Navy keeps mine-warfare options open: budget cuts and ongoing changes in concept of operations slow down programs.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

Among the most mind-numbing jobs in the U.S. Navy is the uncovering and defusing of deadly mines located throughout the world's oceans. The work is tedious, but essential to the conduct of U.S. military operations, given that most of the combat supplies and troops travel by ship to the world's major theaters of war.

Mines can be floating or rising devices that typically are placed in deep water. Moored and buried mines, by and large, are scattered in shallow water areas and surf zones. Sea mines often are called the poor man's arsenal, because they are cheap and low tech but can cause pervasive destruction.

More than 50 countries currently possess mine inventories and are able to deploy more than 300 varieties of mines.

Finding and eliminating these underwater killers are jobs assigned to the Navy's dedicated mine countermeasure (MCM) force, which consists of 14 Avenger class and 12 Osprey class mine hunter-killers, two MH-53 helicopter squadrons, and a specialized explosive ordnance disposal unit. The USS Inchon command-and-control ship for countermine operations was decommissioned earlier this year, and the Navy now is seeking a replacement.

In the future, the Navy wants to have an array of advanced mine detectors and anti-mine capabilities aboard each carrier battle group. Officials decided several years ago that the dedicated MCM force, although competent, is not able to respond and reach the combat zone quickly enough. In the mid 1990s, the Navy started a program to develop a set of organic mine countermeasure systems that would travel with each battle group. The service has spent between $200 million and $300 million during the past five years on the development of these technologies. The cost of deploying organic MCM systems aboard ships and helicopters is not known, given that the Navy has not yet defined what the organic MCM force will look like.

As recently as two years ago, the Navy's official plan was to have the organic MCM systems in place on 10 carrier battle groups by 2005. Over time, the dedicated force would be downscaled. The MCM systems for each carrier group would include five airborne devices, based on helicopters, as well as two unmanned submersibles--one launched from a destroyer and the other from a submarine.

But Navy officials now concede that the original organic MCM concept was flawed, because it did not thoroughly consider the logistics and operational implications for the battle group. "The problem with organic MCM was that the conops [concept of operations] was not thought through," said one former U.S. Navy mine warfare officer who did not want to be quoted by name.

The desirability of organic MCM systems has not changed, but the plan had to be revised, because surface-warfare officials complained that the MCM equipment and associated manpower could end up diverting resources away from combat operations.

These concerns, in addition to budget cutbacks to the organic MCM program, prompted the Navy's mine-warfare requirements office to downscale the program and seek a new approach for deploying organic MCM.

Under the current plan, the Navy will go ahead and begin fielding organic MCM systems in 2005, but at a "limited rate," said Capt. James Rennie, head of mine warfare programs at the office of the chief of naval operations.

Adding a new twist to the MCM program is the possible introduction in the U.S. Navy of a small surface combatant, called the Littoral Combat Ship. The LCS could end up becoming a core platform for many of the MCM systems that originally had been assigned to destroyers or submarines, Rennie told National Defense.

Some time next spring, the Navy will...