Sea Fleet never did attempt to force the Bosphorus as was done with
183

Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 117; Massie, Castles of Steel, 483-484; Langensiepen and
Gleryz, The Ottoman Navy, 74.
184

Haplern, A Naval History of World War I, 118; Massie, Castles of Steel, 492-493; R.A. Burt, British
Battleships of World War One (London: Arms and Armour Press Limited, 1986), 15.

88

the Dardanelles. Although the combination of forts, mobile guns, and mines were also
present there, one of the elements that differed in the Black Sea compared to the south
was the practice of offensive mining. Whereas the Dardanelles saw the use of mines for
the purposes of keeping the enemy out, the Black Sea saw the employment of mines for
the purposes of keeping the enemy in their ports: the Ottomans laid mines outside the
Russian port of Sevastopol, while the Russians laid mines right outside the Bosphorus
(amongst other places).185 Some rather innovative tactics were employed, especially by
the Russians laying mines via submarine and heavy use of aircraft, for example186. Also
unlike the Dardanelles, the Black Sea saw much greater ship-to-ship combat due to the
more balanced quantity and quality of either sides naval forces, especially at the
beginning of the war. Despite these interesting practices, further examination of the Black
Sea conflict will not take place as the nature of it deviates too much to be of overall use
to this paper; however, some tactical elements of the northern conflict do have significant
parallels and will be brought up as relevant.

4.2: Part Two: Applying Lessons

One of the enduring questions in modern strategic studies is whether strategic
concepts can be applied and used regardless of time period, or whether technology can
change so drastically that strategy is dependent on the tools available to the user. It is
hoped that this section of this paper can provide some perspective with empirical
examples at strategic, operational, and tactical levels.
185

Nekrasov, North of Gallipoli, 24-25, 36, 106.

186

Ibid., 62, 126.

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In the event that the Iranian government decides to close the Strait of Hormuz to
traffic (both military and civilian), many observers expect that this would be done via the
deployment of numerous mines in the water way. Since the end of World War II, the vast
majority of ship casualties (some 70%) have been the result of mine strikes. The victims
have ranged from purpose-built minesweepers to guided-missile cruisers and amphibious
assault ships.187 As mines were also the principle cause of death for the Allied fleet in the
Dardanelles, it is only appropriate that we begin out examination with them.
Modern mines differ from those used in the Dardanelles in a variety of ways, but
the most distinctive would be the way they can be fused. The ones used in the Turkish
Straits were simple moored Hertz mines that exploded upon coming into contact with any
object that broke one or more of its many protruding horns, each triggering the mines
explosive cargo.188 These mines had three components: the buoyant mine itself
containing the explosives, an anchor, and a cable or chain that connected the two
together. The anchor prevents the buoyant mine from floating to the surface where it can
be easily spotted. The methods for neutralizing this type of mine has already been
discussed briefly in the first section of this paper, but it generally involves using
minesweeping cable to either cut the mines mooring cable or, failing that, drag the mine
and its anchor to shallower waters where the mine would be close enough to the surface
to be destroyed by gunfire.189

187

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare, 8.

188

Jim Crossley, The Hidden Threat: The Story of Mines and Minesweeping by the Royal Navy in World
War I (Barnsley: Pen and Sword Maritime: 2011), 17-18, 101-106.
189

Crossley, The Hidden Threat, 28.

90

By World War II, however, so-called influence-triggered mines were beginning

to be used. The major difference between influence mines and contact mines is that the
former does not require a ship to actually touch it. This drastically decreases the number
of mines that are needed to deny an enemy fleet access to a particular area. Today,
example triggers include magnetic, acoustic, and pressure-sensitive. While magnetic
mines can be countered by the use of degaussing on metal ships and by building minecountering vessels out of wood and fibreglass, acoustic and pressure-sensitive mines are
less easily eluded. The miniaturization and advancement of sonar and electronics have
made it possible to build mines that are set off only when ships matching prerequisite
signatures pass by; for example, an Iranian acoustic mine can be set so it only blows up
when it hears an American aircraft carrier instead of being wasted on a minesweeper,
which would have alerted the Americans to the presence of mines, thus decreasing the
likelihood of the primary target (the carrier) being successfully attacked.190
To complicate counter-mine activities even further, modern mines can be
positioned in a variety of ways. In addition to the traditional buoyant bottom-moored
more, there are now mines that rest on or under the sea bottom. Such types of mines can
pack a much greater amount of explosives because they do not need to be light enough to
float. However, this also requires that they have to be located in fairly shallow water in
order to be effective. These mines cannot be swept in the manner that bottom-moored
mines can and thus requires a much more tedious process involving the use of remotelyoperated vehicles (ROVs) and/or trained marine mammals. Even more innovative are
moored mines that contain a small upward-firing guided torpedo, further increasing
190

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare, 10.

91

lethality and accuracy.191

So it is clear from the above that modern mine countermeasures (MCM) has to be
much more involved and complicated than in the past. This will have significant impact
on the analysis that follows below. The paper will now examine the parallels between
mine-hunting today and in World War I.
4.2.1: Currents
For the sake of clarity, assume that the Dardanelles operations had taken place
without the forts or mobile artillery that caused such havoc amongst the minesweeping
trawlers. In such a scenario, the main obstacle facing the minesweeping teams was the
current, which ran down the Dardanelles at some 4 knots and prevented the overburdened and under-powered trawlers from sweeping the mines.
In a modern day scenario, currents in the Strait of Hormuz would not be sufficient
to immobilize an Avenger class MCM ship, the only ship in the USN inventory currently
dedicated to mine-clearing. With a published speed of 14 knots, it should be able to
overcome any open-water current.192 However, as noted above, some modern mines
cannot be swept, and others can harm the minesweeper if sweeping is attempted (for
example, an acoustic mine set to explode upon hearing an Avengers engines). Thus, in
order to keep sailors safe, todays mine-clearing methods is less about sweeping in a
large ship than about hunting and neutralizing. In part, this involves the use of Unmanned
Underwater Vehicles, or UUVs, to locate the mines and neutralize them i.e. destroy

191
192

Ibid., 8-10.

U.S. Navy, Mine Countermeasures Ships MCM, U.S. Navy, November 10, 2011,
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=1900&ct=4.

92

them with explosives.193

The tidal current of the Strait of Hormuz has been measured to be as high as 4.8
knots, though it appears to vary significantly depending on time of year, depth, and exact
location in the Strait.194 One of the more commonly used UUVs for exploding mines is
Atlas Elektroniks SeaFox, which fills the inventory of most European navies and, as
mentioned in Chapter Two, has begun filling the USNs. The SeaFox is 1.3m-long
torpedo-shaped vehicle that carries a shaped explosive charge. Using its onboard sonar, it
is designed to locate and identify enemy mines, swim up to one, and explode, destroying
itself and the mine. But being relatively small and dependent on sonar, it cannot have a
very high speed according to Atlas website, its maximum speed is 6 knots.195 Against a
current of 4.8 knots, a SeaFox cannot expect to make much headway. The consequences
of this are two-fold: firstly, it will significantly reduce the SeaFoxs operational range and
secondly, because of that reduced range, the MCM ship deploying the SeaFox will have
to sail much closer to a suspected minefield. This exposes the ship to greater danger than
if SeaFox were to be faster and/or have greater endurance.
For the USN, SeaFox is an interim solution until Raytheons Airborne Mine
Neutralization System (AMNS) enters service. The AMNS consists of four rounds of
Archerfish neutralizers. The Archerfishes operate nearly identically to SeaFox even the
maximum speed is the same. However, being much smaller than SeaFox, the
193

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare, 13, 16.

194

Fujairah, UAE: Currents and Tides, last modified February 2006,

http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/medports/mideastports/Fujairah/index.html; Prasad G. Thoppil and Patrick J.
Hogan, On the Mechanisms of Episodic Salinity Overflow Events in the Strait of Hormuz, Journal of
Physical Oceanography 39(6): 1348.
195

c/.

SeaFox C, Atlas Electronik, http://www.atlas-elektronik.com/en/systemsproducts/uuv-auvrov/seafox-

93

Archerfishes can be, and will be, deployed from the ubiquitous SH-60 shipboard
helicopters.196 It is thus an improvement over the SeaFox in that MCM ships of the future
(i.e. MCM mission package-equipped Littoral Combat Ships) will not have to be near a
minefield at all even if the Archerfishs range is drastically reduced due to currents, since
the helicopter can operate far away from its mothership while hovering safely above the
minefield. Nonetheless, once placed in the water, the Archerfish will have to be
sufficiently powerful to get to the mine itself in the face of possible currents the need
for speed, as it were, remains.
But this need will be difficult to address. At a 2012 maritime security conference
in Victoria, B.C., Canada, the author had the opportunity to meet a defence research
scientist who specialized in unmanned vehicles. When asked about whether there were
any attempts to increase the speed of MCM UUVs, she replied that current battery
technology does not allow for such increases. It was mentioned that the United States
Naval Research Laboratory is working on a new hydrogen-based power source but until
that becomes operational, UUVs for the foreseeable future will be unable to move any
faster than the Dardanelles trawlers.
But regardless of the speed problem, MCM forces still have to know the general
location of minefields before they can conduct a precise search to neutralize them. A side
benefit of gaining such knowledge is that MCM forces may be able to find optimal
deployment zones for UUVs that minimize the impact of currents one solution to the

196

AN/ASQ-235 Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS), Raytheon, last modified May 16, 2008,
http://www.raytheon.com/businesses/rids/businesses/scs/www.raytheon.com/businesses/rtnwcm/groups/pu
blic/documents/content/rtn_bus_ids_prod_amns_pdf.pdf.

94

speed problem suggested by the abovementioned scientist. This will be the focus of the
next examination.
4.2.2: Airborne reconnaissance
The deadly and unexpected mines laid by Nusret were not spotted in the run-up to
the March 18 operation, despite aerial reconnaissance efforts. For whatever reason, the
aircraft conducting the mine spotting did not see the ones in Erenky Bay. The planes
(rather, their pilots) were expected to be capable of seeing at least down to eighteen feet
below the surface of the water. The logical conclusion would be that the waters of
Erenky Bay were less crystal-clear than those in the Aegean where the eighteen feet
benchmark was set, or that the mines laid there were deeper than eighteen feet.
In either case, the lesson should be obvious: never take for granted that sea
conditions in one area will be the same as another, even if they are only a short distance
away. The waters in one area may be murkier than another, or the surface of the water
will be choppier, distorting the view to the bottom. Perhaps even the suns reflections on
the water are more dazzling in one location versus another (not to mention variance due
to time of day and year), hindering the observers ability to see clearly.
These precautions are especially relevant today, as the United States is developing
its Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS).197 To be mounted on a helicopter
like the above-mentioned neutralizer, the ALMDS will use laser beams to pierce through
the water, scanning for mines. This would be a much faster way of finding mines that are
moored close to the surface as it will no longer be necessary to wait for a sonar-equipped

197

LCS & MH-60S Mine Counter-Measures Continue Development.

95

UUV to slowly swim laps along a search grid. But if the developmental difficulties faced
by ALMDS, as detailed in Chapter Three, are any indication, lasers are obstructed by the
same things as visible light: the same conditions that prevented the pilots on March 18,
1915, from spotting Nusrets mines are the same conditions that can decrease the
ALMDS success rate. Not only must the ALMDS be fixed to increase its reliability, it
must also be programmed so that it can compensate for different environmental
conditions.
Furthermore, the airborne nature of future mine-clearing practices does have a
weakness in itself. Just as the reconnaissance and spotting planes at the Dardanelles were
easily threatened by shore anti-aircraft artillery (the primitive carrier HMS Ark Royal lost
the use of three out of her five planes by March 8th, 1915198), so are helicopters. Due to
the slow and methodical nature of counter-mine operations, helicopters are easy targets
for enemy anti-air weapons if they happen to be within range. It will be prudent to make
sure that mine-clearing helicopters are conducting their operations under protection by
other assets.
It is clear from the above that current and upcoming mine-hunting technologies
will have to keep in mind the behaviour of water bodies in order to reach their full
potential. UUVs will have to be powerful enough to maneuver even in the strongest of
currents while the ALMDS will have to be made to compensate for various oceanic
conditions. As the USNs begins leading annual International MCM Exercises, hopefully
the international forces present will learn just how much the Strait of Hormuzs natural

198

Denham, Dardanelles, 53.

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conditions can affect MCM equipment, and revise accordingly.199

In addition to the technical lessons, there is also the simple, but crucial,
operational lesson rendered by Nusrets March 8th laying: it should never be assumed that
a cleared area of water will remain permanently free of mines. Areas where an enemy can
place more mines need to be continuously checked before any ship goes through. Any
hint of the presence of mines should deserve a full and comprehensive MCM effort to
ensure that there are no more lying in wait. Hand-in-hand with this is the recognition that
ships using the same stretch of water repeatedly should expect the enemy to take
advantage of that fact. After all, it was only after observing the Allied battleships
operating in Erenky Bay in the days before March 8th that the Ottomans knew to send
Nusret there.
4.2.3: Beyond MCM
Before this paper ends the discussion on mines, there are certain warnings to be
interpreted from the Ottoman and Russian use of those weapons in the Black Sea during
the war. The practice of offensive mining is something that the USN and its allies in
the Persian Gulf should be concerned about. With the US Fifth Fleet (and its MCM ships)
based out of Bahrain, the situation in the Gulf becomes somewhat similar to that of the
Black Sea major naval bases of opposing forces on either sides of a confined body of
water. Just as the Ottomans and Russians snuck up on each others ports to lay mines, we
can reasonably suspect that Iran may try to conduct a similar operation against Manama
harbour to prevent the Avenger or, if later, the Littoral Combat Ships from leaving port to
199

Rear Admiral Kenneth Perry, International Navies to Conduct Mine Countermeasures Exercise, Navy
Live: The Official Blog of the United States Navy, last modified August 30, 2012,
http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2012/08/30/international-navies-to-conduct-mine-countermeasures-exercise/.

97

conduct MCM duties. Just as the Russians used submarine minelayers to deploy mines
close to enemy territory, so might Iran be expected to do the same with their own
submarines. As well, the Russians ad hoc conversion of the Elpidifor class transports
into minelayers and the tactic of transporting small boats via larger ships in order to lay
mines more closely to enemy shores should not be forgotten.200 These examples highlight
that any vessel, large or small, purpose-built or converted, can be a minelayer. Though
the Iranians have already been known to lay mines in international waters using ad hoc
vessels (i.e. the Iran Ajr during the 1980s Tanker Wars), the Russian example informs
us that covert minelayers may well conduct their activity in inshore areas close to basing
areas: the USN and its allies should be on the alert for any kind of vessel, regardless of its
physical appearance and location. This makes CS-21s second Implementation Priority,
Enhancing domain awareness, of truly paramount importance. Only with comprehensive
Intelligence-gathering, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) abilities that provide
advance maritime domain awareness can the threat of covert minelayers be addressed.
Conversely, the USN and its allies may find it useful to conduct mining
operations of their own. Although this would likely be politically unpopular, the fact that
the Russians were able to end the German submarine menace decisively in 1916 by
placing special anti-submarine mines (rybki) in the Bosphorus and other Ottoman ports
shows that it can be a very effective tactic.201 With the numerous small submarines that
Iran is purported to have202, a blockade of Iranian ports with small mines set to explode
200

Nekrasov, North of Gallipoli, 117, 125-126.

201

Nekrasov, North of Gallipoli, 115, 125.

202

Senior Intelligence Officer Iran, Irans Naval Forces: From Guerilla Warfare to a Modern Naval
Strategy, (Declassified report, Office of Naval Intelligence, Fall 2009), 17-18, 24.

98

only if Iranian submarine signatures are met may well be an excellent defence against
them. However, the smallest mine in the United States inventory is the Mk 62 500 pound
converted bomb; compared to the 30kg mines used by Russia in WWI, its size may cause
unacceptable collateral damage as well as being too costly. Furthermore, the USN has not
been in the business of using mines for quite some time and it will take a while before the
details of counter-submarine mining operations can be determined.203
4.2.4: Other Lessons to be Learned
Up to now, the comparisons have been focused on the mine and counter-mine
warfare aspect. But there was, of course, much more that contributed to the Allies failure
than just the mines. One of them was the lack of professional and battle-ready
minesweeper crews. The absence of thought for human psychological preparedness
resulted in more than a few nights of wasted efforts in March 1915. It highlights the
necessity of preparing sailors both in terms of technical proficiency and their mental
state of readiness. The Implementation Priority of Preparing our people in CS-21,
mentioned in Chapter Two, is thus a positive step in this direction as long as it
encompasses preparing sailors for the experience of war.
But perhaps the most significant, if easily overlooked, cause of the Allied failure
in 1915 were the mobile howitzers. Portable, well-hidden, well-protected, and deadly
against the lightly-armoured trawlers, mobile howitzers played a major role in preventing
any successful attempt at sweeping the Dardanelles mines. Is there a parallel weapon
today that might achieve the same effect?

203

U.S. Navy, 21st Century U.S. Navy Mine Warfare, 25-26.

99

The most obvious comparison would be modern towed or self-propelled

howitzers. Iran is known to possess 155mm (6.1) howitzers that can fire rocket-assisted
shells to a distance of 30 kilometres; Iran has even claimed the development of a new
projectile that can fly up to 34 kilometres.204 However, the distances involved in the Strait
of Hormuz are much greater than those in the Dardanelles; the narrowest point of the
Strait of Hormuz is approximately 53 kilometres wide, compared to just 1.5 km at the
Narrows. Thus, even though Irans modern artillery have much greater range than those
used by the Ottomans, the geography prevents them from having the same effectiveness.
Of course, if Iran had controlled of both shores of the Strait, then they can easily bring
their guns to bear on any ship that tried to pass. Military planners may wish to consider
the possibility, if somewhat remote, that Iran may try to covertly land mobile artillery on
the Musandam peninsula. There are also a few small uninhabited islands off the
Musandam shore that will provide landed artillery with sufficient coverage of the Strait,
though the islands small size would make the artillery difficult to hide.
The threat of artillery to naval ships is not restricted to just unarmed MCM ships,
however. Unlike the battleships in the Dardanelles, modern warships are not provided
with armour that can withstand large explosive projectiles. Thus, even frontline warships
like destroyers, cruisers, and aircraft carriers are vulnerable to a successful artillery strike.
This makes the threat of artillery an even greater priority in any operation in the region.
But even if Iran chose or could not land artillery on other territory in the Strait,
there are modern long-range weapons that are somewhat analogous to the longer-ranged
204

DIO 155mm 39-calibre HM41 howitzer (Iran), Towed anti-tank guns, guns and howitzers, Janes, last
modified March 1, 2012, http://articles.janes.com/articles/Janes-Armour-and-Artillery/DIO-155-mm-39calibre-HM41-howitzer-Iran.html.

100

fortress guns in the Dardanelles. Shore-based anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) have
significantly more range than artillery and can easily reach across the width of the Strait
of Hormuz; unlike the old fortress cannons, however, many ASCMs can be carried and
deployed from mobile carriages.205 This allows ASCMs to have both the long-range
advantage of the old forts and the elusive mobile capabilities of the howitzers a
combination that poses severe challenges to an enemy. However, given the complexity
and price of ASCMs, there are much fewer of them in Irans inventory than, for example,
army howitzer shells. Thus, like the great fortress guns at the Narrows, it is possible the
ASCMs will be reserved for use against major enemy surface combatants, especially
those of direct strategic importance such as aircraft carriers. On the other hand, because
ASCMs can reach the entire width of the Strait, Iran may choose to employ them against
MCM assets as well in order to keep minefields intact. Certainly, MCM assets are likely
to be more easily struck than an aircraft carrier with all the defensive capabilities of its
escorts. This is especially key since Iranian ASCMs are not as advanced as those used by
larger countries like Russia and are thus more susceptible to ASCM countermeasures.
Given the choice between expending limited numbers of cruise missiles against a welldefended aircraft carrier versus a few unescorted mine-hunters, it is likely the latter target
will be chosen. In so doing, the Iranians, just like the Ottomans, can let the mines do the
work of sinking major ships.
Thus, the lesson here is that MCM assets must be protected. They are easy and
vulnerable targets and their loss would severely constrain the USNs ability to maneuver
in the region. Without adequate MCM capabilities, the rest of the fleet may well end up
205

Senior Intelligence Officer Iran, Irans Naval Forces, 17.

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in the same situation as the Allied fleet on March 18th, 1915.

The possibility of Iranian submarine minelayers was mentioned above, and the
conventional threat their torpedoes pose is obvious and well-known. But what about the
attackers submarines? British submarines were the only vessels in the Allied inventory
that could travel past the minefields and into the Sea of Marmara, where they conducted
anti-shipping missions. It was possible for cautious submariners to snake between the
many moored mines without setting them off.206 Could todays large nuclear-powered
submarines do the same in the face of modern influence mines and if so, for what
purpose? This is a potentially salient question, for although anti-shipping can be
conducted today via aerial means, a significant amount of American first-stage attacks
are conducted via ship- and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles. There may be
targets in northern Iran that could only be reached if the launch vessel was in the Persian
Gulf, necessitating their passage through any minefields if it was not already there before
the minefields were laid.
The Ottomans use of searchlights and the Allies inability to counter can also
provide a short lesson. The role of searchlights is analogous to radar today: to search and
track the location of enemy forces when visual/optical means are not possible. By
switching back and forth between different searchlights, the Ottomans had made it
impossible for the Allies to have the time needed for eliminating them. Conceivably,
Iranian radars can also be arranged to do the same: turning different sets on just long
enough to locate American and allied forces and then turning them off before anti-radar
assets can be brought to bear. The portable nature of modern radars further complicates
206

Langensiepen and Gleryz, The Ottoman Navy, 76-81.

102

the situation. Although Iran is not likely to have the network-centric capabilities needed
to make such a web of radars and their data feed into a singular output, it should
nonetheless be considered a possibility, especially if technical assistance is received from
countries with more advanced militaries.
4.2.5: Amphibious Lessons
The preceding analyses assumed a naval-only approach to a potential Iranian
attempt at blocking the Strait of Hormuz. To some extent this can be justified given the
weariness of the Western public over the land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; it is likely
that civilian leaders will be reluctant to authorize the use of land forces in significant
numbers for any attempt to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. However, as Admiral Fisher
adroitly pointed out, Not a grain of wheat will come from the Black Sea unless there is a
military occupation of the Dardanelles.207Analogically, the statement can be modified to
Not a drop of oil will come from the Persian Gulf unless there is a military occupation
of the Strait of Hormuz.
The basis for this perspective comes from the fact that while mines can be swept
away and the waterway itself thus be freed of obstacles, an operation that uses only ships
will not be able to permanently prevent an enemy from using the shores for launching
area-denial operations. To put it in real-world terms, if the Allied battleships had
managed to make their way through the Narrows and into the Sea of Marmara in March
1915 without the use of land forces, what would happen next? The ships would be
continuously using fuel and their ammunition likely low from bombarding the forts; they

207

Prior, Gallipoli, 28.

103

would have to be replenished somehow. A replenishment vessel would have to be sent

through the Dardanelles. But with no Allied forces on the coasts of the Dardanelles, there
would be nothing to prevent the Ottomans from moving back into attack position (if they
left at all) and harass the unarmoured supply ships. The same vulnerability would apply
to any Russian wheat carrier trying to get through the Turkish Straits Ottoman land
forces can attack and sink them with ease. Thus, even if the navy did not require army
forces to help destroy the forts and howitzers that guarded the mine field, it would still
need them to ensure that traffic through the Strait can pass free from harassment.208
The strategic lesson for the modern day scenario should be clear: it is almost
certain that some kind of persistent presence, probably land forces, has to be on the
Iranian shores to prevent them from being used (or reused) as staging points for attacking
oil tankers making their way to and from Persian Gulf terminals. Unless Iran agrees to
discontinue any attempt at closing the Strait of Hormuz (and in essence, surrender),
American and allied ground forces will be necessary to enforce freedom of navigation in
the Strait. However, it should be kept in mind that securing the SOH is only one part of
the equation: the US and its allies must be able to make use of a secured waterway. In
particular, it must have the robust sealift capability needed to transport troops onto land
a crucial logistical element of the CS-21 strategy mentioned in Chapter Two.
Having established the necessity of inserting ground troops, tactical-level lessons
from the Dardanelles experience will now be discussed. One lesson is that the defenders
can hide among civilian population centers and rubble, making them difficult to attack.
This may be a less effective tactic in the 21st century, given the extensive experience that
208

Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 121; Prior, Gallipoli, 29, 41-42.

104

American and NATO forces have had in conducting urban warfare operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan experience that the British and French in World War I may not have had
prior to the landing of their demolition parties. Nonetheless, this is crucial to keep in
mind lest Western leaders mistaken the broad swath of tan-coloured terrain on maps of
Irans coast to be unpopulated desert that can be easily occupied with little resistance.
Another lesson can be drawn from the Ottomans ad hoc use of tall civilian
buildings (e.g. windmills and churches) as vantage points for artillery fire. Intelligencegathering, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities are crucial to warfighting,
and though Irans electronics miniaturization skills are not as well-developed as those of
Western countries, due diligence should be exercised when searching for the locations of
Iranian ISR assets. Small radars, infrared sensors, and light weapon emplacements can be
hidden in civilian buildings. Iran may take advantage of the coalition forces rules of
engagement (and public sensitivities) to hide their equipment in buildings that are
politically dangerous to attack. Mosque and madrassa (religious school) minarets, for
example, can likely be adapted for ISR and fire control purposes; their height and
prevalence in nearly all Iranian population centres make them a tempting solution in the
event that regular military ISR assets are destroyed. Although mosque imams will likely
object to the military use of religious structures, the possibility should not be discounted.
These are some of the challenges American and coalition forces are likely to face
should an occupation of the Strait of Hormuz coast be considered necessary. Had the
author decided to expand the research into the Gallipoli campaign, there would likely be
even more lessons. However, the scenario of an invading amphibious force versus a well
dug-in opponent is relatively common (compared to forcing passage through narrow

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waterways), and thus such an examination may well be redundant in terms of existing
literature. It is also reassuring (for those seeking to maintain a SOH free of mines,
anyway) that A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower already sees land
operations as a given element in 21st century kinetic conflicts; theoretically, then, the US
military establishment should not have too much trouble in accepting and planning for a
mine-clearing operation that includes some land component.
4.3: Caveats
The original intent had been to examine the role that the Ottoman Navy played in
preventing the British and the French from forcing their way through the Dardanelles.
However, the research has clearly indicated that the Ottoman success was not the result
of just the Navy. Indeed, one may argue that the Army played the largest role, with their
howitzers preventing the minesweeping trawlers from completing their assignments.
Many comparisons have been drawn between the past and the present (many of which
share a resemblance that is quite uncanny), but the author would now like to
acknowledge some of the deficiencies in this study.
Firstly, the threats posed by Iranian aircraft and fast attack craft (FACs) have not
been mentioned. This decision was made not only due to space constraints, but because
this chapters main objective was to see what lessons the Dardanelles experience could
teach the present. 1915 saw no aircraft in use by the Ottomans; small fast surface craft
was never employed in the scale and method that Irans FACs are expected to via with
the infamous swarm tactic. Thus, a full discussion of those two platforms is outside the
scope of this research. It suffices to say that on top of all the aforementioned challenges a

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Western fleet would face in the Strait of Hormuz, FACs and aircraft would only add to
them.
Secondly, this chapter ignores the element of alliances. How would Irans ability
to defeat an American-led attempt at re-opening the Strait of Hormuz be affected if Iran
were to have the support of a more powerful country? Just as the Ottomans had
significant German assistance at strategic and tactical levels (not to mention financial), so
too might Iran find the same support.209 Who would be the most likely country (or
countries) to provide that support? And in what form(s) might that support come? These
are broad questions that go beyond this thesis focus on MCM, but would be excellent
grounds for further research.
And finally, it cannot be denied that although both the Dardanelles and the Strait
of Hormuz are narrow waterways connecting two larger bodies, there are significant
geographical differences. Perhaps the greatest is the matter of distance between shores,
which is many times greater in the Strait of Hormuz. Yet, as the analyses in Part II
indicate, the development of modern weaponry with their incredible reach has made this
factor less significant than if the study were conducted decades earlier. Of course, it must
be admitted that a comprehensive closure of the Strait of Hormuz via mines would
require a much greater quantity than in the Dardanelles, even accounting for the greater
coverage that modern influence mines provide.

209

Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire 1914-1918 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1968), 67-70.

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4.4: Conclusion
Despite the above drawbacks, this chapter has demonstrated that many elements
from the Ottoman defence of the Dardanelles can be applied to a modern scenario in
which Iran seeks to close the Strait of Hormuz. In particular, it appears that the use of
naval mines by a power with only a small navy can sufficiently halt and even defeat a
much stronger power. The vulnerability of large and conventionally-powerful ships was
shown on March 18th, 1915. Some may say that the impact there was so large because the
victims were old predreadnoughts not equipped to handle underwater strikes. Yet, this
would be ignoring the example of HMS Inflexible, a then-modern battlecruiser equipped
with anti-torpedo protection. Indeed, even the Yavuz Sultan Selim, that fearsome exGerman dreadnought, was incapacitated for over fourth months after hitting Russian
mines off the Bosphorus, rendering her unavailable during the Allies attempts at forcing
the Narrows.210 Had the Allies been successful at passing through the Dardanelles in
March 1915, Yavuz would have not been in a condition to challenge the fleet. As mines
evolved and became more lethal and difficult to counter over the decades, the
vulnerability of surface ships to mines remain unabated. A multi-layer defence of a welllaid minefield, combined with intelligent tactics, operations, and strategic sense can allow
a defender to rout a much stronger naval force with minimal losses to itself.
At the tactical level, the main historical lesson is that current and upcoming US
Navy mine countermeasures must recognize and address the constraints imposed by
primarily natural conditions. The two key MCM systems being developed underwater

210

Nekrasov, North of Gallipoli, 36-37.

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drones and helicopter-borne optical search systems (i.e. ALMDS) are both vulnerable
to environmental variations in the operating area. But addressing these systems technical
weaknesses is only half the battle. As the historical study in this chapter has
demonstrated, naval mines can be especially difficult to counter in unfamiliar
atmospheric and oceanic conditions. To reduce this unfamiliarity, the USN must take
seriously CS-21s implementation priority of increasing maritime domain awareness.
Cooperation and partnerships with local authorities and maritime agencies can assist
greatly with gathering and keeping the vast volume of environmental information in
regions of the world with relatively few US oceanographic and atmospheric assets. After
all, it does little good to deploy minehunting equipment that compensates for different
oceanic/atmospheric conditions if the operator does not know what those conditions are.
Operationally, the Allies Dardanelles experience suggests that MCM assets must
not operate on their own without significant defensive forces protecting them. This is
especially true for the near future as the slow unarmed Avenger class remains the
mainstay of US MCM forces. The advent of the LCS and its MCM gear may alleviate the
problem somewhat as they have significantly better self-defence tactics available than the
Avengers, but these are likely to be insufficient and will require an operational level
solution that diverts major combat units to support the MCM ships. Furthermore, MCM
and anti-submarine warfare operations should be cooperatively conducted given how
submarines can lay mines stealthily and in relatively large amounts. Finally, the efficacy
of minefields depends on the predictability of the intruding fleet, as demonstrated by
Nusrets 11th line. As the ancient Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu once wrote, ...the pinnacle

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of military deployment approaches the formless.211 If the mines cannot be reliably

removed, then it would be wise to reduce the opportunities for which they would be
useful in this case, the US fleet being unpredictable in its movements.
Ultimately, however, it is perhaps the strategic effects of mines that are the most
noteworthy. Very few weapons can deny the United States and its Navy from using the
worlds waterways, but naval mines are one of them. By making a part of the seas
impassable for a period of time, mines can force an opponent to engage in land
operations. As has been illustrated in this chapter, this holds especially true for narrow
waterways that can be guarded by land forces, greatly influencing the strategic direction
of the intruder as MCM in such situations cannot be confined to just naval operations. In
the context of US naval strategy, mines in narrow waterways effectively expands MCM
efforts from a sea control issue to one of power projection, as gaining control of the sea
is now dependent upon the USNs ability to remove threats from enemy shores. Only by
doing this can USN forces safely project power even further inland and with greater
freedom of maneuver. However, this is complicated by the fact that such power
projection operations may not be feasible unless the mines are first removed, as they
would hinder the ground forces ability to reach the shore. Thus, it can be argued that the
strategy laid out in CS-21 and NOC 10 is actually not quite sufficient to address the mine
threat. The anchor that is deterrence may well not be attached to chain links of sea control
and power projection, but to a cable consisting of sea control and power projection
intertwined with each other, mutually supportive and crucial to the deterrence strategy.

211

Sun-tzu, The Art of War, trans. Ralph D. Sawyer (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 193.

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The answer to the question stated at the beginning of Part Two in this chapter is
thus in the affirmative that yes, despite changes in technology over time, strategic (and
operational and tactical) principles can still apply. Perhaps not entirely and always, but
certain situations are similar enough that the past is valid reference for the future. Lessons
from the past may even be so salient as to unveil weaknesses in a modern naval strategy
given particular conditions. To rephrase a common saying, learning from the past can
prevent it from being repeated.

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Chapter 5: Conclusion

Through an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis has demonstrated that the

United States Navy faces a significant challenge now and in the years to come against an
adversary that can achieve its strategic goals via the deployment of naval mines. The
preceding chapters have accomplished this by first outlining the importance of sea
control to American naval strategy and the threats that mines pose to this in their areadenial capacity. The chapters then proceeded with a description of US mine
countermeasures development since the 1991 Gulf War, concluding that up until recently,
very little has changed and that current measures remain as effective, if not less so, than
they were at the end of the Cold War.
To examine why this has been the case despite the very real threats posed by
mines, obstacles to the development of next-generation mine countermeasures were
examined, both monetary and technological. It was found that there is essentially a
tolerance point on a cost-to-overcome-technological-hurdle line some technologies
remain in development if they fell on the acceptable side of the tolerance point, while
those that did not were cancelled. Cancellation was also usually done when it was
demonstrated an existing system could do the same task with less developmental costs,
even if it comes at the cost of effectiveness. Finally, to put all of these findings in
perspective, the final chapter conducted a partial historical analysis that demonstrated the
weaknesses of a large navy like the United States when facing a weaker power whose
goal is to establish and maintain a naval minefield in order to deny the use of a confined
waterway to an outside power. Many lessons were drawn from the past in that last

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chapter, but perhaps the most prominent is the importance of ensuring the efficacy of
MCM assets in the face of both enemy action and environmental complications.
The findings in the second and third chapters suggest that it would be difficult for
the USN to overcome the challenges mentioned in the fourth chapter. The slow
implementation of the Littoral Combat Ship with its self-defence systems (however basic
compared to larger ships) means that the unarmed Avengers will continue to be the
mainstay of USN MCM activities for years to come, continuing their vulnerability to
enemy action a tactical weakness that has strategic implications, as illustrated in
Chapter Four. Of course, even as the LCSs are being built and commissioned (seemingly
immune to the effects of recent sequestration outcomes212), the advanced MCM
equipment themselves need to be improved and fixed if they are to be effective for
regaining sea control of an area-denied waterway. Elements requiring improvements are
the speeds of unmanned underwater vehicles so they can reliably operate in spite of any
water currents and the tendency to identify false positives in the Airborne Laser Mine
Detection System. The possibility of submarine offensive mining also emphasizes the
importance of developing the anti-submarine warfare Mission Package for the LCS, with
its own and separate unmanned technologies.
To answer the research question posed in the beginning, then, this thesis has put
forth the argument that the USN will be severely limited in its ability to safely and
quickly clear a maritime chokepoint if the adversary in question is equipped with shorebased weapons that can easily strike unarmed MCM vessels. This is further complicated
212

Ellen Mitchell, Chief of Naval Operations: Sequestration will not affect Austals existing LCS and
HSV contracts, AL.com, February 22, 2013, http://blog.al.com/press-registerbusiness/2013/02/chief_of_naval_operations_sequ.html.

113

if local oceanographic and atmospheric conditions are unfamiliar to US forces and

equipment. Furthermore, if the enemy is committed to a comprehensive closure of the
chokepoint, it will be necessary for US and coalition forces to commit to a land operation
of some sort essentially, much as the recent Libyan no-fly zone resulted in strikes
against Libyan land targets, so would be the case in a potential counter-mining operation.
In sum, there cannot be a military operation against a naval minefield without it
becoming a war of some kind.
Having summarized this thesis conclusions, it is now appropriate to discuss the
drawbacks of this thesis work in its entirety.
The importance and significance of this papers findings is based on the premise
of certain assumptions being true: perhaps most concretely that Iran is, indeed, interested
in following through on its threats to close the Strait of Hormuz. Part of the problem here
is that Irans interest in doing so is based upon its intent, and intent, in turn, manifests
itself in the threatened move i.e. closing the waterway. But what exactly is meant by
closing the Strait? The standard and conventional interpretation (and indeed, the
interpretation this thesis employs) is to stop 100% of all seaborne traffic transiting to and
from the Persian Gulf. This move suggests an almost irrational vengeance-based
motivation after all, Iran itself will not gain anything from the move directly, not least
because it would limit its own sea trade. The only tangible benefit of carrying out the
threat would be if it causes the United Nations to lift its sanctions a highly unlikely
outcome as it would set a dangerous precedence for future conflicts. Closing Hormuz in
such a manner would thus serve little purpose if actually conducted and is much more
effective as a threat, particularly in its current ambiguously defined form.

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Other potential forms of closure may include a target-specific approach, such as one
directed against American vessels. Because of the indiscriminate nature of simple noncomputerized fuses such as contact and magnetic, such dumb mines could not be used,
limiting the cost-effectiveness of such weapons. Obviously, this would drastically alter
the utility of this paper as alternate means of area denial must be sought by Iran means
that have not be the focus of this research.
The strategist Sun-tzu is famous for emphasizing the importance of knowing
ones enemy as well as oneself only with this can victory be ensured.213 The
incorporation of this crucial aspect in this paper is limited by the authors unfamiliarity
with Iranian sources, which are difficult to locate. As well, the authors inability to read
Farsi limits the utility of any such sources. The authors source of knowledge for the
Iranian perspective is thus constricted to just English translations, either by Iranian
institutions or Western media. This carries certain risks: asides from the standard concern
of accidental mistranslations, there is also the possibility of intentional mistranslations.
For example, Iranian translations may contain certain phrases and terms that are
purposely meant for Western governments so as to induce the latter to take political
demands and threats more seriously. Conversely, Western media translations may,
purposefully or subconsciously, exaggerate any aggressive phrases as a result of biases.
The language barrier thus affects this thesis negatively in terms of uncertainty over
Iranian intent, with consequences such as that mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Furthermore, lack of access and ways of interpreting Iranian sources prevents the author
from accurately assessing the extent to which Iran would be willing to engage Western
213

Sun-tzu, The Art of War, 215.

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forces in military action for example, would Iran really fortify coastal towns and
villages with anti-ship missiles, thus turning those population centres into targets, in order
to protect the minefields as suggested in Chapter Four?
As well, this thesis did not take into account the capabilities of potential US allies.
The United Kingdom, for example, also has MCM vessels forward deployed to Bahrain
and has trained extensively alongside their USN counterparts. NATO also has a
permanent rotational MCM task group that would likely be called upon in the event of a
counter-mining operation in the SOH. The exclusion of these forces from the thesis can
be justified, however, by the fact that allied contributions cannot be guaranteed. Just as
this thesis assumed the worst-case scenario of Iran carrying out its threats, the thesis has
also assumed the worst-case scenario of the United States having to go it alone with no
allied assistance.
Perhaps one of the most poignant criticisms of this thesis is that the United States
is decreasing its dependence on oil from the Middle East. As fracking is developed in
the continental US and Arctic resources become more accessible, some observers expect
the US to be nearly self-sufficient in oil and gas in the coming years, drastically reducing
its need for Middle East petroleum.214 This may significantly reduce any incentive for
American military presence and intervention in the Middle East. Tempering this
expectation, however, is the recognition that while the US may become self-sufficient in
oil, its allies abroad may not be. Some East Asia countries, such as Japan, import as much

214

Asjylyn Loder, Fracking Threatens OPEC as U.S. Output at 20-Year High, Bloomberg, February 13,
2013, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-13/fracking-threatens-opec-as-u-s-output-at-20-yearhigh.html.

116

as 87% of their oil from the Middle East, some even from Iran.215 Despite Americas
pivot to Asia, ensuring the continued satiation of Asian allies Middle Eastern oil
appetite may well require that region of the world remain an integral part of US foreign
policy. Should China become allied with Iran and engage in a conflict with Japan,
American forces may well have to engage in both East Asia and the Middle East,
ensuring the safety of Japans oil supply from the latter region. Therefore, the USN may
still be expected to assist in ensuring freedom of navigation in Middle East waters for its
allies, if not directly for itself. USN MCM capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz, despite
Americas potentially decreased national interest in that region, will thus remain pertinent
for decades to come.
Some may also scoff at the degree of threat that a mined SOH poses to American
naval forces, as it would be highly unlikely that the USN will send one of their precious
carrier strike groups through such a dangerous waterway in times of war. While this is
likely the case, there are other ships in the USN that have strategic relevance requiring
transit into the Persian Gulf. In particular, AEGIS destroyers or cruisers equipped for the
anti-ballistic missile mission may well need to be positioned in the northern end of the
Gulf in order to prevent Iranian ballistic missiles from striking targets in, for example,
Israel. Furthermore, a potential alliance between Iran and nearby states, such as Iraq with
whom it has warming relations216, may well require the presence of an aircraft carrier in

215

John Calabrese, Japans New Energy Future and the Middle East, Middle East Institute June 11, 2012,
http://www.mei.edu/content/japan%E2%80%99s-new-energy-future-and-middle-east.
216

Bilgay Duman, Where are Iran-Iraq Relations Heading? Al Monitor, April 25, 2013, http://www.almonitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/04/iran-iraq-relations-possible-alliance.html.

117

the Gulf. As a result, major US vessels would still require safe transit through the SOH,
requiring a dedicated MCM effort.
Despite these weaknesses (many of which have been countered), the thesis focus
on the tactical and operational possibilities of a given strategy, however broadly defined,
allows the paper to remain a relevant and salient piece of work within certain scope
conditions. But as suggested in the beginning of the thesis, the lessons here are not
restricted to just the Strait of Hormuz scenario. Other waterways around the world, such
as the Formosa Strait between Taiwan and China and the Strait of Malacca between
Malaysia and Indonesia, are just as strategically important. Their geographic
arrangements are also very similar. Admittedly, the Strait of Malacca is unlikely to
become a flashpoint of conflict between the regional powers, but there are several nonstate armed groups in the region who may take advantage of the favourable geography.
The Formosa Strait, on the other hand, separates two states which have mutual animosity.
Though the dynamics in this case involves crossing the width of the Strait rather than
through it, the lessons in this thesis on the need for protecting MCM forces and
supportive ground operations remain salient.
To answer the enduring question in strategic studies about the universality of
strategy over time, this papers findings suggest that although actors and political
objectives may differ, the strategies, operations, and tactics of the past remain a viable
pattern for current and future actions.

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