In January begins third phase of Argentine landmine clearance in the Falklands

The third phase of explosive ordnance and landmine clearance in the Falkland Islands is scheduled to begin next January and extend until March 2013 and is programmed to concentrate in the surrounding of the capital Stanley.

The Zimbabwe team celebrates previous successful clearances of areas that included Surf Bay, Goose Green, Sapper Hill and part of Stanley Common  

These are the remnants of the Argentine occupation of the Falklands thirty years ago, back in 1982, which left thousands of mostly antipersonnel mines planted in areas considered strategic from a military point of view to defend the capital Stanley, but with which Islanders have had to learn to live for over three decades.

This next phase of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Explosive Ordnance and Landmine Clearance Programme is to be carried by BACTEC International Limited, who undertook the first two phases.

This is the third such phase of explosive ordnance and landmine clearance in the Falkland Islands. The first was carried out in 2010 with the successful clearance of areas that included Surf Bay, Goose Green and Sapper Hill, as well as land clearance on Stanley Common in 2012 that opened up a large area including the Stone Corral.

The scope of work for Phase Three is the clearance of one known, fenced, minefield in the part of Stanley Common that was released for public use earlier this year, as well as the clearance of the large (currently restricted) area just to the north and west of Mile Pond, which, it is suspected, contains two minefields.

Additionally, a further minefield just to the north of and bordering the Stanley to Goose Green Road, which was subjected to some clearance in 1982, is to be re-processed/cleared and the land released for public use.

Any available time will be used to carry out further land release to the east of Round Pond heading towards the Eliza Cove Road.

The BACTEC team will consist of 51 Zimbabwean demining personnel, most of who have already worked on Phases One and Two.

Phillimon Gonamombe will again be the Operations Manager and the project will be directed by Guy Lucas, who in 1982 set up the post conflict clearance and also directed the 2009/10 and 2012 programmes.

Guy has firsthand experience and knowledge of the Islands and the task at hand. Unlike the 2012 program, which focussed on land release, the 2013 program will focus on clearing known minefields to meet the UK Government commitment in accordance with the Ottawa Treaty, as well as doing some land release.

The BACTEC team is looking forward to returning in January to continue its work following up on 2012’s successful land release project.

BACTEC are pleased that Guy Marot, who was part of the team for Phase 1 in 2009/10, will be the Falkland Islands Demining Project Office (FIDPO) representative. (PN).

SeaFox On The Run

The recent massive naval mine clearing exercise in the mouth of the Persian Gulf (the Straits of Hormuz) demonstrated two things. First, mine clearing ships (which many nations have) and mine clearing helicopters (like the U.S. MH-53) were not as successful as hoped. A lot of the practice mines used were not found. Second, one new system, the SeaFox (a remotely controlled underwater system) was very successful. Ten nations already have SeaFox, and while the United States is a new user, it is hustling to make SeaFox work from different ships and aircraft.  This involves training ship crews to operate SeaFox and equipping ships with the control equipment.

Earlier this year the U.S. Navy ordered several dozen more of the expendable SeaFox UUVs (unmanned underwater vehicles). SeaFox was designed to find and destroy bottom mines (which sit on the seabed) as well as those that float. These UUVs were quickly sent to the Persian Gulf to deal with potential Iranian use of naval mines. The U.S. first used their new Seafox UUVs on some of the eight U.S. Avenger class mine hunting ships stationed in the Persian Gulf.

SeaFox is a small (1.4x.4x.2 meters/55x16x8 inches) battery powered sub that weighs 43 kg (95 pounds) and has a fiber-optic cable connecting it to a surface ship or hovering helicopter. The controller can move the SeaFox close to a suspected mine (using a small sonar unit to assist navigation), then turn on a spotlight for a video cam to examine the object and determine if it is a mine. If it is then SeaFox gets closer and detonates a shaped charge explosive, sending a shaft of hot plasma through the mine destroying it (and the SeaFox).

SeaFox has an endurance of about 100 minutes, a top speed of 10 kilometers an hour, and can dive as deep as 300 meters (930 feet). Operators get to increase their skills and effectiveness using a SeaFox simulator.

U.S. Navy, Allies Find Less Than Half the Sea Mines Planted in Key Exercise

On board the USS Ponce, the command ship for mine hunting operations in the Persian Gulf, sailors practice using surveillance equipment. Watch this video to see the unmanned aerial vehicle called Scan Eagle land by snagging a cable with its wing. The camera in the aircraft feeds back video to sailors who watch for threatening boats.

 A major international naval exercise last month in and around the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, led by the U.S. Navy with more than 30 other nations participating, located fewer than half of the practice mines laid at sea.

This outcome of the highly publicized military drills — not publicly known until now — underscores how difficult it may be for the United States and its partners to detect and incapacitate waterborne explosive devices that Iran has threatened to plant if its nuclear facilities come under attack.

Out of the 29 simulated mines that were dropped in the water, “I don’t think a great many were found,” retired Navy Capt. Robert O’Donnell, a former mine warfare director for his service, told the NewsHour. “It was probably around half or less.”

Navy officials, though, said the drill was constructive and asserted that focusing on the number of mines detected alone would paint an incomplete picture.

“We enjoyed great success,” said Cdr. Jason Salata, the top public affairs officer for the 5th Fleet. “Every platform that was sent to find a shape found a shape. We stand by that.” Salata asserted that “there were no missed mines, each platform that had an opportunity to find the mine did so.”

The drill, dubbed International Mine Countermeasures Exercise 2012 or IMCMEX, brought together countries from all over the world at a time when tensions with Iran have been heating up. Tehran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important choke points through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows.

The surprising mine-detection result came in what one senior Navy official told the NewsHour was “one of the most significant and strategically important exercises of the year.” It was also the largest exercise of its kind ever held in the region.

Being able to find and destroy sea mines is critical to maintaining stable world oil prices and global economic growth.

“The Strait [of Hormuz] remains a vital sea lane of communications to us and our partners,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said earlier this year. “We are determined to preserve freedom of transit there in the face of Iranian threats to impose a blockade.”

“I just felt that they should have done better,” said O’Donnell, clearly disappointed with the outcome of this key measure of performance. “That’s the point of the exercise, to do mine-countermine [operations] in an area, and to find the mines.”

Now a consultant, O’Donnell was invited by the Navy to observe the September exercise firsthand as it unfolded.

The Navy declined to provide data on how many practice mines were located during the two-week naval drill but did not dispute that less than half were found. However, a spokesman insisted that the figures do not tell the whole story and that the event was “‘not just about finding” the dummy mines.

“Numbers alone do not tell the story of IMCMEX’s effectiveness and success,” said Lt. Greg Raelson, a media officer with the 5th fleet, stationed in Bahrain. “We operated ships, helicopters, divers, and unmanned undersea vehicles with accuracy and effectiveness, confirming our ability to respond to maritime mine threats in the undersea environment. Because of this exercise, we were able to enhance partnerships and further hone the international community’s ability to ensure the safe and free flow of navigation.”

However, some analysts with extensive experience in evaluating Navy mine exercises say the rate of success in detecting practice mines is critically important.

“I would be surprised if the post-exercise analysis didn’t include some kind of a scoring mechanism of how well did we do against this set” of imitation mines, said Scott Savitz, a senior RAND engineer who, in a prior job, led Navy-contracted teams to analyze counter-mine exercises. The central point of a mine-hunting exercise is “to find them all, because in the real-world scenario you want to minimize the subsequent mine risk,” he said.

“You want to try to ascertain how well you are doing. You need a find a certain number of mines and a certain number of attempts to hunt or sweep them in order to get anything statistically meaningful,” Savitz said. “If we get zero or one or two, it doesn’t tell us much. It’s not granular enough.”

During the exercise, the military’s top commander of U.S. Naval forces in the Middle East stressed two key objectives for the drill: To practice working together with other countries, and to find simulated mines.

“This exercise is about getting the mines of out the water, and making sure people can sail through the Strait of Hormuz,” Vice Adm. John Miller, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, told reporters in Bahrain as the exercise was getting under way. “And what it’s really about is the opportunity to operate together in an international coalition and to make sure we can complete all the tasks that need to be completed.”

The top U.S. combatant commander for the region last month said the exercise was intended to realistically simulate possible military scenarios.

“We train as you do the real thing,” said Gen. James Mattis, the commander of U.S. military forces in the Middle East said while onboard a command-and-control vessel, USS Ponce, during the exercise. “You’ve got to train the same way that you operate every day at sea.”

One of the Navy spokesmen asserted last week that the military did not intend to go after all the mock mines laid for the exercise, much as an individual might focus a session at the gym on selected pieces of equipment but skip those that are unnecessary.

“My trainer builds me a workout,” said Salata. “Perhaps my trainer does not want me to work on some of the equipment. Maybe I don’t have enough time to get to all of the equipment. But based on my expectations, and the objectives of the session, I still may have an amazing workout and enjoy great success.”

Likewise, in terms of last month’s exercise, he said, “the number of shapes found vs. the number of shapes laid does not tell a clear story.”

Savitz, the RAND engineer, said a selective approach to testing counter-mine readiness might indeed have been appropriate for last month’s drill.

“If the goal is to do some of the monkey bars and then…we have something else that is in a slightly different environment and we are going to be testing your skills in that,” he said, the exercise approach might have given participating nations “a broad sampling of all of the parts of the decathlon” and “that may make sense.”

Navy spokesmen said that following the exercise, a key measure of achievement would be to see how many countries partake in the next drill.

“So how do we see success in this case? Well, the biggest tell will be the participation interest for next year’s exercise, which is already being planned,” Raelson said.

But others see coalition-building as just one piece of a fruitful military exercise.

Former Navy Lt. Cdr. Stephen Burke, who served aboard ships in the Persian Gulf when it was infested with mines during the U.S. war with Iraq in 1990-1991, said 5th Fleet officials are “putting the spin on it” when they emphasize the 30-nation participation without detailing how well those countries did at finding mines.

When the U.S. Navy is “trying to get people to participate, you don’t get them to participate by telling them that they don’t do very well,” Burke said. “It was a big love-in exercise to get them to keep coming back and to build a coalition.”

Mine-hunting is quite challenging, he emphasized.

The less-than-50-percent success rate in the exercise shows “it’s very difficult to detect shapes on the seabed and discriminate between rocks and other debris from the actual mines you are actually trying to go after,” Burke said. Well aware of the tall order involved, the Navy likely laid “10 shapes in order for the probability of finding at least one of them,” he surmised.

Meantime, U.S. naval forces are trying to build a wide coalition of foreign navies to show resolve in confronting Iran, he said.

“They are trying to get everyone — especially the partner nations that may not have a robust capability — to come away from the exercise feeling good about themselves for having accomplished something positive,” Burke said. “So it’s like seeding a lake for fishing. You put more fish in there than you expect your customers to catch, but you want them to all go away having caught a fish.”

That said, setting an objective of maximizing international partner participation “in and of itself is not bad,” Burke said, given a perceived political need to signal to Iran that the international community is determined to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

Raelson, the 5th Fleet media officer, emphasized the collaborative military successes involved.

“Each ship, unmanned underwater vehicle and helicopter that was tasked with finding a practice mine in a particular geographic operating area did. The use of shapes enabled participants to use their individual capabilities in their three regional environments while proving interoperability, compatibility and information exchange,” he said. “It was not the intention to utilize the inaugural IMCMEX to validate effectiveness by assessing individual nations’ capabilities and nor would it be appropriate for us to comment too deeply on tactical performance.”

O’Donnell said the exercise appears to have been useful, but the United States and its military partners should look to future counter-mine drills to more fully prepare for real-world threats.

“All in all, I guess that the exercise was a success since so many nations participated and they were able to communicate with each other,” said the retired Navy captain. “Next time, though, I think they should do a better job of finding the drill mines that were there.”

Chávez’s Dangerous Liaisons with Tehran

U.S. diplomats have been silent on these growing alliances. However, fresh revelations about Chávez’s alliance with Iran demonstrate what he is capable of doing when he is not provoked.

Hugo Chávez admitted on June 13 that Venezuela is manufacturing Iranian drones and that Iran has built several explosives and chemical facilities in his country. However, Chávez is trying to throw international observers off his scent by acknowledging an unmanned aerial vehicle program for “peaceful purposes.” What  he did not disclose are the many other troubling aspects of the extensive military cooperation between the two rabidly anti-U.S. regimes—not the least of which is that Venezuela secretly shipped an F-16 to Iran in 2006 that could be used today to test the air defenses around Teheran’s illicit nuclear facilities.

U.S. diplomats have convinced themselves—and have tried to convince members of Congress and the media—that Iran’s push into the Americas poses no threat to U.S. security. Indeed, a State Department spokesperson quickly downplayed the significance of Chávez’s admission.

Here’s some of what U.S. diplomats continue to ignore:

The fact that Venezuela shipped one of its U.S.-manufactured F-16 fighter aircraft to Iran was revealed to me last month by a Venezuelan military officer who was present during an Iranian military delegation’s visit to El Libertador Air Base in Palo Negro. Because the Israeli air force operates modified F-16s, the Iranian military could use the purloined Venezuelan aircraft to calibrate its air defense systems.

    Venezuela secretly shipped an F-16 to Iran in 2006 that could be used today to perfect the air defenses around Teheran’s illicit nuclear facilities.

Chávez also failed to reveal that Iran is bankrolling the production of marine (seaborne) mines that might one day be deployed in the Strait of Hormuz or across shipping lanes leading to the Panama Canal. According to another Venezuelan military source, the director of that mine program purchased some of the necessary technology here in the United States.

Neither did the Venezuelan caudillo explain why six Iranian companies associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and sanctioned by the United Nations, United Kingdom, and European Union for their involvement in Tehran’s illicit ballistic missile and nuclear programs are now operating major industrial facilities at strategic locations in Venezuela. For example, the firm Kimia Sanat, which is helping Venezuela build unmanned aerial vehicles near Maracay, Venezuela, was sanctioned under a 2007 UN Security Council resolution.

Parchin Chemical Industries, sanctioned under a UN resolution in 2007 for exporting chemicals used for Iran’s ballistic missile program, has recently completed a factory near Morón, Venezuela, to produce “ball powder,” an explosive propellant. Likewise, Iran’s National Petrochemical Company was sanctioned by the United Kingdom in 2008 but continues to operate a “petrochemical training facility” in Venezuela, which was inaugurated personally by Chávez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2006.

The Iranian Offshore Engineering Construction Company, which has operated a private port and shipyard on the strategic Paraguana peninsula since 2008, was sanctioned last year for being involved in the construction of the Fordow uranium enrichment site near Qom.

    Chávez failed to reveal that Iran is bankrolling the production of marine (seaborne) mines that might one day be deployed in the Strait of Hormuz or across shipping lanes leading to the Panama Canal.

According to reliable sources in the Venezuelan government, Iranian Major General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace commander who previously headed Iran’s missile program, visited the facilities in Maracay and Moran in July 2009 and November 2011. An independent source who infiltrated Hezbollah on behalf of a South American security agency attended several lectures from 2006 to 2008 at the Iranian-run petrochemical training facility by radical cleric Mohsen Rabbani, who is wanted by Interpol for his role in the 1992 and 1994 terrorist bombings against the Israeli Embassy and Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Chávez is suffering from terminal cancer and may die before Venezuela’s October 7 presidential elections. In the meantime, members of his ruthless inner circle—many of whom are implicated in narcotrafficking and corruption—are determined to hold on to power at all costs. The Venezuelan opposition is waging a lonely battle against an authoritarian regime that is managed by Cuba, bankrolled by China, and armed by Russia and Iran.

U.S. diplomats have been silent on these growing alliances, determined to avoid a public confrontation with Chávez for fear of provoking the bombastic populist. However, these fresh revelations about Chávez’s alliance with Iran demonstrate what he is capable of doing when he is not provoked.

With Iran’s back against the wall, squeezed by new international economic sanctions, it will scratch and claw to hold on to its economic ties to Venezuela, which it uses to gain illicit access to the international financial system and carry its struggle to the United States’ doorstep. As the United States and the international community square off with Iran in the months ahead, we may pay a dear price for having neglected Chávez’s dangerous liaisons with Tehran until it was too late.

Roger F. Noriega held senior positions in the State Department in the administration of President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005 and is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His firm Vision Americas represents U.S. and foreign clients.

Remus 600 AUV for Japanese MOD

Hydroid has announced that the Japanese Ministry of Defence (MOD) has purchased one Remus 600 system for mine countermeasure operations. The new purchase brings the Japanese MOD AUV fleet to five vehicles, the company said in a 12 June, 2012 statement.

The Remus 600 AUV was specifically designed for operations requiring extended endurance, increased payload capacity and greater operating depth.

Earlier this year the Japanese MOD purchased four Remus 100 systems for investigating and mapping seafloor dispersion of contaminants as well as mine countermeasure operations. Mine detection work includes locating explosive devices and other undetonated ordnances as well as finding and classifying submerged objects.

Hydroid's Remus AUVs are modular, and can be fitted with a variety of sensors and used to aid in hydrographic surveys, harbor security operations, debris field mapping, scientific sampling and mapping, as well as many basic and applied research programmes.