April 06, 2015
Clearing sea mines is so murderously hard that the best defense is to sink the ships or shoot down the planes carrying them before they can be put in the water. But politics, surprise, orfear of escalation might keep the US military from stopping the minelayers “left of splash.” That means somebody had better be ready to go after the deadly explosives in their natural habitat. The great leap forward today is that “somebody” is increasingly likely to be a robot.
For over a century, clearing mines was a brutal, crude and close-up business. Specialized ships, divers, and even trained dolphins had to go right into the minefield. The US Navy has led the world in counter-mine equipment that could be towed from helicopters, but that still means flying low, slow and in a predictable pattern in airspace where enemy aircraft or missile launchers might be watching. There are even reports that China has developed anti-helicopter mines designed to launch themselves out of the water. For more than a decade, the Navy has increasingly invested in technologies to “keep the sailor out of the minefield” by sending unmanned systems in, both under water and on the surface.
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