Undersea Threats: Navy Mine Warfare Teeters Between Present, Future.

• Author: Tegler, Jan

Sea-based mine warfare is in a state of flux, suspended between decadesold, manned technologies and a long-promised future of multi-domain unmanned drones capable of finding and neutralizing enemy mines or covertly mining in deep and shallow waters.

Roughly 35 years after becoming operational, the Navy's two main legacy mine countermeasure platforms, its Avenger-class minesweeper ships and its MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters, are in short supply.

Eight of the 14 Avenger-class ships built remain in service, forward-deployed in Japan and Bahrain. According to Naval Air Systems Command, 30 MH-53ES of the 44 delivered remain in service with two squadrons, HM-14 and HM-15. But the Navy's number fails to account for the four MH-53ES severely damaged last July when a major thunderstorm tore across NAS Norfolk, tossing at least one Sea Dragon upside down.

Retirement of the minesweepers and helicopters has been planned for more than a decade, but operational delays for their primary replacement--the littoral combat ship and its mine countermeasures package --have moved out-of-service dates back again and again.

Navy public affairs officer Lt. Meagan Morrison said, "The Navy will comply with 2021 NDAA requirements before retiring legacy MCM [mine countermeasure] platforms. Those retirements are based on fielding expeditionary modular MCM capabilities and not on a target date."

Last March, Fincantieri Marine Systems North America was awarded a maintenance contract for the Avenger-class minesweepers. The contract could be worth up to $78 million, according to Fincantieri Marine Group director of communications Eric Dent, if the Navy takes up its option for four years of maintenance, suggesting that the ships may serve until 2026 or 2027.

The 20-year-old saga of costly missteps in the development of the littoral combat ship, or LCS, has been mirrored in some ways by the decade-plus development of the modular MCM package, one of two mission packages the LCS is to feature.

Six systems make up the package, including three airborne detection and neutralization systems fielded by MH-60S helicopters and MQ-8B/C Fire Scout drones, and three in-water systems including a mine hunting sonar, a minesweeping system operated from a common unmanned surface vehicle and an unmanned underwater vehicle capable of finding mines buried in the sea floor.

The Navy stated that the package was supposed to be fully operational by the end of 2022. But the sonar, Raytheon's...