The Iranian Navy is building a new domestically designed minesweeper and
equipping one of its destroyers with advanced systems, the commander of
the Navy announced on Thursday.
Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said that the minesweeper would be able
to quickly clear enemy mines which would possibly be laid in the
entrances of the country’s ports.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the admiral said that the Navy planned to
stage a major naval exercise, entitled Velayat-92, in the current
Iranian calendar year, which stated on March 21.
From December 28, 2012 to January 2, Iran held the Velayat-91 naval
exercise in an area covering about one million square kilometers from
the east side of the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf of Oman to the
northern Indian Ocean.
The six-day maneuvers were conducted in international waters and the
country’s territorial waters with the participation of various units of
the Iranian Navy.
The war games were held to test the country’s new defense and missile
systems, combat vessels, submarines, drones, and torpedoes, and provide
naval forces with the opportunity to perform combat and reconnaissance
missions, repel mock attacks, and practice countering electronic warfare
measures.
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.
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.”
Iran is ramping up its production of mini-submarines, which are 'a huge problem' for US naval power. The US has countered by sending minesweepers to the region.
Iranian submarines participate in a naval parade on the last day of a war game in the Sea of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year.
Iran’s mini-submarines and Special Forces “frogmen” spell trouble for the US Navy
The Iranian military has a growing fleet of mini-submarines that is particularly difficult for the US Navy to detect and track. They are kitted out with torpedoes, highly-trained SEAL-like frogmen, and – most troublesome for the US military – mines that could threaten to shut down the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane.
In response, the commander of US forces in the region recently announced that the Navy would be doubling the number of its US minesweepers in the Gulf. The ranks of these minesweepers had remained steady for the past decade, but have risen from four to eight since June.
The ramped-up Iranian production of mini-submarines – as well as the Pentagon’s response – threatens to ratchet up military tensions in the region, analysts say.
The additional four Avenger-class minesweepers arrived in Bahrain on June 24. Along with the minesweepers, the Navy also sent additional minesweeping helicopters called “Sea Dragons.”
Their mission will be to counter the Iranian mini-submarines, which are “a huge problem for us,” says retired Navy Cmdr. Christopher Harmer, who from 2008 to 2009 was the director of future operations for the US Navy Fifth Fleet, stationed in Bahrain.
“They are a threat to us because they can disperse them throughout the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, and it’s extremely difficult for us to track them,” he adds. As a result, they can lay "in wait to execute an ambush.”
The challenge of mini-subs
The US Navy is more accustomed to tracking large, Soviet-era nuclear-class submarines – something Iran knows well, adds Commander Harmer. “Looking for small subs in shallow water is much more difficult, because the acoustics are so much more difficult – smaller makes less noise.”
As a result, he adds, the Iranian military-industrial complex “has prioritized these mini-subs – and have gone into overdrive building them.” Mini-submarines are generally considered any submarine vessel under 500 tons and roughly 100 feet long or less.
Five years ago, the Iranian military had “no mini-subs,” says Harmer, senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. Now they have 19 in service, and are building an average of four per year – a “strategically significant” force, he adds.
The Philippines needs 48 F-16 jet fighters, four to six mini submarines, more armed frigates and corvette-size combat vessels and minesweepers if it is to have a credible military defense capability, the Center for a New American Security said on Friday.
The assessment of the center, an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization that develops strong, pragmatic and principled national security and defense proposals based in Washington, DC, came amid the standoff between Beijing and Manila over the Panatag or Scarborough Shoal, which is within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone but is being claimed by China as its own.
The shoal is a coral reef surrounding a lagoon, and it is 124 nautical miles from Zambales and 472 nautical miles from China’s Hainan province.
The Philippines’ Armed Forces has been struggling to get financing for its modernization program for over two decades, leaving its Air Force without a single jet fighter interceptor since 2005 and the Navy with old warships, some of them of World War II vintage.
The Philippines’ Air Force and Navy were second to none in Asia except Japan from 1947 up to the ‘70s, but then it was slowly overtaken as a result of the poor financing of the military’s modernization.
Most of the country’s aircraft and ships were provided by the United States when the Americans still had their air and naval bases in the Philippines under the RP-US Military Bases Agreement, which expired in 1991 when the Philippine Senate did not extend the agreement.
Air Force records showed that in 1965 the US provided the Philippines 30 F-5A/B supersonic jet fighters, becoming one of the first countries in the world to acquire US-made fighter jets.
In 1979 the Air Force bought 25 F-8 Crusader war jets and some helicopters from the US, but due to wear and tear and the lack of spare parts the F-8s and F-5s were decommissioned in 1988 and 2005, leaving the Air Force with no jet fighters to guard Philippine airspace.
As a result, the country’s “air defense capability became practically zero,” said Col. Raul del Rosario, commander of the Air Defense Wing based in Pampanga.
“Our Air Force is referred to as a Helicopter Air Force [and] we have only one operating radar with very limited capability,” Del Rosario said.
“What’s disheartening is that, with this token capability, our nation is faced with enormous security challenges.
“We need to develop facilities for the equipment that will be acquired such as radar sites, forward operating bases, hangars and command and control facilities.”
