Tag Archive for: mine warfare

ADF will need fast minelayers for its new ‘smart’ mines

Australia has made the long-overdue decision to arm its military with sophisticated sea mines. The surface combatant review now underway needs to consider the acquisition of at least two fast minelayers able to lay protective minefields around Australian ports in a crisis.

Sea mines provide the capacity to protect strategic harbours and sea lines of communication, which is a fundamental component of Australia’s maritime strategy. To date we have lacked the means to properly execute that requirement.

It is understood that the government will shortly formally announce the acquisition of modern ‘smart’ mines at an estimated cost of $600 million to $1 billion. The Defence procurement team put together to deliver this vital capability to the Australian Defence Force has done so in near record time and should be applauded.

The weapon selected is expected to be a multi-influence ground mine (also known as a bottom mine). Generally, this class of mine is around 2 metres long and weighs 900–1000 kilograms. The explosives charge is normally around 600 kilograms, which enables the mine to be laid in depths down to 300 metres for anti-submarine effects and around 150 metres for surface ships. The sensing systems are singularly, or a combination of, magnetic, acoustic, seismic, pressure and, more recently, UEP/ELFE (underwater electric potential and extra-low-frequency emissions) sensors able to detect the small electric currents emanating from a ship’s hull and shaft. Once laid, some of these mines can be controlled by water acoustic commands and they can remain in the water for up to 12 months.

Australia has some 10 priority ports and another seven significant ports that together account for 99% of its international trade. Its vulnerability to blockade is of course significant. A quick assessment of the approaches to these ports and the straits leading to them, and the corresponding assessment of what would constitute an effective protective minefield against adversary naval units, indicates that at least 1,000 to 2,000 weapons would be required in a first-tranche procurement. An order of 10 times that would be needed for the ADF to mount a formidable defence of ports and sea lines in times of tension or conflict.

As an example, more than 10,000 mines were laid off the Queensland coast and into Papua New Guinean waters during World War II to control access to just one section of the eastern coast. They were, in the main, buoyant contact mines with a limited radius of action, so large numbers were required to form an effective defence. Notwithstanding the greater effectiveness of the modern mines now being procured, establishing protective minefields around our ports and in their approaches would be a substantial undertaking.

Defence planners must dispel any misguided belief that a modest procurement of sea mines will suffice or that the mere ability to lay some mines would be an enduring and effective deterrent. Potential belligerents in the region are well versed in mine warfare and understand the probabilistic nature of the minefield threat. The minefield—potential numbers, location, depth of water, sensors, charge weights and so on—and not the mine provides the threat, along with the observed acumen and knowledge of the minelayer’s capabilities and limitations. We can’t bluff. We must be able to back any potential minelaying acumen with well-trained personnel and assets.

The sea mines the ADF will shortly take possession of will be able to be laid by surface or subsurface vessels or from the air. In the short term, these could be military and commercial vessels ‘taken up from trade’, Collins-class submarines fitted with external mine racks, and military aircraft. The new Arafura-class offshore patrol vessel could be a candidate for use as a minelayer, although this platform may not survive the surface combatant review and is too slow for the role.

Aircraft and submarines are generally utilised in offensive minelaying operations. But surface minelayers are used to lay protective minefields in home waters and approaches to ports to achieve speed and the high accuracy required to protect friendly merchant shipping and naval forces. The reality is that ‘platforms of opportunity’ are unlikely to be available when minelaying is required at very short notice. Few shortcuts are available to the ADF.

For world navies that are practised and capable at mining operations, fast minelayers are crucial.

So, what does the future minelayer for Australia look like?

It need not be an overly expensive acquisition, and nor should it require a tortured 10-year acquisition process. A quick review of the fast catamaran Jervis Bay, which was used effectively during the 1999 Timor operation, is a good place to start. A capacity to carry 200–250 mines in a highly automated, 40-knot minelayer is the ballpark requirement. Automation will allow minimum crewing. The vessels could be intermittently crewed for minelaying exercise and drills, but they would also be very useful for a range of support tasks.

Mines will be programmed at the depot, loaded at the most appropriate port and armed. Precise positioning of the minelayer and the release of each mine can be a near-autonomous operation. The utility of such ships would allow extensive protective and defensive minefields to be laid quickly and efficiently. The high-speed nature of the vessel will allow for rapid relocation and mine loading.

Having made the correct decision to acquire sea mines, the ADF now needs to become proficient in their use. It also must be able to lay enough mines quickly with dedicated minelayers.

Sea mines: the asymmetrical weapon Australia must have

Now that the cacophony surrounding Australia’s submarine decision and the AUKUS announcement has quietened somewhat, it’s timely to mention a much smaller but nonetheless important milestone in building the Royal Australian Navy’s lethality—the pending acquisition of a sea mine capability.

Greg Sheridan of The Australian has recently, and quite rightly, written extensively about the need for the Australian Defence Force to embrace a range of asymmetric weapon types to add some spine to Australia’s quest for greater self-reliance as well as increased lethality. So, it was timely that just two weeks ago the Defence Department released a request for information from industry relating to the near-term acquisition of modern sea mines. Project SEA 2000—Maritime Mining, is up and running, and not before time.

The ADF’s force structure has become more and more US-centric over the past 70 years of Australia’s sitting underneath the umbrella of the ANZUS Treaty and all that that entails. In distancing themselves from the British influence that was still the hallmark of the ADF after World War II, our senior ADF leaders (over several generations) have become indoctrinated if not consumed with every aspect of interoperability, at the highest levels, with US forces. The navy is completely enamoured with slotting itself in a US battle group (or amphibious ready group), the air force has the appearance of a subset of the US force with a range of US-sourced aircraft types, and the army to a lesser extent with artillery and tanks.

None of this is a problem when you rely on the US for your overarching defensive strategy. Having all your eggs in one basket becomes a problem, however, if things go awry and your senior partner is otherwise occupied. So rather than complementing the US with capabilities (and in this case asymmetric ones) which make the whole greater than the sum of the parts, we’re at risk of being just some more of the same. And those parts, as Sheridan has pointed out, are vulnerable due to a range of potential support and survivability weaknesses (everything is made somewhere else).

And so, to asymmetrical capabilities. SEA 2000 aims to acquire an outfit of modern sea mines to be laid by submarine, surface and air assets. This acquisition has been a long time coming, after an attempt to acquire mines in the early 1990s was shelved. The RAN hasn’t been particularly interested in sea mines; it involves boring and dangerous work and just doesn’t have the air of being ‘blue water, big navy’ in the same way a new destroyer does.

Anything to do with mines, laying or countering them, has been a backwater for many years in both the RAN and the US Navy. But sea mines are exactly the asymmetric weapon Australia needs plenty of. As a maritime nation, our sea approaches are extensive, but many are eminently mineable and the presence of minefields either laid to protect our sea lanes or laid to disrupt an adversary’s operations against us is one hell of an asymmetric capability.

Some in the navy may suggest that all we need to do is to get a few and advertise that we have them, and that area of navy capability is done and our potential foes will tremble in their shoes. They are a tad misguided. Australia needs an extensive mine inventory, and we need to practise laying them from air, surface and subsurface platforms to become proficient in their use as well as demonstrate to observers our real capacity to bring these powerful yet flexible weapons to bear. Anything less and our mining capability will be seen as nothing more than a paper tiger.

The ADF will need a mix of influence mines as well as more advanced encapsulated torpedo mines to be laid from surface ships (offshore patrol vessels and craft of opportunity), aircraft (P-8s and heavy lift units) and submarines. Newer technology involving the use of modified autonomous underwater vehicles will also enable the ADF to acquire smart mobile mines that can be launched from submarines and navigate autonomously into adversary waterways and harbours.

If there’s one sure way to deter adversary surface and subsurface units from approaching our harbours or using our sea lanes, it’s the laying of minefields. Even in periods of tension, mines provide the flexibility to impose a significant deterrent without causing an all-out confrontation.

As one of many examples, minefields can be laid in home waters so that the onus is on an adversary to stay away. Such protective fields could be remotely controlled (turned off and on by command) to allow the safe passage of friendly ships, both merchant and naval. Of course, in times of conflict they can be laid anywhere, with a variety of strategies and tactics to choose from. The psychological impact on an adversary is extensive as soon as sea mines enter the fight.

In the same way that industry has answered the call on advanced missile initiatives (encouraged by the government), so too must the call go out for industry to become engaged in the development and supply of sea mine systems and support. Defence Innovation Hub grants, for example, could target industry with emerging capabilities.

Importantly, there also needs to be cultural change within the RAN. Leadership from the top is required to ensure that sea mines and all they offer in both the defensive and offensive realm are covered in warfare training across rank and file. At best, current training in minelaying and mine tactics in general is cursory; even mine warfare specialist officers have little exposure to the tactics and skills involved.

A reinvigorated mining capability is an important investment for the ADF. To support the acquisition, industry must be encouraged to participate, and the navy must step up and build a supporting culture. The ADF’s shortcut to lethality is to embrace asymmetric weapons and tactics. A well-resourced and competent minelaying capability will add significantly to Australia’s defence in terms of both deterrence and lethality. Bring on SEA 2000.

From the bookshelf: ‘Naval minewarfare: politics to practicalities’

Captain Chris O’Flaherty of the Royal Navy has produced a timely study of the theory and practice of naval mine warfare in a period when strategic and technological change are challenging traditional concepts of maritime operations. Naval minewarfare, written by a serving British officer who is a deep specialist in mine warfare with extensive frontline experience, explains in clear and simple prose not only the mechanics of the trade, both offensive and defensive, but the history of mine warfare, its legal aspects, and contemporary doctrine and practice.

As the author notes, there has been ‘a general failure to appreciate the potential of mining’, despite the critical role it played in two world wars—and in many conflicts before and since 1945. Naval minewarfare sets the record straight and merits careful study by contemporary planners. The subtitle Politics to practicalities is apt. ‘Weapons that wait’ have a history stretching back hundreds of years; their first systematic—and effective—employment was during what is mistermed the Crimean War of 1853–56 (a conflict which extended not only to the Baltic Sea but the Kamchatka peninsula).

The chapter on 24 post–World War II mining ‘events’ is especially useful because it demonstrates the ways in which mines, and the threat of mines, have been employed by many agents—even right-wing elements in the United States. Given their essentially covert nature, just the possibility that mines have been deployed can be effective against an adversary. And if mines have been laid, even the most effective mine countermeasure operation can only achieve a probability of their clearance, not certainty. The one exception is when concrete proof can be provided that the number of mines cleared equates to the number deployed—something that’s very rarely the case. Even in March 2020, the 24th mining event is still playing out in the southern Red Sea as drifting mines, possibly originally laid by Houthi militia, threaten shipping.

Geography matters in mine warfare, of which the Chinese will be well aware. We are prone to think of mines as a weapon only for a weaker power. The truth is that they have been used very effectively to achieve sea control by denying access to the open sea to aggressor forces that are at a geographic (and oceanographic) disadvantage. The British mining campaign in the North Sea and English Channel in 1917–18 made a vital contribution to wearing down both the German U-boats and the surface forces that protected their departure and return to their home ports. Germany’s invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940 was in part driven by the German Navy’s determination not to be closed in that way again; the fall of France and the access it gave to France’s Atlantic ports was a bonus.

Dominating the sea areas out to the first island chain will mean little to China if the gaps in that chain become mine-strewn barriers that prevent the Chinese navy from accessing the open ocean. The Japanese learned that lesson the hard way in 1945 when the fittingly named Operation Starvation around Japan’s main islands used air-laid mines to close off practically all of the country’s seaborne communications, both external and domestic. In the last five months of the conflict, mines were responsible for sinking or damaging more Japanese ships than any other form of attack—including submarines and aircraft.

The legality of mine warfare is inextricably bound up in the politics of conflict and the extent to which war is limited or total. O’Flaherty’s chapter on the weapon’s legal aspects bears careful study. Although mine warfare is apparently hedged about with many legal restrictions, they are by no means straightforward—and much less limiting than people think. The truth is that legal arguments can be found to justify the deployment of mines not only in territorial waters, but on the high seas and in many modes.

One simple approach is to give enough warning for neutral and civilian craft to clear the area. Furthermore, technology can limit the ‘live’ period of deployed mines or make them highly discriminating in their reaction to a target. Indeed, unmanned autonomous vehicles have the potential to deploy to a set location, remain on task for a required period and return to their parent afterwards—perhaps allowing an entire operation to remain covert if the political circumstances dictate.

In all, Naval minewarfare is worth reading if one is to understand both the potential and the challenges of mine warfare. It contains important lessons for the Australian defence community. As we think of ways to improve the maritime strike capabilities of our defence force, mines must be at the centre of our considerations. Both a true, multi-platform offensive and defensive minelaying capability and a substantial mine countermeasure force should be integral to Australia’s maritime force structure.