Navy anticipates smoother waters for LCS mine countermeasures module.

• Author: Insinna, Valerie

* The Navy has employed everything from wooden-hulled ships, sophisticated sonar systems and trained dolphins to find and clear underwater explosives. But in future years, it plans to hand responsibility for mine countermeasure missions over to the much-maligned littoral combat ship.

The service is testing a mission module comprised of various countermine systems, some of which have encountered setbacks that have forced it to scrap and rework certain plans. Navy officials say that most of these issues have been worked out, and that the ship will he ready to hunt mines in 2019.

The LCS mine countermeasures mission module is "designed to close an absolutely critical warfighting gap in mine warfare," said Sean Stackley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. Unlike current methods, it will use unmanned systems to do most of the dirty work, keeping the ship and sailors out of harm's way.

Mines are cheap and easy to produce. They also are extremely dangerous. Since World War 11, they have sunk or seriously damaged ships more than any other weapon.

Wooden-hulled Avenger-class ships currently conduct minehunting and minesweeping activities. Adversaries can deploy a wide variety of mines that occupy different parts of the water column, so there is no one-size-fits-all system to find and defeat them.

"For mine countermeasures, the initial increment will be about twice as effective as what we have on our MCM-1 class Avenger for minesweeps, and it comes with more precise sonar capability for rapid hunting and therefore avoiding of mines," Vice Adm. Richard Hunt, director of Navy staff said at a July hearing of the seapower and projection forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. "As we go through the enhancements, the capability will expand to about three times the capability of what we currently have in inventory, and we do that without putting the ship, and therefore our sailors, into the minefield."

A cliche often repeated by Navy mine countermeasure officials is, "Hunt if you can, sweep if you must." Both methods have their disadvantages. Minehunting is a time-consuming procedure that requires detecting, classifying, localizing, identifying and neutralizing individual mines. Minesweeping--which involves purposely detonating the mine--is more dangerous, but is a faster way of clearing a minefield.

Once the Avenger has moved into a suspected minefield, it uses a series of sonar and mine neutralization devices for hunting. The Navy also uses a combination of mechanical, acoustic and magnetic sweeps, some of which are towed by the MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter.

One key advantage the littoral combat ship has against the...