Mines and underwater IEDS in U.S. ports and waterways: context, threats, challenges, and solutions

Naval War College Review, Wntr, 2008 by Scott C. Truver

Since the end of World War II, then, mines have damaged or sunk four times more U.S. Navy ships than have all other means of attack: mines, fifteen ships; missiles, one; torpedoes/aircraft, two; small-boat terrorist attack, one (and this last, the attack on Cole, can be seen as a "terrorist in the loop" mobile-mine strike).

In addition to the U.S. Navy's experiences with mines since September 1945, mines have been used or threatened in a wide variety of scenarios that are harbingers of terrorist dangers yet to come. In October 1946, during a "freedom of navigation" operation, two Royal Navy warships were severely damaged by Soviet-made mines laid by Albania in the Corfu Channel. In 1974-75, the U.S. Navy assisted in clearing the Suez Canal and its approaches of mines and unexploded ordnance left from the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

The "patriotic scuba diver" mine crisis of January 1980 showed that a terrorist threat of mines--in this case "mining" the Sacramento River during the Soviet grain embargo announced by President Jimmy Carter--could have dramatic effects on maritime trade. An unknown person identifying himself as the "patriotic scuba diver" claimed by telephone to have placed a mine in the waterway; all shipping movement ceased almost immediately. Once on scene, the Navy minesweeper USS Gallant required four days of intensive minehunting to determine the channel was safe. No mines were discovered, but the cost in merchant vessel lay days caused by the hoax was estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Since the 1970s, the Tamil Tigers have been particularly vicious in mine attacks against Sri Lankan government ships, commercial vessels, and private boats. In 1982, the Argentine military used mines during the Falklands War. Reports have the Nicaraguan Contras using limpet mines to damage two ships in Corinto Harbor in 1984, in a direct challenge to the Sandinistas.

But it was the "Mines of August" crisis in the summer of 1984 that showed most vividly how easily mines can be used as weapons of maritime terror. (16) From 19 July to 13 September as many as twenty-three vessels reported damage from underwater explosions in the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez, a rash of attacks that generated a massive multinational mine countermeasures response. Egypt, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, and the United States helped clear the waterway. Only one new mine was recovered and rendered safe, by Royal Navy divers--a 1,700-pound, multiple-influence Soviet bottom mine completely unknown in the West. (The British and French MCM forces also detected, identified, and destroyed a two-thousand-pound bomb, a practice torpedo, and numerous old mines, some dating to World War II.) Later it was proved that Libyan naval personnel aboard the commercial ferry Ghat had rolled off the mines as the vessel meandered throughout the waterway, completely unchallenged, for more than two weeks. This experience prompted Admiral Trost to comment that