The Navy's 4,000-strong Mine Warfare Command based at Naval Station Ingleside, Texas, is undergoing its most radical transformation in decades as it tries to keep up with new technology and a changing world. Modular counter-mine systems embedded on destroyers, submarines, helicopters and the new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) are replacing dedicated minehunting ships to make the force speedier, longer-ranged and more flexible. Concurrent administrative changes aim to reduce overhead.

Through the transformation, the command's message remains unchanged: countering mines is a vital mission. "This includes not only locating and neutralizing sea mines, but also identifying where mines are not present," says Ed Mickley, Mine Warfare Command spokesman.

Command executive director Scott Price points out that, since World War II, mines have accounted for three-quarters of all successful attacks on Navy ships, including two ships that suffered damage during the 1991 Gulf War.

Traditionally, minehunting has been the purview of small, slow ships equipped with sonars and magnetic mine detonators. The ships would spot the mines and clear them themselves or call in divers to disarm them. In recent decades, modified helicopters towing special sleds have joined the fray -- and so have highly-trained dolphins working with Navy handlers. Additionally, from 1996 to 2002, a former amphibious assault ship served as a mine warfare command vessel. (It has been replaced on an experimental basis by a catamaran of commercial design.)

While effective against large, dense minefields in predictable places -- such as those planned for the U.S. seaboard by the Soviet Union during the Cold War -- traditional forces are too slow and flimsy for rapid deployment to unfamiliar waters to counter more mercurial mine threats.

The Navy's solution is to integrate minehunting systems onto its large, fast Arleigh Burke -class destroyers and the future fleet of nimble LCSs (and, eventually, Virginia -class submarines) while transitioning the airborne counter-mine force from oversized Sikorsky MH-53E Sea Dragons to smaller Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawks that can fly from the surface ships' heaving decks.

Several Burke destroyers have been fitted with the Lockheed Martin AN/WLD 1(V)

Remote Minehunting System, or RMS, which Price describes as “a diesel [unmanned] system, with the bulk of its body underwater, that tows a side-scanned radar” for detecting mines.

LCS is designed as a “truck” that can accept different “mission modules” depending upon the threat. The keel of the first LCS was laid last summer. As many as 55 might join the fleet in coming decades. The class's countermine module will be one of the first fielded: module crews are already training on simulators at a Navy facility in Panama City, Florida.

The LCS countermine module combines several advanced minehunting drones including the RMS and the so-called Unmanned Surface Vehicle -- essentially a robot motorboat that tows counter-mine sleds similar to those towed by helicopters. Future development might see mine hunting systems combined with the Northrop Grumman RQ-8 Firescout drone helicopter being considered for the LCS.

As modular and organic capabilities increase, the command will decommission its 12 Osprey -class small coastal minehunters, which "were designed in the 1980s ... to counter massive Soviet mining of U.S. ports," Price says. Six Ospreys are slated for 2007 disposal.

The balance of the command's traditional force -- 14 ships of the larger Avenger class -- will be modernized pending a decision on their fates slated for around 2012.

The command is transforming its administrative structure at the same time that its forces adopt new technologies. The Navy has announced the impending merger of Mine Warfare Command with the Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Center to create a new command devoted to countering undersea threats.

The decision has been met with some skepticism, admitted Admiral John Nathman, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command. “People don't like change, and we have people that don't like what we've done,” Nathman told Defense News on Aug. 15.

“Mine warfare wasn't as holistically treated as it should have been. We tended to put it together operationally at the point of the problem,” Nathman added. “ The benefit to this merger will be the combined use of resources that overlap for both commands.”