Minehunters - dying breed or not getting attention?

[Jon K]

Finnish Navy ordered three brand new minehunters about a year ago with price of 245mE complete with Hugin AUV for searching mines and SAAB Double Eagle for disabling them. The hull mounts all sorts of gizmo sonars from Kongsberg.
As usual is the case in this country, the acquisition was naturally trumpeted as our Glorious Nation being in forefront of technological progress and suiting the Finnish special operational conditions.

But since then, taking a cursory look at minehunter acquisitions nowadays, is any country building them anymore? Have UUV's and AUV's, deployable to any ship, progressed to a point that traditional minehunters are irrelevant, or is this just a case that a vital area is not getting enough attention?

 

[kato]

France is currently having their Tripartites upgraded by Thales, Germany's MCMV fleet is on a late 90s standard, same for most British Sandowns. Sweden is upgrading the Landsorts at the moment too (Koster class). Japan's Yaeyama class is early 90s too.

In the Baltic region... Latvia bought five (!) Tripartites in 2006. Estonia bought three Sandowns in 2007, which are being upgraded right now.

Germany had a project for new minehunting/-sweeping ASV/USVs ("Seahorse") until 2003, which would have upgraded the current fleet, but the project was cancelled in light of the current units only being 10 years old around that time.

The US seems to be set on exploring AUV/UUV use from other ships right now.

 

[submerged]

Also the dutch Tripartite minehunters are in the middle of upgrading, currently 3 (may be 4) have allready been updated, 2 more are currently undergoing the upgrade process and the other 4 will follow in a short while. The 6 Belgian Tripartite's will be getting similar upgrades at Zeebrugge with cooperation of the dutch navy.

Updates include upgrades in the minehunting control room, technical control room, sonar upgrades (a new hull mounted sonar and a totally new towed sonar, the swedish SVPDS) and the replacement for the currently used PAP submersible by the german Sea Fox wich can also be used for floating or chained mines, wich isn't possible with the currently used type. Operational tests have allready been undertaken and the SVPDS is currently undergoing more tests in the mediterrenean sea by one of the dutch minehunters.

A short note about the attention, it's been one of the main tasks of the dutch navy in it's home waters and got loads of attention the last few years after a couple of fishing vessels had accidents with WWII explosives detonating wich got stuck in their nets and killing crew members, wich led to a massive rise of reports of explosives found (the fishers found it too time consuming and of no importance to do so before those events is the general idea by the minehunters)

 

[gf0012-aust]

or is this just a case that a vital area is not getting enough attention?

I'm not so sure its an issue of getting enough attention. I remember attending a NWC about 3 years back where the entire session was devoted to minewarfare issues. It was pointed out that in real terms, $150k worth of mines, and some using WW1 contact tech, had been responsible for over $350m in physical damage. this did not include on cost damage such as trade re-routes, insurance spikes to merchant shippers etc....

the focus at this event was very much geared towards new minewarfare solutions and the fact that a high ratio of countries had become complacent.

The USN made a point of emphasising that they were fully intent of heading down the new technologies path and not investing in dedicated mine warfare hulls.

 

[kato]

The German path in that regards seems to be that while mine warfare priority (both active and reactive) is somewhat lowered compared to the Cold War, it's still a vital concern. Mine Warfare is of course considered a vital concept within littoral warfare.

Current and future German fleet will retain 11 minehunters with 10 Penguin B3 UUVs (in one of the two classes), 5 minesweepers with 18 Seehund ASVs, 5 minehunters relegated to other duties (but reconfigurable). And those same ships plus two LCMs for minelaying.

Seafox-C disposable attack drones able to deployed from all the above ships except the LCMs btw.

Still the same numbers as early 90s, if the 5 reconfigurable units are counted. Minelaying somewhat reduced, but still an active capability.
The MJ2010 plan that was developed until 2003 intended to add up to 12 minehunting ASVs to this fleet.

 

[Systems Adict]

Mine hunting is still a necessary process of Naval activities, it's just that like Aircraft, Stealth & "cutting edge" technologies are a bit more Bling, Bling.

Many Navies are now looking to the future. Numbers of vessels in the fleet, the costs of maintaining them, etc. These factors are being taken into account, with designers looking at integrating smaller, specialist roles into larger, multi-role vessels.

The US is one of the first in this respect with the LCS, as an "all things to all sailors", multi-role, modular ship, although the Nordic countries (Sweden & Norway) have been at the forefront (as is detailed in the 1st posting in the thread !).


Stating the obvious !
Systems Adict

 

[swerve]

...
Many Navies are now looking to the future. Numbers of vessels in the fleet, the costs of maintaining them, etc. These factors are being taken into account, with designers looking at integrating smaller, specialist roles into larger, multi-role vessels.

The US is one of the first in this respect with the LCS, as an "all things to all sailors", multi-role, modular ship, although the Nordic countries (Sweden & Norway) have been at the forefront (as is detailed in the 1st posting in the thread !).


Stating the obvious !
Systems Adict

Denmark's another one.

 

[kato]

Personally, i have my doubts about the viability of this concept (multi-role ships) for high-intensity mine warfare.

While a LCS (or other similar ship) would probably be perfectly good to clean the path ahead of a squadron steaming towards a target - and in that case be even better due to adapted speed and range - it's not necessarily all that suited to some other classic mine-warfare scenarios:
Sweeping large automatically-laid minefields (in particular when that minefield employs modern triggering and delay mechanisms), underwater EOD and mineclearing in harbour areas, search-and-destroy against submarine-laid mine barriers around a flotillas position, underwater EOD operations in extreme littoral areas.

Some of these could probably be solved rather simply by proper mine diver support facilities and a capability to deploy minesweeping USV/ASVs - neither of which i'm seeing in these multi-role designs (and the latter would only be possible by loading them into LPDs realistically anyway).

 

[Jon K]

Some of these could probably be solved rather simply by proper mine diver support facilities and a capability to deploy minesweeping USV/ASVs - neither of which i'm seeing in these multi-role designs (and the latter would only be possible by loading them into LPDs realistically anyway).

AN/WLD-1 UUV is deployable with container containing control facilities and suitable crane, as is Kongsberg Hugin AUV and Saab DoubleEagle ROV. I think even fairly small naval ship would be able to deploy these systems, not to mention such commercial animals as offshore work vessels etc. (which would have benefit of extremely good seakeeping qualities). In fact, these systems might be deployed to any suitable shore location such as boat marina, fishing wharf etc, and all are air transportable.

Don't know, at least for me nowadays spending money on dedicated new minehunter seems a waste. No matter how much effort is spent on making the minehunter as stealthy as possible it would seem to me that making AUV/UUV even stealthier is easier. As for upgrading older designs or buying used ones it's a different ballgame. I'm just wondering if the Finnish Navy has wasted, as usual, precious money to get the last minehunters ever built.

 

[harryriedl]

Personally, i have my doubts about the viability of this concept (multi-role ships) for high-intensity mine warfare.

While a LCS (or other similar ship) would probably be perfectly good to clean the path ahead of a squadron steaming towards a target - and in that case be even better due to adapted speed and range - it's not necessarily all that suited to some other classic mine-warfare scenarios:
Sweeping large automatically-laid minefields (in particular when that minefield employs modern triggering and delay mechanisms), underwater EOD and mineclearing in harbour areas, search-and-destroy against submarine-laid mine barriers around a flotillas position, underwater EOD operations in extreme littoral areas.

Some of these could probably be solved rather simply by proper mine diver support facilities and a capability to deploy minesweeping USV/ASVs - neither of which i'm seeing in these multi-role designs (and the latter would only be possible by loading them into LPDs realistically anyway).

i feel that multi role would be very useful especially in something like the Falklands rather than have T21 go up and down San Carlos bay until it run into a mine because you can't get Mine hunter down with the rest of the fleet. could ship the Mine hunting kit ahead of the fleet and you add it at a point in the journey which makes it better than having no mine hunting capability because you can't get a mine hunter when you need one

 

[kato]

AN/WLD-1 UUV is deployable with container containing control facilities and suitable crane, as is Kongsberg Hugin AUV and Saab DoubleEagle ROV.

Neither of these are capable of sweeping though. You can clear a few handful mines per day with a minehunting ROV, nothing comparable to what a squadron of sweeping ASV do to a large minefield.

Besides, even for the ROVs mentioned for minehunting, you'd want your operator ship to be protected from mines itself, both by passive measures (lowering detection through GFK or wood construction), and by active measures (survivability against mine blasts).

 

[tphuang]

Fineland is not alone, PLAN has come out with 1 new minehunter class + at least 2 new minesweeper class in the past 2 years. But then again, that's probably just their goal of catching up to the west and not an indication of the most modern navies.

 

[BilalK]

Pakistan also has a requirement for 2-3 new minehunters...I guess the need is there in the Arabian Sea at least...

 

[JHC]

about the sweds, we have 4 Styrsö class minevessles and 2 has been rebuilt so they can have minehunting divers, the later 2 ships are now called Styrsö class type Spårö. We also have 7 Landsort class, but i only think that 5 is being rebuilt to Landsort class type Koster, 1 is finished and i saw a couple of them under construction when i ran through Kockums a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Galrahn]

What concerns me is the doctrine behind MIW hasn't evolved in the west much. I get the impression offensive MIW doctrine is evolving in the east at a much faster rate then the defensive MIW doctrines, and technologies, are in the west.

I predict the LCS MIW solution will be one of the greatest military blunders of our time if it is ever required to be utilized. Whoever thought it was a good idea to turn the entire flotilla of a major navy into a high speed, part-time minesweeper should be fired for being a mental midget of maritime history and strategy.