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he invasion of iraq the us still relies on british and canadian minesweeping services the us has worked on some innovative mine hunting countermeasures such as the use of military dolphins to detect and flag mines mines in nearshore environments remain a particular challenge they are small and as technology has developed they can have anechoic coatings be non metallic and oddly shaped to resist detection 91 18 further oceanic conditions and the sea bottoms of the area of operations can degrade sweeping and hunting efforts 91 18 mining countermeasures are far more expensive and time consuming than mining operations and that gap is only growing with new technologies 91 18 passive countermeasures edit designers can make ships difficult for mines to detect to avoid detonating them this is especially true for minesweepers and mine hunters that work in minefields where a minimal signature outweighs the need for armour and speed these ships have hulls of glass fibre or wood instead of steel to avoid magnetic signatures these ships may use special propulsion systems with low magnetic electric motors to reduce magnetic signature and voith schneider propellers to limit the acoustic signature they are built with hulls that produce a minimal pressure signature these measures create other problems they are expensive slow and vulnerable to enemy fire many modern ships have a mine warning sonar a simple sonar looking forward and warning the crew if it detects possible mines ahead it is only effective when the ship is moving slowly see also sqq 32 mine hunting sonar a steel hulled ship can be degaussed more correctly de oerstedted or depermed using a special degaussing station that contains many large coils and induces a magnetic field in the hull with alternating current to demagnetize the hull this is a rather problematic solution as magnetic compasses need recalibration and all metal objects must be kept in exactly the same place ships slowly regain their magnetic field as they travel through the earth s magnetic field so the process has to be repeated every six months 92 during the second world war charles f goodeve developed a simpler variation of this technique for the british admiralty his wiping saved time and resources between 1941 and 1943 the us naval gun factory a division of the naval ordnance laboratory in washington d c built physical models of all us naval ships three kinds of steel were used in shipbuilding mild steel for bulkheads a mixture of mild steel and high tensile steel for the hull and special treatment steel for armor plate the models were placed within coils which could simulate the earth s magnetic field at any location the magnetic signatures were measured with degaussing coils the objective was to reduce the vertical component of the combination of the earth s field and the ship s field at the usual depth of german mines from the measurements coils were placed and coil currents were determined to minimize the chance of detonation for any ship at any heading at any latitude 93 some ships are built with magnetic inductors large coils placed along the ship to counter the ship s magnetic field using magnetic probes in strategic parts of the ship the strength of the current in the coils can be adjusted to minimize the total magnetic field this is a heavy and clumsy solution suited only to small to medium sized ships boats typically lack the generators and space for the solution while the amount of power needed to overcome the magnetic field of a large ship is impractical 93 compared with conventional vessels hovercraft can exhibit less vulnerability to some naval mines 94 active countermeasures edit active countermeasures are ways to clear a path through a minefield or remove it completely this is one of the most important tasks of any mine warfare flotilla mine sweeping edit an mh 53e from hm 15 tows a minesweeping sled while conducting simulated mine clearing operations minesweeper uss tide after striking a mine off utah beach 7 june 1944 note her broken back with white smoke billowing amidships main article minesweeping a sweep is either a contact sweep a wire dragged through the water by one or two ships to cut the mooring wire of floating mines or a distance sweep that mimics a ship to detonate the mines the sweeps are dragged by minesweepers either purpose built military ships or converted trawlers each run covers between one hundred and two hundred metres 330 and 660 ft and the ships must move slowly in a straight line making them vulnerable to enemy fire this was exploited by the turkish army in the battle of gallipoli in 1915 when mobile howitzer batteries prevented the british and french from clearing a way through minefields if a contact sweep hits a mine the wire of the sweep rubs against the mooring wire until it is cut sometimes cutters explosive devices to cut the mine s wire are used to lessen the strain on the sweeping wire mines cut free are recorded and collected for research or shot with a deck gun 95 minesweepers protect themselves with an oropesa or paravane instead of a second minesweeper these are torpedo shaped towed bodies similar in shape to a harvey torpedo that are streamed from the sweeping vessel thus keeping the sweep at a determined depth and position some large warships were routinely equipped with paravane sweeps near the bows in case they inadvertently sailed into minefields the mine would be deflected towards the paravane by the wire instead of towards the ship by its wake more recently heavy lift helicopters have dragged minesweeping sleds as in the 1991 persian gulf war 96 the distance sweep mimics the sound and magnetism of a ship and is pulled behind the sweeper it has floating coils and large underwater drums it is the only sweep effective against bottom mines during wwii raf coastal command used vickers wellington bombers wellington dw mk i fitted with degaussing coils to trigger magnetic mines 97 in a parallel development the luftwaffe adapted some junkers 52 3m aircraft to also carry a coil operated by electricity supplied from an onboard generator the luftwaffe called this adaption minensuch e lit mine search 98 in both cases pilots were required to fly at low altitude up to about 200 feet above the sea and at fairly low speeds to be effective modern influence mines are designed to discriminate against false inputs and are therefore much harder to sweep they often contain inherent anti sweeping mechanisms for example they may be programmed to respond to the unique noise of a particular ship type its associated magnetic signature and the typical pressure displacement of such a vessel as a result a mine sweeper must accurately mimic the required target signature to trigger detonation the task is complicated by the fact that an influence mine may have one or more of a hundred different potential target signatures programmed into it 99 another anti sweeping mechanism is a ship counter in the mine fuze when enabled this allows detonation only after the mine fuze has been triggered a pre set number of times to further complicate matters influence mines may be programmed to arm themselves or disarm automatically known as self sterilization after a pre set time during the pre set arming delay which could last days or even weeks the mine would remain dormant and ignore any target stimulus whether genuine or false 99 when influence mines are laid in an ocean minefield they may have various combinations of fuze settings configured for example some mines with the acoustic sensor enabled may become active within three hours of being laid others with the acoustic and magnetic sensors enabled may become active after two weeks but have the ship counter mechanism set to ignore the first two trigger events and still others in the same minefield with the magnetic and pressure sensors enabled may not become armed until three weeks have passed groups of mines within this mine field may have different target signatures which may or may not overlap the fuzes on influence mines allow many different permutations which complicates the clearance process 99 mines with ship counters arming delays and highly specific target signatures in mine fuzes can falsely convince a belligerent that a particular area is clear of mines or has been swept effectively because a succession of vessels have already passed through safely minehunting edit pinguin b3 minehunting drone such are operated from frankenthal class minehunters of the german navy as naval mines have become more sophisticated and able to discriminate between targets so they have become more difficult to deal with by conventional sweeping this has given rise to the practice of minehunting minehunting is very different from sweeping although some minehunters known as mine countermeasures vessels mcmvs can do both tasks minehunters use specialized high frequency sonars and high fidelity sidescaning sonar to locate mines which are then inspected and destroyed either by divers or rovs remote controlled unmanned mini submarines 91 18 it is slow but also the most reliable way to remove mines as it circumvents most anti minesweeping countermeasures minehunting started during the second world war but it was only after the war that it became truly effective sea mammals mainly the bottlenose dolphin have been trained to hunt and mark mines most famously by the us navy marine mammal program mine clearance dolphins were deployed in the persian gulf during the iraq war in 2003 the us navy claims that these dolphins were effective in helping to clear more than 100 antiship mines and underwater booby traps from umm qasr port 100 french naval officer jacques yves cousteau s undersea research group was once involved in minehunting operations they removed or detonated a variety of german mines but one particularly defusion resistant batch equipped with acutely sensitive pressure magnetic and acoustic sensors and wired together so that one explosion would trigger the rest was simply left undisturbed for years until corrosion would hopefully disable the mines 101 mine running edit seehund rovs of the german navy used for minesweeping a more drastic method is simply to run a ship through the minefield letting other ships safely follow the same path an early example of this was farragut s actions at mobile bay during the american civil war however as mine warfare became more developed this method became uneconomical this method was revived by the german imperial german navy during world war i left with a surfeit of idle ships due to the allied blockade the germans introduced a ship known as sperrbrecher block breaker the type was also used during world war ii typically an old cargo ship loaded with cargo that made her less vulnerable to sinking wood for example the sperrbrecher was run ahead of the ship to be protected detonating any mines that might be in their path the use of sperrbrecher obviated the need to continuous and painstaking sweeping but the cost was high over half the 100 or so ships used as sperrbrecher in wwii were sunk during the war alternatively a shallow draught vessel can be steamed through the minefield at high speed to generate a pressure wave sufficient to trigger mines with the minesweeper moving fast enough to be sufficiently clear of the pressure wave so that triggered mines do not destroy the ship itself these techniques are the only way to sweep pressure mines that is publicly known to be employed the technique can be simply countered by use of a ship counter set to allow a certain number of passes before the mine is actually triggered modern doctrine calls for ground mines to be hunted rather than swept a new system is being introduced for sweeping pressure mines however counters are going to remain a problem 102 103 an updated form of this method is the use of small unmanned rovs such as the seehund drone that simulate the acoustic and magnetic signatures of larger ships and are built to survive exploding mines repeated sweeps would be required in case one or more of the mines had its ship counter facility enabled i e were programmed to ignore the first 2 3 or even 6 target activations counter mining edit another expedient for clearing mines especially in a hurry is counter mining by this method an explosive is detonated in the area of a known or suspected minefield and the blast either trips off the fuzes or the actual explosive contained within the mine or mines this latter is known as a sympathetic detonation counter mining is normally used as a last resort or if other equipment is not available one example was at the entrance to grand harbour valletta malta in ww2 when the british dropped depth charges into the harbour entrance to detonate suspected mines prior to the arrival of an important convoy it is especially useful against acoustic or pressure mines due to their activation by sound or increases in water pressure national arsenals edit us mines edit the united states navy mk56 asw mine the oldest still in use by the united states was developed in 1966 more advanced mines include the mk60 captor short for encapsulated torpedo the mk62 and mk63 quickstrike and the mk67 slmm submarine launched mobile mine today most us naval mines are delivered by aircraft mk67 slmm submarine launched mobile mine the slmm was developed by the united states as a submarine deployed mine for use in areas inaccessible for other mine deployment techniques or for covert mining of hostile environments the slmm is a shallow water mine and is basically a modified mark 37 torpedo general characteristics type submarine laid bottom mine detection system magnetic seismic pressure target detection devices tdds dimensions 0 485 by 4 09 m 19 1 by 161 0 in depth range shallow water weight 754 kg 1 662 lb explosives 230 kg 510 lb high explosive date deployed 1987 mk 62 quick strike deployed from a p 3 orion mk65 quickstrike the quickstrike 104 is a family of shallow water aircraft laid mines used by the united states primarily against surface craft the mk65 is a 910 kg 2 000 lb dedicated purpose built mine however other quickstrike versions mk62 mk63 and mk64 are converted general purpose bombs these latter three mines are actually a single type of electronic fuze fitted to mk82 mk83 and mk84 air dropped bombs because this latter type of quickstrike fuze only takes up a small amount of storage space compared to a dedicated sea mine the air dropped bomb casings have dual purpose i e can be fitted with conventional contact fuzes and dropped on land targets or have a quickstrike fuze fitted which converts them into sea mines general characteristics type aircraft laid bottom mine with descent to water slowed by a parachute or other mechanism detection system magnetic seismic pressure target detection devices tdds dimensions 0 74 by 3 25 m 29 by 128 in depth range shallow water weight 1 086 kg 2 394 lb explosives various loads date deployed 1983 mk56 genera...
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