US Navy Modernizes Drones to Locate, Neutralize & Explode Enemy Mines

Video Above: Columbia Class Ballistic Missile Submarine

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

They can be tethered to the ocean floor to explode on impact, linger just beneath the surface, buried beneath the bottom of the ocean and set to detonate by undersea soundwaves. Mines are as ubiquitous as they are dangerous, and often cheap for adversaries to acquire, yet they are also increasingly sophisticated and proliferating at a concerning rate.

While mines can of course cause casualties, destroy ships and present real “kinetic” threats, they are also used to simply “deny” access to a sensitive area or make the price of entry simply too high for manned vessels to operate. Therefore, it may seem almost too obvious to mention the growing importance of drones, sensors and unmanned boats when it comes to finding and exploding or neutralizing enemy mines.

AI-enabled, High-Tech Multi-Domain Mine Countermeasures 

It is no surprise that the US Navy is fast-tracking a growing suite of AI-enabled, high-tech multi-domain mine countermeasures to include laser sensors scanning the top portions of the water column, small semi-autonomous mine-hunting drones such as Raytheon’s Barracuda or side-scanning AQS-20 towed synthetic aperture sonar lowered beneath highly maneuverable groups unmanned boats sending data to a manned host ship.

The Navy’s Program Manager for Unmanned Combat Vehicles Capt. Pete Small explained the importance of these kinds of synergies while updating programs at the 2022 Surface Navy Association symposium. Small talked about the value of integrating laser-mine detection with surface and undersea technologies to optimize mine hunting and neutralization. 

“Laser mine detection systems have a capability to coordinate a surface, and the AQS 20 has volume. We’re demonstrating a tactic to determine the overlap that we could achieve, so that we can make sure we don’t have any gaps in mine hunting coverage,” Small said.