Shallow-Water Mines Remain 'Achilles' Heel' of U.S. Navy.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

After nearly a decade of research and at least $70 million spent on engineering and testing, the Navy and Marine Corps are nowhere close to having suitable equipment to detect and breach minefields in shallow waters, dose to the beach.

Shallow-water mine countermeasures today, said experts, are not much mote advanced than what Army and Navy engineers had at Omaha Beach in 1944.

"We've been talking for 10 to 15 years about how we are going to deal with the mine threat in the littorals," said Lt. Gen. Emil Bedard, the Marine Corps deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations. "We are still talking about it," he said in a briefing to the National Defense Industrial Association's expeditionary warfare conference, in Panama City, Fla. The most critical issue for amphibious operations," said Bedard, is the inability to find and destroy mines in shallow waters, less than 40-foot deep.

Last month, the Navy's office of expeditionary warfare was expected to release a solicitation to industry seeking proposals for mine-breaching systems that can find and destroy mines buried in the "surf zone," in order to dear lanes for Marines to land safely.

The surf zone is a term that describes the region extending from the mean high water line on the beach to a water depth of 10 feet. This is considered the most difficult area to conduct mine detection and clearing.

Today, the inability to clear mines from the surf zone is the "Achilles' heel of our maneuver force," said the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James L. Jones.

Jones is a long-time advocate of the need to develop mine countermeasures. He often has pointed out that enemy sea mines were responsible for 14 of the 19 Navy ships destroyed or damaged since 1950. During the Gulf War, two Navy ships--the USS Princeton and the USS Tripoli--were severely damaged and seven sailors injured by sea mines. Navy studies reported that approximately 50 nations possess sea mines--a 40 percent increase since 1986. At least 30 of those countries are able to produce mines.

In a previous assignment, Jones was director of naval expeditionary warfare, a position that is now held by Marine Maj. Gen. William Whitlow.

The "10-feet in" problem, Whitlow said, is now on the agenda of the secretary of the Navy, Gordon England. "He is intent on resolving that issue," Whitlow said at the symposium.

The solicitation for industry proposals, he explained, specifically asks for capabilities to breach minefields in waters less...