THE LITTORAL NAVY: SEALS, DOLPHINS, AND OTHER MARINE MAMMALS

By OTTO KREISHER

The Navy introduces new MCM capabilities while maintaining a dedicated countermine force.

Otto Kreisher is a reporter for Copley News Service.

As the Navy begins to shape its fleet for the 21st century, it is putting greater effort into countering the weapons that caused the most damage to its ships in the last half of the 20th century--sea mines.

"While much of the current discussion of asymmetric threats involves terrorist activities, perhaps the greatest asymmetric threat to expeditionary operations continues to be the antiship mine,'' Maj. Gen. William A. Whitlow, director of expeditionary warfare, told the Senate Armed Services Committee's Seapower Subcommittee on 9 April.

Since 1950, three U.S. Navy ships have been damaged by air attacks, missiles, or torpedoes; 14 have been sunk or damaged by sea mines.

"To address the challenge posed by sea mines, the Navy-Marine Corps team is maintaining a dedicated mine countermeasures [MCM] force, while simultaneously developing and introducing new organic MCM capabilities," Whitlow said.

For those reasons and others, " ... this is an exciting time for the Mine Warfare Command," said Rear Adm. Paul J. Ryan, commander, Mine Warfare Command, in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Ingleside, Texas.

The Navy's "dedicated" mine-warfare force--the ships, helicopters, and personnel of Ryan's command--"now has a pretty good ... [capability] to meet the deepwater [threat]," said Capt. Thomas Davilli, head of Whitlow's mine warfare branch. The force's capabilities are more limited in the shallow-water region--which ranges from the 200-foot depth to the 40-foot line--Davilli said. In very shallow water and the beach zones, he conceded, "We are not where we need to be."

Lapses and Challenges

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee, said that, despite some congressionally mandated progress in mine warfare in recent years, "I fear we are seeing early signs that the Navy Department may be lapsing into previous unacceptable behavior." He cited, as examples, the retirement of the mine countermeasures support ship USS Inchon and the cancellation of two research programs for shallow-water minefield breaching systems. The cancellations were ordered, he noted, "in spite of the fact that the Navy has no near-term alternative to provide this capability."

In an interview, Whitlow challenged the notion that "We don't have any capability in that very shallow-water column. We do. It's just not what we would like it to be."

In its fiscal 2003 mine-warfare plan, the Navy acknowledged that "mine countermeasures represents one of the Navy's most significant operational and tactical challenges." That challenge was demonstrated with lethal force during the Persian Gulf War, when relatively cheap mines caused more than $120 million in damage and dozens of casualties on the Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton and the Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli.

Today, more nations than ever before are producing and selling mines, Davilli said, and have virtually flooded the world with mines ranging from crude floating contact devices to highly sophisticated weapons that are activated by pressure, magnetic influence, and/or sound and can hide on the ocean bottom.

But the Navy has recovered from the late 1970s/early 1980s low point by building a much more capable, modernized, and dedicated mine-warfare force, Davilli added.

The MCM assets now in the inventory, Whitlow said, "provide a sustainable capability for larger missions, such as detecting and clearing mines in a broad geographical area." That capability is needed to permit combat operations overseas by forward-deployed carrier battle groups (CVBGs) and/or amphibious ready groups (ARGs).

The dedicated MCM force includes 26 ships--14 Avenger-class MCM ships, and 12 Osprey-class coastal minehunters, all of which were commissioned between 1987 and 1999--and 20 MH-53E Sea Dragon mine-countermeasures helicopters, as well as 15 explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) detachments with nine to 10 divers each. Most of the MCM force and its 4,500 personnel are stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas, and nearby Ingleside. But one helicopter mine-countermeasures (HM) squadron is based in Norfolk, Va.; four ships, four helicopters, and two EOD detachments are forward-deployed to Bahrain; and two ships are forward-deployed to Sasebo, Japan.

The U.S.-based forces train regularly with battle groups on both coasts; the deployed units drill frequently with U.S. and allied naval groups, Ryan said. "The mine-warfare forces are well-trained and ready to go," he said.

No Quick or Easy Solutions

But the ships and helicopters have limited effectiveness in shallow water and even less in the surf zone and beach.

The two cancelled systems that Kennedy had commented on were SABRE--shallow-water assault breaching equipment--and DET--distributive explosive technology. They were cancelled, Davilli said, because they had demonstrated only limited effectiveness and could not mark the cleared lanes needed for amphibious units to follow.

Today, the mine clearing mission in very shallow waters is assigned to EOD divers and to the "marine mammal system"--i.e., dolphins specifically trained to find and mark mines. The divers and dolphins are sometimes augmented by SEALs and Marine Recon divers. But the current shallow-water antimine process is still slow, and manpower-
intensive, and cannot be improved quickly or easily, Davilli said, if only because of the time needed to train divers and marine mammals. The operation becomes more dangerous as it moves closer to the beach, he noted, where divers are more exposed to enemy gunfire and to "tilt rod" mines that are difficult to detect in churning surf.

Marines usually are responsible for mineclearing in the dry beach zone, Davilli said, but they lack the equipment needed to do the job quickly. The Army recently cancelled a joint program for a mineclearing bulldozer called the Grizzly, after which the Marines started work on an "advance assault breacher vehicle." The vehicle is built on an M1 tank chassis and is fitted with a mine plow, line demolition charges, and a lane marker system.

In dealing with shallow-water mines, the expeditionary warfare office has two key goals, Davilli said: "To try to speed up all of our time lines, and to get the people and the mammals out of the minefields. ...

"We would like it to be all-robotic, no men or mammals in that area," he said. He also said that the Navy plans to used improved ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems to find enemy sea mines so they can be avoided. To address current weaknesses in the shallow-water and beach zones, Davilli said, the Navy has adopted a three-track program to improve existing breaching capabilities while at the same time pursuing both near-term and long-range efforts to develop and field new mine-detection and clearance mechanisms by 2015.

A Focus on Organic Systems

The Navy also is making a major effort to improve its total mine-warfare capabilities by developing new "organic" MCM tools. The dedicated and organic MCM capabilities are complementary, but designed to address two different missions, Whitlow said. It is the Navy's position that both are needed "to safely and effectively prosecute the MCM missions."

The organic MCM systems are being developed primarily to permit the Navy's CVBGs and ARGs to operate in or transit through mined waters without having to wait for the dedicated MCM forces, which might be hundreds or thousands of miles away in times of sudden crisis. Focused primarily on dealing with the mine threat in deep water, the organic systems will provide reduced but still highly capable MCM capabilities, according to a Navy briefing paper.

The first full set of organic MCM systems is scheduled to be delivered to a CVBG by March 2005, Davilli said, in time for the ships in the CVBG to train with the systems prior to deployment later that year. The Navy intends to equip five CVBGs with the organic systems by the end of fiscal year 2007, he said, and all of its CVBGs by the end of FY 2009.

Among the organic MCM systems now planned are two new detection systems and three neutralization devices
to be carried by the new MH-60S Knighthawk helicopters: the Remote Minehunting System (RMS), deployed by surface combatants; and the submarine-launched Long-Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS).

The Submarine Warfare Division of the office of the chief of naval operations also is working on a "mission reconfigurable" UUV, which would have a longer range than the LMRS and be able to carry a variety of sensors that could be used for a broad spectrum of missions.

The MH-60S helicopter, which will carry out many of the organic MCM missions, also could become the replacement for the MH-53Es, which will be reaching the end of their normal service lives beginning in 2009, Davilli said. A study on options for the MH-53E replacement will start next year and should be reflected in the FY 2005 budget. A switch to the MH-60S would provide greater commonality, but could create operational challenges, he said, because the MH-60S would not be able to tow the multifunction sled used by the MH-53E in mineclearing missions.

A Catamaran MCS?

The decision on the future dedicated MCM helicopter also will be a factor in the planning for a permanent replacement for the Inchon as the Navy's principal MCM support ship (MCS), Davilli said. Selection of a heavy-lift helicopter to replace the MH-53E might well mean that the next MCS would be another large-deck amphibious ship, such as an LHA or LHD. A switch to the MH-60S, though, he said, could mean that a smaller ship--such as the Joint Venture, a high-speed catamaran the Navy and Marine Corps are testing, or the proposed Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)--might be able to carry out the MCS mission.

In interviews, Whitlow and Davilli defended the decision to decommission the Inchon this year, instead of in 2005, as earlier planned. A converted LPH amphibious assault ship, the Inchon was
already in the "high maintenance" category before enduring a damaging fire in its engineering spaces. Rather than pay for the repairs, Davilli said, the Navy determined it was more cost-effective "to terminate her early."

The Inchon had performed well, but was not really an ideal platform for the MCS mission, he noted. "Inchon was a very expensive ship. She was old, manpower-intensive, maintenance-intensive," and was not fitted with a well deck, a deficiency that forced the ship's crew to deploy the MH-53E's sled from the flight deck.

"But the problem with Inchon or any [other] ship," Davilli commented, "is that, because of its maintenance cycle, it is only available to you part time. ... If you really want to cover your requirement all the time, it's tough to do with any one ship. If the MCS mission could be handled by a high-speed vessel or an LCS, either of which would require a smaller crew than the Inchon's 1,300-man complement ... the Navy could have more than one [MCS]." Studies now underway on a replacement for the Inchon could lead to construction of a dedicated MCS ship in the 2009-2010 time frame, "if that is what comes out of the [study]," he said.

In the interim, Ryan has available an MCM command package of equipment and personnel from the Inchon that he can deploy aboard a big-deck amphibious assault ship for use in mine-countermeasures operations overseas.

In addition to the broad spectrum of new programs now underway, Davilli said, the Navy's support for mine warfare is demonstrated by the steadily growing MCM budget. The FY 2003 defense budget proposed by President Bush requests an increase of $458 million for mine-warfare programs over the Pentagon's future years defense plan. The increase includes funding for the organic systems, "a major investment in the readiness of the dedicated force," and "significant investments in science and technology," Davilli said. "If you look at other warfare specialties," he said, pointing to the rising line on an MCM funding graph, "I'm not sure anyone can show you a line like that."

Ryan, a career submarine officer on his first full-time assignment in the mine-warfare field, said that he also believes its status with the Navy's other warfare "communities" is rising. "The Navy is recognizing the threat of littoral sea mines," he said, "because we [the mine-warfare community] have become the 'Littoral Navy.'" *