The Future of Mine Warfare: A Hail and Farewell

Photos by U.S. Navy

The Future of Mine Warfare: A Hail and Farewell

Story by Lt. Cmdr. Eric Hernandez and Lt. Katie Labbe, Mine Division TWELVE Public Affairs

The future of mine countermeasures warfare in the U.S. Navy will soon look very different. While eight mine countermeasures ships (MCM) will continue their missions from homeports in Bahrain and Japan, the three San Diego-based Avenger-class MCMs USS Champion (MCM 4), USS Scout (MCM 8), and USS Ardent (MCM 12) will be decommissioned in August 2020.

These ships have protected U.S. assets from mine fields across the globe for more than 30 years. They also assisted in operations including, but not limited to, the evacuation of Albanian citizens from a war-torn Kosovo, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and provided humanitarian assistance following Hurricane Katrina.

While these MCMs’ time of warfighting comes to a close, the Navy’s newest littoral combat ships (LCS) are in the final stages of development and testing of new mine countermeasures technologies including Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS), and the Surface Mine Countermeasure Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (SMCM UUV), commonly known as Knifefish.

UISS is employed on an Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) and provides LCS with a stand-off, long endurance, semi-autonomous minesweeping capability to counter acoustic and/or magnetic influence mine threats in the littoral environment. It affords the ability to clear and secure transit lanes, sea lines of communications, and operations areas for sea-based and amphibious operation forces while taking the Sailor out of the minefield.

The Knifefish system provides buried mine detection capability with Low-Frequency Broadband Synthetic Aperture Sonar (LFBB SAS). It can hunt mines in high clutter and provides improved detection, classification, and identification performance against stealthy mines. Knifefish can also detect volume and bottom mines.

To lead these advancements aboard LCS, Littoral Combat Ship Squadron One stood up Mine Division Twelve (COMMINEDIV TWELVE), one of two warfare-based divisions, in December 2019. COMMINEDIV TWELVE has been working in close coordination with program offices PMS 420, 406, and 505 to ensure the successful and timely delivery of the new MCM systems to operate aboard USS Manchester (LCS 14), USS Tulsa (LCS 16), USS Charleston (LCS 18) and USS Cincinnati (LCS 20).

In addition to decommissioning the three San Diego-based Avenger-class ships and assisting in the delivery of new MCM systems, COMMINEDIV TWELVE is scheduled to receive five additional MCM LCS over the next five years for a total of nine MCM LCS and 17 crews. “Having served aboard minesweepers, part of me will definitely miss the culture of ‘wooden ships and iron Sailors,’” said Capt. Henry Kim, commander of COMMINEDIV TWELVE. “Yet, it’s exciting to be part of a new organization that bridges the next generation of MCM capabilities for the U.S. Navy.” *