Navy practices mine sweeps in Gulf of Mexico

Laptops, robotic equipment, small subs and high-speed vessels update mine warfare.

©Associated Press
December 10, 2001

ABOARD THE USS ROBIN -- Sailors in blue jumpsuits and hard hats use a crane to lower Biff, a bright orange minisubmarine with shark's teeth painted on its nose, into the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida Panhandle.

Twin propellers send the unmanned remote-controlled device, officially an AN/SLQ-48(V)2 Mine Neutralization System, below the surface. Biff reels out a yellow umbilical cord like a 10-foot mechanical tuna tugging on a fishing line.

"We refer to that as our primary battery," said Lt. Cmdr. Mark Laxen, commanding officer of the Robin, a coastal minehunter. "Battleships have big guns. We have the mine neutralization vehicle."

The Robin is one of six vessels participating in an exercise that includes existing and experimental technology designed to prevent the kind of damage the Navy sustained a decade ago in another gulf halfway around the world.

Iraqi mines blew holes in the hulls of the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship, and the cruiser USS Princeton during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

The Tripoli and Princeton are among 14 U.S. ships damaged or sunk by mines since 1950, said Capt. Richard Rush, commander of Mine Countermeasures Squadron 2. That compares with only two by aircraft and one each by missiles, torpedoes and explosives aboard a small boat that severely damaged the USS Cole.

Rush is overseeing the Gulf of Mexico Exercise, or GOMEX, that began Oct. 30 when the Robin and three other mine warfare ships left their home port at Ingleside, Texas. It will continue through Friday off Panama City Beach, home of the Navy's Coastal Systems Station, which conducts mine warfare research.

The Joint Venture, a 310-foot, high-speed catamaran, served as Rush's flagship during the first part of the exercise. The Defense Department is leasing the Australian ship, originally a car ferry, to determine whether such a giant water scooter is suitable for mine warfare, special operations, troop transport and other missions.

The Joint Venture, capable of nearly 40 knots fully loaded, is so named because the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command are partners in the experiment. It returned late last week to its base at Little Creek, Va., for other test missions.

A smaller but slightly faster high-speed vessel, the Norwegian navy's Skjold, has been in the United States since September to demonstrate its capabilities to American military officials.

For GOMEX, the smaller Skjold, which can do 55 knots, has been used to tow devices that cause mines to explode prematurely by mimicking a ship's sound or magnetic signature. The Skjold is a surface-effects ship, sort of a cross between a catamaran and Hovercraft, Rush said.

Other experimental systems were used aboard the Joint Venture during the exercise, but they also are still being evaluated to determine whether they will be adopted.

One is a low-cost but powerful communications center that uses personal computers, flat-screen displays and other off-the-shelf technology that could be placed aboard almost any ship.

It gives the Joint Venture more satellite data-transfer capability than any other Navy ship, said Cmdr. Dean Chase of the Navy Warfare Development Command at Newport, R.I. The vessel can get information, including radar and other sensing data, from other ships and shore stations with less hardware.

"We don't have an air search radar aboard this ship," Chase said. "We don't need to. We have the ability to use somebody else's."

Instead of the Robin's remote-control mine neutralization system, the Joint Venture deployed an experimental robot submarine known as the Battlespace Preparation Autonomous Underwater Vehicle.

The torpedo-like BPAUV, developed by Bluefin Robotics Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., needs no tether. Equipped with side-scan sonar, it can be programmed to map the sea bottom for about 15 hours before returning to the ship.

Sonar data then is fed into computers that display the returns, but human operators still must decipher whether objects on the bottom are mines, coral, junk or something else.

The Coastal Systems Station is working on software contained in two laptop computers, also tested aboard the Joint Venture, to enhance those returns and make the detection job easier.

Aboard the Robin, Laxen watched his sonar operators search for practice mines with a bulkier system that looks primitive by comparison. The job is more art than science, said Laxen, who grew up in Indianapolis and has a radio-TV-film degree from Northwestern University.

Once a mine is suspected, a "pilot" uses a joystick to steer Biff to its target based on the sonar image and pictures from a TV camera on the vehicle.

Biff can destroy a bottom mine by dropping a small bomb, and it can cut the anchor line of a floating mine. That lets the mine bob to the surface, where it can be destroyed by gunfire or explosives planted by divers. In many cases, it is enough just to locate mines so ships can avoid them.

Mine hunting is not a glamorous job, but a critical one, Laxen said.

Since the Gulf War, the mine warfare force has grown with 12 new coastal minehunters, including the 188-foot Robin commissioned in 1996, and 14 larger Avenger Class vessels. Four ships and four helicopters are deployed in the Persian Gulf.

"In the real world, if not for the mine warfare force, the rest of the ships are not going to go in," Laxen said. "We are the enabling force for the fleet."

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