Don’t Sweep Minesweepers Under the Rug: America’s Critical Naval Vulnerability
The MOC
By
Ethan Connell and Jonathan Walberg
May 20, 2025
The Trump Administration has prioritized making the American military more lethal, agile, and capable, with a hyper-focus is on making sure the U.S. Navy is ready for the next war. The Navy intends to invest in drones and a “hybrid fleet” of manned and unmanned systems. Unfortunately, while procurement debates focus on the gap between the United States and China, submarine procurement, and cruiser retirements, one critical capability remains dangerously neglected: mine warfare.
Strategically-placed sea mines could become the Achilles’ heel of U.S. naval operations. China, Russia, and Iran each have acquired high numbers of these cost-effective weapons that could be rapidly deploy in a crisis against the United States. Despite this clear threat, the Navy is dismantling its already-limited mine countermeasures capability without fielding proven replacements, creating an exploitable gap in America’s maritime defenses.
The Looming Mine Threat
Naval mines have been around for centuries. First deployed widely in the early nineteenth century, they proved their effectiveness during the Crimean War when Russian naval strategists used them to deter an Anglo-French fleet from attacking Kronstadt in 1854. By the time of the American Civil War, naval mines had become the primary weapon of seacoast defense—allowing defending navies to concentrate force while conserving manpower and materiel.
Today, mines remain one of the cheapest and most effective Area Access/Area Denial (A2AD) capabilities. In Ukraine, Russia has extensively deployed naval mines in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, effectively blocking Ukrainian ports, disrupting commercial shipping, and hampering naval operations. These actions demonstrate how even relatively simple mine warfare can impose significant economic costs and operational constraints.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) possesses one of the world’s largest and most advanced mine warfare arsenals with reportedly as many as 100,000 mines—including rocket-propelled and intelligent mines—intended to blockade Taiwan and restrict U.S. naval operations in the Indo-Pacific. Even non-state actors like the Houthis have deployed mines in the Red Sea, disrupting global shipping lanes and forcing the West to undertake expensive naval escort operations.
American institutional memory bears the scars of mine warfare as well. During the 1991 Gulf War, incidents involving USS Princeton and USS Tripoli resulted in injuries to Navy personnel and millions of dollars in damage to ships and equipment, creating a chilling picture of the danger mines pose to even the most advanced surface platforms.
The current state of American minesweeping capability is grim. The Avenger-class of mine countermeasures ships (MCMs) are nearly 40 years old. Of the 14 vessels originally built, only eight remain—all forward-deployed in Manama, Bahrain and Sasebo, Japan. In a Taiwan crisis, the four Sasebo-based MCMs would take nearly two days to reach Taiwan at top speed and under ideal conditions.
The Navy plans to retire four of the remaining Avenger-class hulls this fiscal year, reducing the fleet’s mine countermeasures ships to just four platforms, which themselves are scheduled to be retired by 2027.
America’s air-based mine countermeasures capability is equally concerning. The Navy has shifted primary responsibility for airborne mine countermeasures to the MH-60S “Knighthawk” helicopter. However, the minesweeping and mine neutralization packages (ALMDS and AMNS, respectively) on the MH-60S have not yet passed the Department of Defense’s reliability or operability tests.
As early as FY16, the Pentagon stated that that the MH-60S helicopter, equipped with current minesweeping technologies, would not be “operationally effective or operationally suitable” in conducting minesweeping operations in combat.
In certain scenarios, the MH-60’s MCM package was shown to detect and classify a smaller percentage of mines than present systems, causing MCM commanders to likely underestimate the residual risk to transiting ships following clearance operations. In other scenarios, the system also generated large number of false positives (erroneous indications of mine-like objects), which delayed mine clearance operations due to the need for additional search passes.
Nine years later, despite two ships deploying with embarked helicopters equipped with these systems, there appears to be no resolution to these concerns. Despite these concerns (and recommendations for further testing) raised in the FY24 Annual Report from the Director Operational Test and Evaluation, no further operational testing has been funded or scheduled for ALMDS or AMNS. While there is a third system under development for the Navy, Raytheon’s Barracuda mine-hunting system, Raytheon has confirmed that operational testing for the Barracuda will not begin until 2027 at the earliest.
Unmanned Systems: Promise Unfulfilled
If it was not bad enough that the Navy’s existing minesweeping capabilities are aging and cannot meet critical operability requirements, top leadership has invested far too much faith (and money) in a platform that is more based in science fiction than in reality. The Navy’s plan to replace dedicated minesweepers relies heavily on the Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV), the autonomous primary component of the Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS). Upon decommissioning of the Avenger-class, the UISS will be the Navy’s only surface maritime minesweeping capability outside of the AQS-20C towed sonar array. These unmanned surface systems would be deployed off of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship platform, which has been stricken with its own problems.
When employed from its intended platform, UISS demonstrates an operational availability of just 29 percent, well below the Navy’s minimum threshold, while also facing issues relating to maintenance and repair. “Maintainers demonstrated limited capability to repair the UISS due to deficiencies in maintainer documentation for operational-level repairs and additional repairs that required subject matter expert intervention,” according to DOT&E.
The CUSV is further limited in endurance and weight of its cable, restricting the possible depth of towed sonar. Line of sight between the mothership and the CUSV is required and in heavy sea states its effectiveness is limited. Bandwidth, in particular, is taxed by the amount of information that needs to be shared between the ship-based operator and sensor suites aboard the unmanned vessel.
Despite these persistent and well-documented concerns, the Navy inexplicably cleared the CUSV and UISS for initial operational capability in 2023.
The Strategic Liability of Inaction
The consequences of the Navy’s decision to roll out and deploy sub-standard equipment go beyond standard inefficiencies or wasted resources, the safety of American sailors and the ability to achieve operational goals in theater is at stake. Deploying a minesweeping system that fails to reliably detect or classify threats risks leaving sea lanes improperly cleared and creating a false sense of security for transiting vessels. In combat scenarios, this shortcoming could prove catastrophic, leading to avoidable casualties and potentially undermining broader operational objectives.
However,the consequences of the Navy’s approach to mine warfare extend beyond immediate operational concerns. By neglecting this critical capability while adversaries expand theirs, the United States is creating a strategic vulnerability that could fundamentally limit its ability to project power in contested environments.
China’s emphasis on mine warfare is particularly concerning given potential scenarios surrounding Taiwan. A Chinese mine-laying campaign in the Taiwan Strait and surrounding waters could effectively isolate the island before U.S. naval forces could intervene. The PLAN themselves have assessed that “relative to other combat mission areas, [the U.S. Navy’s] mine warfare capabilities are extremely weak”. Without robust mine countermeasures, the Navy would face unacceptable delays in establishing sea control, potentially allowing a fait accompli before effective military assistance could arrive.
The economic impact of mine warfare extends beyond direct military confrontation. Recent Houthi deployments of sea mines demonstrate how even rudimentary capabilities can disrupt global shipping, increase insurance costs, and force expensive naval escort operations. The economic impact has been felt globally, with shipping companies forced to reroute vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to transit times and billions in additional shipping costs.
A Path Forward
The failures of the current MCM programs underscore the need for the Navy to pursue a dedicated MCM-X Platform—a new class of mine countermeasure vessels optimized for modern threats. These ships should integrate both manned and unmanned capabilities to provide a layered approach to mine warfare.
The key to producing and maintaining a capable minesweeping fleet is far from a needle in a haystack. There are current technologies being employed by American allies, such as the fiber-reinforced plastic hulls of Japan’s newest Awaji-class minesweepers, or the Republic of Korea Navy’s conceptual design for their mine warfare USV.
The Italian Navy recently acquired five minesweepers for $1.75 billion USD, demonstrating that purpose-built platforms remain a viable investment for NATO allies. Compared to the massive expenditures on other naval programs with questionable returns, this represents a sensible allocation of resources for a critical capability.
Conclusion
With the glaring vulnerabilities in America’s mine countermeasures programs, the Navy is creating a strategic liability that our chief adversaries are positioned to exploit. In an era of great power competition where every tactical advantage matters, neglecting mine warfare capabilities is not merely an oversight—it is a dangerous gamble with national security.
The strategic and tactical importance of mine warfare will only increase in future conflicts. Without an effective, dedicated mine countermeasure force, the United States risks ceding control of key maritime domains to adversaries who have recognized and embraced the power of naval mines.
If the Navy truly seeks to maintain freedom of navigation and retain the ability to project power in contested environments, it must stop sweeping the minesweeping problem under the rug and make the necessary investments in the future of mine countermeasure capability. The cost of inaction could be measured not just in ships and lives lost, but in strategic objectives unmet and national interests compromised.
Ethan Connell is a Research Team Lead at Taiwan Security Monitor, specializing in U.S. naval operations and capabilities. He tracks American fleet movements and developments, having worked previously with the National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office. His work examines Chinese maritime strategy, integrating satellite imagery and OSINT to assess surface and subsurface naval activity. Ethan holds a degree in International Politics and Security Studies from George Mason University.
Jonathan Walberg is a PhD student in International Relations and Psychology at the University of Virginia, studying China’s use of AI in disinformation and narrative warfare, as well as American military modernization. Jonathan is the Associate Director of Taiwan Security Monitor, a research initiative dedicated to improving the understanding of security dynamics in the Taiwan Strait, as well as a fellow for both the Center for Security Policy Studies and the Center for Advancing Human Machine Partnership.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Ethan Connell and Jonathan Walberg
The Trump Administration has prioritized making the American military more lethal, agile, and capable, with a hyper-focus is on making sure the U.S. Navy is ready for the next war. The Navy intends to invest in drones and a “hybrid fleet” of manned and unmanned systems. Unfortunately, while procurement debates focus on the gap between the United States and China, submarine procurement, and cruiser retirements, one critical capability remains dangerously neglected: mine warfare.
Strategically-placed sea mines could become the Achilles’ heel of U.S. naval operations. China, Russia, and Iran each have acquired high numbers of these cost-effective weapons that could be rapidly deploy in a crisis against the United States. Despite this clear threat, the Navy is dismantling its already-limited mine countermeasures capability without fielding proven replacements, creating an exploitable gap in America’s maritime defenses.
The Looming Mine Threat
Naval mines have been around for centuries. First deployed widely in the early nineteenth century, they proved their effectiveness during the Crimean War when Russian naval strategists used them to deter an Anglo-French fleet from attacking Kronstadt in 1854. By the time of the American Civil War, naval mines had become the primary weapon of seacoast defense—allowing defending navies to concentrate force while conserving manpower and materiel.
Today, mines remain one of the cheapest and most effective Area Access/Area Denial (A2AD) capabilities. In Ukraine, Russia has extensively deployed naval mines in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, effectively blocking Ukrainian ports, disrupting commercial shipping, and hampering naval operations. These actions demonstrate how even relatively simple mine warfare can impose significant economic costs and operational constraints.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) possesses one of the world’s largest and most advanced mine warfare arsenals with reportedly as many as 100,000 mines—including rocket-propelled and intelligent mines—intended to blockade Taiwan and restrict U.S. naval operations in the Indo-Pacific. Even non-state actors like the Houthis have deployed mines in the Red Sea, disrupting global shipping lanes and forcing the West to undertake expensive naval escort operations.
American institutional memory bears the scars of mine warfare as well. During the 1991 Gulf War, incidents involving USS Princeton and USS Tripoli resulted in injuries to Navy personnel and millions of dollars in damage to ships and equipment, creating a chilling picture of the danger mines pose to even the most advanced surface platforms.
America’s Declining Mine Countermeasures Capability
The current state of American minesweeping capability is grim. The Avenger-class of mine countermeasures ships (MCMs) are nearly 40 years old. Of the 14 vessels originally built, only eight remain—all forward-deployed in Manama, Bahrain and Sasebo, Japan. In a Taiwan crisis, the four Sasebo-based MCMs would take nearly two days to reach Taiwan at top speed and under ideal conditions.
The Navy plans to retire four of the remaining Avenger-class hulls this fiscal year, reducing the fleet’s mine countermeasures ships to just four platforms, which themselves are scheduled to be retired by 2027.
America’s air-based mine countermeasures capability is equally concerning. The Navy has shifted primary responsibility for airborne mine countermeasures to the MH-60S “Knighthawk” helicopter. However, the minesweeping and mine neutralization packages (ALMDS and AMNS, respectively) on the MH-60S have not yet passed the Department of Defense’s reliability or operability tests.
As early as FY16, the Pentagon stated that that the MH-60S helicopter, equipped with current minesweeping technologies, would not be “operationally effective or operationally suitable” in conducting minesweeping operations in combat.
In certain scenarios, the MH-60’s MCM package was shown to detect and classify a smaller percentage of mines than present systems, causing MCM commanders to likely underestimate the residual risk to transiting ships following clearance operations. In other scenarios, the system also generated large number of false positives (erroneous indications of mine-like objects), which delayed mine clearance operations due to the need for additional search passes.
Nine years later, despite two ships deploying with embarked helicopters equipped with these systems, there appears to be no resolution to these concerns. Despite these concerns (and recommendations for further testing) raised in the FY24 Annual Report from the Director Operational Test and Evaluation, no further operational testing has been funded or scheduled for ALMDS or AMNS. While there is a third system under development for the Navy, Raytheon’s Barracuda mine-hunting system, Raytheon has confirmed that operational testing for the Barracuda will not begin until 2027 at the earliest.
Unmanned Systems: Promise Unfulfilled
If it was not bad enough that the Navy’s existing minesweeping capabilities are aging and cannot meet critical operability requirements, top leadership has invested far too much faith (and money) in a platform that is more based in science fiction than in reality. The Navy’s plan to replace dedicated minesweepers relies heavily on the Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV), the autonomous primary component of the Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS). Upon decommissioning of the Avenger-class, the UISS will be the Navy’s only surface maritime minesweeping capability outside of the AQS-20C towed sonar array. These unmanned surface systems would be deployed off of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship platform, which has been stricken with its own problems.
Unfortunately, testing shows that the CUSV and UISS mine clearing system as a whole are not operationally suitable: UISS reliability and availability do not support sustained mine sweeping operations, suffering from issues relating to mission availability and degraded mission performance.
When employed from its intended platform, UISS demonstrates an operational availability of just 29 percent, well below the Navy’s minimum threshold, while also facing issues relating to maintenance and repair. “Maintainers demonstrated limited capability to repair the UISS due to deficiencies in maintainer documentation for operational-level repairs and additional repairs that required subject matter expert intervention,” according to DOT&E.
The CUSV is further limited in endurance and weight of its cable, restricting the possible depth of towed sonar. Line of sight between the mothership and the CUSV is required and in heavy sea states its effectiveness is limited. Bandwidth, in particular, is taxed by the amount of information that needs to be shared between the ship-based operator and sensor suites aboard the unmanned vessel.
Despite these persistent and well-documented concerns, the Navy inexplicably cleared the CUSV and UISS for initial operational capability in 2023.
The Strategic Liability of Inaction
The consequences of the Navy’s decision to roll out and deploy sub-standard equipment go beyond standard inefficiencies or wasted resources, the safety of American sailors and the ability to achieve operational goals in theater is at stake. Deploying a minesweeping system that fails to reliably detect or classify threats risks leaving sea lanes improperly cleared and creating a false sense of security for transiting vessels. In combat scenarios, this shortcoming could prove catastrophic, leading to avoidable casualties and potentially undermining broader operational objectives.
However, the consequences of the Navy’s approach to mine warfare extend beyond immediate operational concerns. By neglecting this critical capability while adversaries expand theirs, the United States is creating a strategic vulnerability that could fundamentally limit its ability to project power in contested environments.
China’s emphasis on mine warfare is particularly concerning given potential scenarios surrounding Taiwan. A Chinese mine-laying campaign in the Taiwan Strait and surrounding waters could effectively isolate the island before U.S. naval forces could intervene. The PLAN themselves have assessed that “relative to other combat mission areas, [the U.S. Navy’s] mine warfare capabilities are extremely weak”. Without robust mine countermeasures, the Navy would face unacceptable delays in establishing sea control, potentially allowing a fait accompli before effective military assistance could arrive.
The economic impact of mine warfare extends beyond direct military confrontation. Recent Houthi deployments of sea mines demonstrate how even rudimentary capabilities can disrupt global shipping, increase insurance costs, and force expensive naval escort operations. The economic impact has been felt globally, with shipping companies forced to reroute vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to transit times and billions in additional shipping costs.
A Path Forward
The failures of the current MCM programs underscore the need for the Navy to pursue a dedicated MCM-X Platform—a new class of mine countermeasure vessels optimized for modern threats. These ships should integrate both manned and unmanned capabilities to provide a layered approach to mine warfare.
The key to producing and maintaining a capable minesweeping fleet is far from a needle in a haystack. There are current technologies being employed by American allies, such as the fiber-reinforced plastic hulls of Japan’s newest Awaji-class minesweepers, or the Republic of Korea Navy’s conceptual design for their mine warfare USV.
The Italian Navy recently acquired five minesweepers for $1.75 billion USD, demonstrating that purpose-built platforms remain a viable investment for NATO allies. Compared to the massive expenditures on other naval programs with questionable returns, this represents a sensible allocation of resources for a critical capability.
Conclusion
With the glaring vulnerabilities in America’s mine countermeasures programs, the Navy is creating a strategic liability that our chief adversaries are positioned to exploit. In an era of great power competition where every tactical advantage matters, neglecting mine warfare capabilities is not merely an oversight—it is a dangerous gamble with national security.
The strategic and tactical importance of mine warfare will only increase in future conflicts. Without an effective, dedicated mine countermeasure force, the United States risks ceding control of key maritime domains to adversaries who have recognized and embraced the power of naval mines.
If the Navy truly seeks to maintain freedom of navigation and retain the ability to project power in contested environments, it must stop sweeping the minesweeping problem under the rug and make the necessary investments in the future of mine countermeasure capability. The cost of inaction could be measured not just in ships and lives lost, but in strategic objectives unmet and national interests compromised.
Ethan Connell is a Research Team Lead at Taiwan Security Monitor, specializing in U.S. naval operations and capabilities. He tracks American fleet movements and developments, having worked previously with the National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office. His work examines Chinese maritime strategy, integrating satellite imagery and OSINT to assess surface and subsurface naval activity. Ethan holds a degree in International Politics and Security Studies from George Mason University.
Jonathan Walberg is a PhD student in International Relations and Psychology at the University of Virginia, studying China’s use of AI in disinformation and narrative warfare, as well as American military modernization. Jonathan is the Associate Director of Taiwan Security Monitor, a research initiative dedicated to improving the understanding of security dynamics in the Taiwan Strait, as well as a fellow for both the Center for Security Policy Studies and the Center for Advancing Human Machine Partnership.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.