The Navy Mines Warning Nobody Is Talking About Enough

The peculiar thing about the Strait of Hormuz at the moment is how little is really going on there. There were no explosions, no burning tankers on the evening news, and no terrified broadcasts from a supertanker’s bridge.

Nevertheless, one of the world’s most crucial shipping lanes is no longer operating as it once did by nearly all significant metrics. The mine warning over the last few weeks really tells us that, above all else.

According to the US Navy, two guided missile destroyers are being sent to clear what Iran has suggested—but never fully confirmed—lies beneath the surface. For its part, Iran has released a map. A map. It is merely a courteous suggestion that ships might want to take a different route, hugging closer to the Iranian coast, away from the older lane near Oman. It is neither a denial nor a confirmation. You can infer something from that alone. Not a single device needed to be detonated by the IRGC. All it had to do was suggest that the gadgets might be present.

Maritime analysts believe that this is the true story, which is being undervalued. The construction of a mine costs several tens of thousands of dollars. It causes billions of dollars’ worth of disruptions, including cancelled insurance policies, stopped LNG shipments, rerouted shipping, and unstable oil markets. Tehran seems to have a perfect grasp of the math behind what is arguably the most unbalanced cost-benefit ratio in contemporary military hardware.

These days, you can hear the same conversation in any major port operations room, albeit in different languages. Underwriters are withdrawing. Hazard pay is what captains are requesting. In an interview with Al Jazeera, a retired Romanian naval officer succinctly stated that the mined area need not be everywhere for those who must cross it to perceive it as being everywhere. The trick is that. The majority of the weapon’s work is completed before it is discovered.

The fact that the Americans appear to have entered this situation unprepared is more difficult to discuss, at least in Washington. Just months before the war, in September, the Navy decommissioned its final four Avenger-class mine countermeasures vessels in Bahrain. In August, the Sea Dragon helicopters that were previously used for airborne sweeping were phased out. According to reports, the USS Canberra is the only small combat ship in the area equipped with a mine-clearing module. The Foreign Policy Research Institute refers to it as a “mine gap,” a neat term for what appears to be institutional neglect compounding poor timing.

It’s difficult to ignore the difference with the Europeans as you watch this develop. Through the rMCM program, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France have been covertly constructing steel-hulled, drone-launching, appropriately armed mine-hunting motherships. Earlier this week, the first ship from Belgium was delivered. It wasn’t until late February that the French joined. Work is slow and out of style. No one runs campaigns on this kind of capability. Nevertheless, it’s precisely the kind that counts when a strait closes.

Beneath all of this is a longer story that no one really wants to feature on the front page. Throughout the past century, naval mines have appeared in every maritime conflict. The next one will feature them. They punish navies that have neglected to take them seriously, and they are inexpensive and patient. It’s still unclear if the Pentagon’s current frenzy will result in a true reckoning or merely a few reassuring news cycles. Either way, the mines—real or imagined—are fulfilling their purpose.