Ok, :hitwall, we know mines are a serious matter, we remember when the kuwait invasion, or the irak invasion, the usn had to deal with mines, you can expect conflicted waters have mines you have to search and destroy, we have countermines small boats which can do the job for eliminating them, but to search and discover is different, i say this for the helos flexibility, speed to act, range and altitude at they fly searching for mines, mine detector in an helo should be more or much more efficient than in a patrol boat, not talking about fuel expenditure, the amount spent with a countermines patrol boat in the trip of the fleet, that to take the helo out to give an scanning pasade in all the way of the fleet.
I know important ships have specific "radars" for searching mines, but with a limited alert, they might discover the mines too late, also there are mines which remain at certain depth and when detect the ship they come up to hit..
I would say as a good idea to have 2 or 3 mrh60s (sikorsky) with the antimines warfare, these helos to be deployed with the fleet, with or without the lhd. Because we can imagine the sceneraio of an international taskforce, without the canberras, where the awd´s, anzac´s, or new anzac´s are keeping a perimeter out of a coast, i dont think many navies have these antimines capacities in helos... actuallly we would thank the future anzacs to have 2 helos hangars...
Have a good webber...
