Navy, Air Force Reviving Offensive Mining with New Quickstrikes
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April 26, 2016 10:59 AM • Updated: April 26, 2016 11:33 AM
An MK 62 ÒQuick Strike mine is deployed from the starboard wing of a P-3C Orion aircraft in 2004. US Navy Photo
Consumed with long-running irregular warfare challenges, the Pentagon took its eye off the ball with respect to maritime warfare, particularly against hostile warships.
The Navy is stuck with an obsolescent antiship cruise missile that is outranged by newer systems fielded elsewhere, and the U.S. Air Force lacks an antiship capability that can be fired from beyond visual range. Understandably, both services are now playing catch-up, and are searching for solutions that will allow the Joint force to reliably and effectively neutralize surface combatants. But the urge to focus on neutralizing enemy warships has dramatically constrained concept development to focus only on the tactical task of sinking warships and less on the strategic value of maritime interdiction.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of mine warfare, which has languished in a technological backwater for four decades, starved of resources and relegated to the junior varsity bench. However, a PACOM is directing a joint effort to combine legacy mines with precision guidance and standoff capabilities, introducing the Quickstrike-J and the Quickstrike-ER.
Recent attempts to modernize the capability by
ran into objections on the Pentagon’s third floor because of a presumed limited applicability of mine warfare against warships. But this focus on antisurface warfare (ASuW) misses the whole point of offensive mining. Placing minefields in enemy waters is rarely about sinking warships, although that has proven effective. It is more about
, starving vital industries, interfering with logistics flows and making every voyage to or from a hostile port a potentially risky endeavor.
Viewed from that perspective, recent demonstrations of advanced mining capability have a staggering potential to revolutionize maritime warfare, and deserve close attention from strategists and policymakers in the Department of Defense.
Capturing the Precision Revolution
2,000-lb Quickstrike-J. The weapons are externally identical except for the safe/arming device installed in the nose. At the top is a Mk-64-J Mod 0 and below is a Mk-64-J Mod 3. US Navy Photo
The primary method for mine emplacement for U.S. forces is aerial delivery. The majority of the mine inventory is simply a cost-effective conversion of a general-purpose bomb into a mine. The Mk-80 series of bomb bodies are the warhead sections for the vast majority of air-dropped weapons, and have been since Vietnam. Designed for low aerodynamic drag, the weapons come in four sizes (250, 500, 1000 and 2000-lbs) and have a wide variety of uses from the unguided “dumb bomb” to the GPS-aided JDAM, Paveway Laser-Guided Bomb and even the rocket-boosted AGM-130.
The bomb bodies have fuze wells in the nose and tail for the devices that detonate the weapon. When the fuze is replaced with a target detection device (TDD) and dropped into the water, it becomes a mine that sits on the bottom and waits for a victim. Called “Quickstrike” mines, they can be laid by trained crews at low altitude from the Navy’s P-3 and F-18, and by the Air Force’s B-1 and B-52. Minelaying accuracy is very low, with the parachute kits contributing to poor predictability. Air-laid minefields are this designed for a “random uniform distribution” and consequently require large numbers of mines (and multiple minelaying passes at substantial risk to the aircraft) to be effective. The design of the basic Quickstrike mine has remained static since the Vietnam War, with advances in precision that were applied to the bomb bodies completely ignored for the mine variants.
Mk-82 bomb bodies equipped with the legacy Mk-57 (left and center) or the new Mk-71 (right) target detection devices, converting the weapon to a Mk-62 Quickstrike. These weapons were later built into extended-range winged mines, called GBU-62 Quickstrike-ER. Col. Mike Pietrucha Photo
No longer.
In September of 2014 Pacific Command (PACOM) demonstrated the Quickstrike-ER, a modification of the 500-lb. Australian
. Dropped from a B-52H, this was the first-ever deployment of a precision, standoff aerial mine. Now a parallel Joint effort between PACOM, the Navy and the Air Force has had its first success in the form of a 2000-lb. Mk-64 Quickstrike-J laid by a B-52H. Dropped in two variants, the Quickstrike-J can be laid from any altitude, by any aircraft equipped to drop the GBU-31 JDAM. In the case of the bombers, an entire minefield can be laid in a single pass without even passing directly over the minefield. The mines come in two variants, the Mod 0 with the legacy Mk-57 TDD and the Mod 3 with the new Mk-71 TDD. Both variants are assembled entirely out of components already in the US inventory, making these weapons possible without a protracted acquisition process.
The advent of precision aerial mines has outstripped the ability of mine warfare planners to design the minefields – no planning tools have yet been developed to take into account the ability to tailor a minefield to a specific body of water. What is certain is that precision minelaying will allow minefields to be shaped to maximize the threat in harbors, ship channels and other confined spaces. The mines have JDAM accuracy with respect to their selected impact point on the water surface and have surprisingly predictable underwater trajectories on their way to the bottom. Initial live drops showed a back-of-the-envelope
(CEP) of only six meters
on the bottom. The ability to place a 2000-lb. mine within six meters of a specified aimpoint is unprecedented.
The goal of precision minefields is not to hunt warships. Warships, with their damage control parties, tight compartmentalization and designed-in damage mitigation features are about the worst possible targets for a mine. When
USS Tripoli (LPH-10)
in Desert Storm, she was immobilized for less than 60 minutes and back on station 12 hours later.
USS Princeton (CG-59) hit
, and despite being immobilized her crew restored her systems and she resumed her role as the Air Warfare Commander within two hours.
Tripoli stayed on station for six more days;
Princeton was towed to port when relieved by another cruiser. They continued a long and successful streak – no U.S. warship has been sunk by a mine since the Korean War.
Not so vessels built to commercial standards. Commercial vessels tend towards small crews, large compartments, and lack both redundancy and onboard damage control. The US aerial mining effort against North Vietnamese harbors (codenamed Pocket Money) shut down the ports for the duration before the first mine was laid – all commercial traffic stopped when the US provided 72-hour advance notice. Navy aircraft laid 1000 and 2000-lb. mines on Haiphong harbor three days after that. No commercial ships braved the minefields until Operation End Sweep cleared the single mine that had failed to deactivate on time.