The opening scenes of Nate Boaz’s new memoir of his Marine Corps service during America’s recent “long wars” offer a study in contrasts. It begins driving headlong into the crossfire of multiple defensive positions around Saddam Hussein’s palace, his team of human intelligence Marines sitting atop sandbags layered along the floorboards of their HMMWV, the only protection offered in their soft sided and unarmored vehicle. Boaz writes evocatively, with tracers arcing across the sky and the rush of adrenaline and fear mixing as they fight their way into a culminating moment of the run to Baghdad in April of 2003. Boaz tells his readers that the scene “is seared into my memory and is more vivid to me than yesterday.” But from that moment of dramatic combat, he shifts our attention to another place of potential conflict and trauma, the office of his psychologist many years later. There, the description is just as vivid with hot peppermint tea to calm the stomach, the washing of the white noise machine outside the office door, and the comfortable and familiar place on the couch.
This opening of a memoir, one which takes Boaz from a lower middle-class upbringing in rural Florida to some of the most consequential military operations of our generation, foreshadows something courageous about his reflection on his service and his life after he wore the uniform. He offers up observations on his experiences that are full of vivid detail and clear writing, but which also do not shy away from the complications of how we mentally and emotionally process our experiences in war. His experience and his honesty reminds us that this has an impact on our lives, both during and after our service.
Running Toward Firefollows a generally chronological form and guides the reader through Boaz’s life before, during, and after his service. He is admirably open about his life growing up in Florida, his motivations and interest in becoming a Marine and what led him to the U.S. Naval Academy, and about his early formation as an officer. He relates to the reader the experiences of going from a Marine Corps and a nation at peace to one under attack on an early September morning, leading to involvement in a pair of conflicts on the other side of the world. There are moments of heroism, the dangers of combat, and the murky world of intelligence work in a warzone. Boaz and his small group of intelligence Marines were involved in a series of significant operations during the early years of the war in Iraq, and the reader is brought along in the back of the HMMWV as they help with POW rescues, hunt for high value targets from the infamous “deck of cards,” and interact with the Iranians.
Throughout the chapters that take place deployed overseas, readers are reminded of a few of the realities of war. First, that a creative junior officer and a good team of enlisted Marines or sailors can accomplish an enormous amount if given proper leadership and open mission orders. Second, that our adversaries and enemies are humans as well, which Boaz reminds us a number of times and recalls with the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observation that “if we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” And, though the war in Iraq was a messy one, all wars (to paraphrase Tolstoy on families) are messy in their own way.
In addition to Boaz’s wartime experience, this memoir helps us understand some of what it is like to come home from war. His reflections on the messages of masculinity and toughness that most of us internalized as young recruits will hit home for many veterans. He reflects that “I had believed that the answer to all things in life was simply ‘be a tougher warrior,’” a belief that led down some dark paths. The realities of struggling to belong and looking for meaning in post-service American society also will resonate for many. And he shares some thoughts on how we can help one another. Boaz offers his own experience and the things that he has learned along the way not as a mentor or a guide but as a good intelligence officer would, warning us of the indications and warnings and the possible implications for the rest of us.
The great strength of Nate Boaz’s memoir is that it is not just about going off to war. It is not just about the combat and the heroic acts of his fellow Marines, although those elements are certainly there and in vivid detail. But Boaz reminds us that war is a human endeavor and humans don’t go off to war in isolation. They leave people behind, they go with shipmates, and eventually the lucky ones return again to people they love and who love them. This story does not treat war in isolation, it acknowledges that human continuum, in both its complications and its blessings.
In this way, this book joins the memorable memoirs of Marines of the past like Eugene Sledge and Nate Fick, but it also raises the genre to something higher as Boaz brings years of reflection and wrestling with what it means to be an American at war, and an American home from war. Running Toward Fire is both a gripping read and a deep and meaningful offering that gives veterans and Americans things to think about.
BJ Armstrong is a naval professional and a historian who has served more than 25 years with the sea services. He is the author or editor of seven books on naval history, strategy, and the military profession. His book Developing the Naval Mind , with co-author John Freymann, was recently added to the list of books recommended as “CNO’s Professional Reading.” Opinions expressed here are offered in his personal and academic capacity and do not reflect the policies or views of the U.S. Navy or any government organization.
Featured Image: U.S. Marines from the Hawaii-based Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment patrol through back alleys in Haqlaniyah, Iraq, June, 1, 2006. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by SGT Roe F. Seigle, 1st Marine Division)
Smoke twisted slowly out of a burnt crater, listing sideways in the gray light of an overcast dawn. A gentle breeze caught the twist and wafted it downwind. To Staff Sergeant Ron Garcia it smelled familiar – sweet petroleum mixed with the acidic charred aftertaste of high explosive. He’d made it through another long night of missile strikes. The Staff Sergeant sat against the wall of his subterranean command post, watching the waves of the South China Sea while tracing the edges of his battered tablet with his finger. Soon, he’d have to go check the men and the gear, but he hesitated in a moment of quiet. He looked at his watch, it was May 5, 2040. The war had been going on for eight years. Eight years seemed too long, and he was tired.
Staff Sergeant Garcia was lean, with hunched shoulders that implied a coiled tense energy or intense fatigue depending on the light. He wore a bleached uniform that hung loosely on his frame. He had been out in this stretch of islands for nearly eighteen months making sure his motley team of Marines, soldiers, airmen, and local auxiliaries stayed focused and stayed alive. In that time, he’d never seen the enemy. What a way to fight a war.
A thick mass of low-slung clouds started to roll in, washing the island in a wet mist. “Perfect,” he thought to himself. He popped to his feet and walked back into the cave, quickly gulping a mouthful of water and a couple bites of stale protein bar. The other occupants of the CP slowly emerged.
“You running a check? SATCOM is still working, but landline is down after last night,” said Senior Airman Brenner, with bloodshot eyes and similarly loose-fitting fatigues.
“Yeah, I haven’t heard anything in a couple of hours so I’m going to go check on the Lieutenant and try to get a line to the big island. Get the power back on and go check the shoreline to see if we got any new deliveries. Leave Desmond here with Santo to monitor the SATCOM and watch the beach. I’ll be back before sunset.”
Slinging his rifle behind his back, Staff Sergeant Garcia checked the battery on his tablet and picked up a handheld radio before heading out the door.
As he left the mouth of the cave, Garcia pushed aside wire netting and instinctively looked up to scan the sky. With bounding strides, he walked downhill, following a beaten path into the remains of the fisherman’s outpost on the beach. The structures, rusted from neglect and punctured by fragmentation, were a reminder of the days before the war went hot – when it was sufficient to hold territory with flags and legal claims rather than Marines and steel. Despite appearances, they still managed to hide a missile launcher in the remains of the concrete block fisherman shelter.
Garcia moved South along the rocky shore. The beach quickly ran out and he resorted to hopping across black volcanic rocks. This island was barely a mile long, so he didn’t have far to go. Another shallow bay emerged. Garcia turned inland and started the climb to one of the three sheltered outposts on the island. As he climbed, his nose twitched again as the smell of sweet petroleum and acidic char returned. The Marines had a launch site here on the windward side of the island. It was a good site, sheltered from direct overhead reconnaissance but with a commanding view of the sea to the West. The Lieutenant had taken a rotation here to spend some time with the guys.
Quickening his pace, Garcia turned a corner around two large boulders into the rocky platform and stopped in horror. Everything was black and smoking. His stomach dropped as he rushed to the twisted remains of his Marines. They were pushed up against the rough walls and cold to touch. The Lieutenant slouched near the edge of the platform, his jaw hung slack and loose against his chest. On the other side, Corporal Reston lay face down, his limbs splayed at acutely unnatural angles.
“Goddamn it,” Garcia breathed out quietly, touching the Lieutenant’s cold shoulder.
Looking up from the Marines, he assessed the launchers and missile stockpile. Like the Marines, the equipment was charred and twisted. The stacked missiles were toppled or burnt while the launcher showed gashes and pock marks where it must have been punctured by tungsten. He found the Lieutenant’s faded ball cap and stuffed it in a cargo pocket.
To get to the other launch site, Garcia had to cross over the island’s ridge. Luckily, the clouds still hung low and shrouded him from the sky. There was little foliage to speak of so walking across the ridge was always a risk. Garcia instinctively hunched down and ran across the island.
He dropped down to the leeward side, slipped and nearly tumbled into Corporal Masterson and Lance Corporal Hubert huddled in their hole. This site was sheltered on three sides by jagged vertical rocks that stuck up out of the ocean like fingers. Masterson tried to catch Garcia and gave him a hand down into their shelter. Garcia took a seat next to them.
“You guys OK?” He asked.
“Yeah, although they seemed angry about something last night,” Masterson said with a grin.
“That’s why I need you to keep it locked in today. How’s your gear?” Garcia asked.
“Missiles are dry. Drones are charged and ready. Ammo is the same as it always is. Targeting diagnostics are all green gumballs. Could use some new items on the menu, though.”
“Got it. Just be thankful you’ve got a menu,” Garcia grumbled, as he looked out from this natural bunker at the East side of the island and the Philippine Sea.
“The Lieutenant and Reston are dead. Comms are down, but I’ll get them fixed soon,” Garcia continued.
The Marines followed Garcia’s gaze out to the ocean.
“I’m ready to go home,” said Hubert.
Garcia spent the rest of the day checking on assets sprinkled around the island. He recalled a story he read growing up – of Robinson Crusoe washed up on a deserted island in the middle of the sea. Crusoe had built shelter, sowed crops, and befriended a native man named Friday. Except for cannibals, it sounded like a grand adventure. When Garcia was first dropped off on the island he had felt like Crusoe, but that feeling was long gone.
This island got nearly everything from the sea. Garcia walked along the leeward side and came to a camouflaged concrete box nestled in the rocks above the high-water line. He popped off a metal manhole cover to reveal the hardware inside. The contents of the box were their lifeline to the cabling that connected them with Luzon and brought them consistent electricity. This box charged their batteries and was the network switch for their wired communications connecting the CP to each launch site.
Talking over radio was possible. Talking over SATCOM was possible. But, this close to the PLA Navy, even a radio squelch invited a missile or a drone while wired communication stayed out of earshot and only suffered from a busted wire here and there. So, they used old school wire to talk and only monitored SATCOM to receive critical tasking.
About a quarter mile offshore was an array of submarine batteries installed on the floor of the island’s shelf that pulled energy off the telecommunications line, converted it, and fed it into this box. That was enough power to keep them going indefinitely.
The box was humming and its contents were intact. Garcia connected his tablet into a port and watched the screen. He reviewed diagnostics for the battery systems, the subsea cable line, and the cable line’s sensors. Then, he got on the net, authenticated his crypto, and typed a quick message:
“ROWAN3, FRESNO9. SITREP. PLA-N MISSILE ATTACK. 2 KIA. 1 LAUNCHER DESTROYED. SITUATION WELL IN HAND.”
Garcia’s island was a small but important outpost. The Company was based on the “big island,” which was a misnomer because the “big island” was only five miles long. There were detachments manning other small outposts on outlying islands, but Garcia’s was the northernmost, meaning they had the greatest range but were also the most exposed. The Marines and missiles sprinkled around the Philippine Sea were meant to deny the PLA Navy freedom of operation in these constrained waters and augment the combat capacity of the waning US Navy surface fleet.
Garcia saw an alert flash on his screen for an inbound message.
“FRESNO9, ROWAN3. ACK. BE ADVISED. INCREASED PLA-N SURFACE/SUBSURFACE ACTIVITY ANTICIPATED IN AO. HOLD CURRENT POS DESTROY ANY EN OVER II THRESHOLD. RELIEF AS SCHEDULED NOT BEFORE.”
“Shit.”
As dusk was beginning to set in, Garcia hurried back into the CP. He saw Santo Biyernes, a big island local who served as an auxiliary member of their unit, unpacking a number of large waterproof bags lined up against the wall, and exclaimed with relief.
“What did we get!?”
Santo turned around and smiled a welcome as Brenner walked out from the tactical operations room.
“Mostly food. But also two new tube-launched drones, a couple of replacement satellite arrays, and de-sal kits. I saw the boat caught out in a reef, so I got a little wet dragging it in.” Brenner said, swelling with pride as if he were a hunter who had killed his meal instead of dragging in one of the thousands of surface maritime drones that were slowly but surely supplying the static island campaign.
“Awesome. Are comms up? I think it’s just a wire shunt.”
“Yeah. I found the shunt and patched it. We’re up. I saw a message came in, but couldn’t read it.”
“I have it here,” Garcia said, raising his tablet. “Red is coming our way in a big way and we need to be ready.”
“Where’s the Lieutenant?” Brenner asked, wide eyed.
“He got hit last night, but we’re going to get ours tonight.”
With communications re-established with Masterson and Hubert on the leeward side of the island and the rest of the Company on the big island, Garcia leapt into action. He needed to find the enemy.
Each of the missile sites had a number of rotary and tube-launched fixed wing drones equipped with sensor arrays to identify enemy ships and guide missiles into them. Garcia got the long-range drones into the air and traveling west to the vicinity of known sea corridors. He didn’t have to worry about controlling them because their AI understood the mission.
Garcia had been an artilleryman for the better part of two decades. As he booted his reconnaissance and targeting systems up, he thought about how much his tools had evolved. He was first trained on rudimentary and temperamental AFATDS fire control software on the Oklahoma plains, then on the KillSwitch mobile app in the California hills. Now, seated on a makeshift bench hunched over two screens, Garcia activated the distributed acoustic sensor suite along his island’s subsea cables. In addition to a single connection between his island and the big island, the cable was festooned along the coastline. This festoon created multiple redundant cable landing access points and also allowed Garcia to monitor the depths of the sea around him. On his other screen, he received video feeds from the aerial drones. He now had eyes and ears in the sky and the sea.
With the missiles loaded and activated, he called his Marines back to the CP. Masterson and Hubert shuffled in with a renewed sense of urgency and purpose. Masterson took a seat next to Garcia while Hubert quickly pulled the .50 caliber machine gun from the recesses of the cave and set it to cover the bay. Corporal Masterson and Lance Corporal Desmond monitored launcher diagnostics on their own tablets while keeping an eye on Garcia. Now it was a waiting game.
“We’re looking for anything over threshold two, so more than 7,000 tons. That means we’re looking for Type 61 or 57 destroyers, or even an old Type 55 Renhai if we have to settle,” Garcia muttered as he watched images from the airborne drones pop up on his feed.
The small fleet of drones, both from Garcia and the rest of the Company on the big island, communicated with each other and coordinated their search path. They had cues about where the enemy fleet was likely steaming from and where they were likely steaming to, so their AI could anticipate the likely path. Sure enough, well into the night, the first targets began to materialize on Garcia’s screen.
Garcia saw the highlighted outline of a Type 61 destroyer appear and felt a wave of adrenaline flush into his bloodstream. His fingers tingled and shook as the drone cycled through different sensor spectrums to identify the vessel.
“Standing by to fire, Staff Sergeant,” one of the Corporals whispered, dripping with anticipation.
“Alright. Relax. We have to wait until we identify more, and the AI matches us,” Staff Sergeant Garcia soothed. Firing at the first identified target would spoil the surprise. They would have to wait for the AI to calculate the ideal flight path of each of the Company’s launch sites, match their launcher to the right ship, and deconflict through the Navy’s antiquated JADC2 targeting network. Garcia hoped the AI would do its job right.
Another tense 20 minutes passed. The number of targets acquired was quickly growing. After finding the first ship, the AI could easily anticipate the enemy’s order of battle. It seemed obvious that the PLA Navy fleet was heading directly for the US Fleet at Camilo Osias Naval Base under cloud cover and darkness. With few U.S. Navy surface ships in the South China Sea, they must’ve felt uncontested.
Then, the target list abruptly started to shrink. Garcia stared at his screen, growing impatient and increasingly concerned with each passing minute as images blinked off the screen, targets fell off the list, and yet he had not received an order to launch.
“What the hell, Staff Sergeant?” one of the Corporals muttered.
Garcia was at a loss. His team was ready. They had done everything right. The list had been full of ripe targets – lumbering surface vessels with meager defenses just begging for a naval strike missile. A target allocation to his team would have justified his last eighteen months of semi-starvation. It would have justified the daily battle drills that he had forced his team to sweat through in full PPE over and over again. It would have justified eighteen months away from his wife and two daughters, who he was scared wouldn’t recognize him when he came home. It would mean that the Lieutenant’s missing jaw and Reston’s shattered limbs would have had a purpose – a purpose other than fulfilling some General’s wet dream of what the new Marine Corps should be. Tears welled up in Garcia’s eyes as he clenched his fists and tried to stop himself from screaming.
The target list dwindled down to vessels below their threshold – tenders, minesweepers, ammunition boats. There must be something wrong with his systems. He tested the connections, running his shaking fingers over each wire and port. Nothing.
Garcia looked at the screen of his cable sensing system. The diagnostic dashboard showed no problems. Then he looked at the time in the corner of the screen. It read 9:47pm. The screen had been frozen for hours. Garcia furiously grabbed the tablet, closed out of its programs and restarted. The boot procedure stretched on for what felt like eternity. As the cable sensing system came online, the acoustic disturbances in the water surrounding the subsea cables north of his island gave him a clear picture.
“It’s CV-35!” CV-35 Shaoshan was the PLA Navy’s cutting-edge aircraft carrier. She was escorted by a pair of destroyers and an amphibious ship and seemed to be making a quiet run around the southern tip of Taiwan to break out of the first island chain into the Philippine Sea.
“AI must have known CV-35 was missing!” Garcia cried out.
The AI finished its calculations, reorienting the remaining missiles from Staff Sergeant Garcia’s launchers to target CV-35, and flashed a message to Garcia.
“Fire.”
Geoffrey Irving works for the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in information and communications technology supply chains. Geoff previously served on active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps and currently serves in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Geoff is a graduate of Tsinghua University College of Law and writes about the national security implications of economic and technological competition.
At no time since the end of World War II have so many nations fielded blue water navies that have roamed the globe. Navies from Australia, China, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have regional and worldwide commitments. Whether it is reinforcing or challenging rules-based order at sea, showing resolve to reassure allies and deter rivals, or exercising with other navies, these fleet also recognize that they must be prepared for high-end war at sea. Comparative naval advantage has returned as a critical unit of measure in great power competition.
But despite growing threats, navies have become accustomed to traversing the oceans and littorals with near impunity. This ability is now being increasingly jeopardized, and not necessarily by conventional high-end threats. For centuries, sea mines have presented an affordable and effective option in naval warfare. That threat is increasing today. The number of countries with mines, mining assets, mine manufacturing capabilities, and the intention to export mines has grown dramatically over the past several decades. More than fifty countries possess mines and mining capability. Of these, thirty countries have demonstrated an indigenous mine production capability and twenty have attempted to export these weapons. Additionally, non-state actors have used these cheap and plentiful weapons to hazard commercial vessels and disrupt commerce on the oceans.
When policymakers, military leaders, and analysts compare the qualities of various navies, they typically think in terms of numbers of ships, submarines, aircraft, and other conventional assets. However, considering the growing threat of sea mines worldwide, the capability to employ and defeat mines forms another core consideration in gauging the balance of naval advantage. Navies must consider how to field affordable and risk-worthy unmanned systems at scale to meet the mine threat.
A Centuries Old Challenge
Mine warfare is not new. Precursors to naval mines were first invented by innovators of Imperial China. The first plan for a sea mine in the West was drawn up by Ralph Rabbards, who presented his design to Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1574. Since the invention of the Bushnell Keg in 1776 (a watertight keg filled with gunpowder that was floated toward the enemy, detonated by a sparking mechanism if it struck a ship), mine warfare has been an important element of naval warfare.1 While the first attempt to deliver the Bushnell Keg from America’s first combat submarine, the Turtle, against a British warship in 1776 failed, subsequent attempts to employ these early mines were successful.2
Over 150 years ago, Admiral David Farragut became famous for “damning torpedoes” (which were actually mines) at the entrance to Mobile Bay during the Civil War.3 Indeed, in the early stages of the Civil War, Admiral Farragut wrote to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles about the sea mine threat posed by the Confederacy, stating, “I have always deemed it unworthy of a chivalrous nation, but it does not do to give your enemy such a decided superiority over you.” Farragut’s warning was eerily prescient. 4
The use of sea mines and countermeasures to these weapons have figured significantly in every major war and nearly every regional conflict in which the United States has been involved since the Revolutionary War. Indeed, the naval mine has been a mainstay of modern warfare. The North Sea Mine Barrage, a large minefield laid by the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy between Scotland and Norway during World War I, inhibited the movement of the German U-boat fleet. During World War I more than one thousand merchant ships and warships were lost because of the 230,000 mines used.5 NATO navies continue to clear these mines to this day.6
Mines released by U.S. Navy submarines and dropped by U.S. Army Air Force B-29 bombers in the Western Pacific during World War II sank hundreds of Japanese warships, merchant ships, and smaller vessels. During World War II 2,665 ships were lost or damaged by 100,000 offensive mines.7
In Korea during the early 1950s, the Soviets provided North Korea with thousands of sea mines. These were used to defend key harbors and multiple U.S. warships struck mines. During the Vietnam War, over 300,000 American naval mines were used. In 1972 Haiphong Harbor was seeded with 11,000 destructor mines and was shut down completely for months, and it took years to clear out all the American mines.8
In the past several decades, rogue states have indiscriminately employed sea mines. Libya used mines to disrupt commerce in the Gulf of Suez and the Strait of Bab el Mandeb. In the 1980s Iran laid mines to hazard military and commercial traffic in the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, leading to the devastating mine strike against USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG 58). During Operation Desert Storm in 1990-1991, the threat of mines precluded the effective use of the Navy and Marine Corps expeditionary task force off Kuwait and hazarded all U.S. and coalition forces operating in the Arabian Gulf. Indeed, Operation Desert Storm highlighted the importance of mine warfare with the heavy damage dealt to USS Princeton (CG 59) and USS Tripoli (LPH 10). The U.S. Navy has an abundant history of employing mines and striking them, but it remains unclear what the U.S. Navy’s mine strategy is for modern naval warfare.
Captain Bruce McEwen, commanding officer of amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LPH-10), inspects damage to the vessel inflicted by an Iraqi mine that the ship struck while serving as a mine clearing platform during Operation Desert Storm, February 18, 1991. (Photo via U.S. National Archives)
Today’s Ongoing Mine Challenge
Mine warfare remains a critical element of naval capability. In terms of availability, variety, affordability, ease of deployment, and potential impact on naval operations, mines are some of the most attractive weapons available.
Sea mines are hard to find, difficult to neutralize, and can present a deadly hazard to any vessel—especially those ships specifically designed to hunt them. They can also heavily shape behavior and weigh on the operational calculus of commanders, making them a source of potent psychological effects in the battlespace.
Great power rivals are likely to employ mines in any conflict with the United States. Scott Truver highlighted the danger posed by China’s mine warfare capabilities, as well as those of other potentially hostile nations:
“The mine warfare experiences of America and other nations are not lost on the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Chinese naval analysts and historians understand the asymmetric potential for mine warfare to baffle the enemy, and thus achieve exceptional combat results.’ Mines provide what some have described as affordable security via asymmetric means.”9
Seth Cropsey echoed similar challenges and highlighted the mining capabilities China and Russia would bring to the fight. He focused primarily on the threat from China, noting:
“One of the top global mine threats comes from China. It has been estimated that Beijing has as many as 100,000 such weapons. Those range from the old-fashioned moored contact mine to include mines that have rocket-propelled weapons and target detection systems. In the event of a conflict with China, the United States is unlikely to approach warfare from the land. That leaves us with the seas as the place where conflict is most likely to play out.
Beijing would likely concentrate on creating choke points in areas such as the archipelagos that separate East Asia from the Middle East and the South China Sea. That means that sea control and navigating around China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities will be crucial. It’s reasonable to expect that the Chinese would use mines there, and reasonable to expect that they would use mines if they decided to use force against Taiwan. Moving through those straits is crucial and being able to clear them of mines is equally important.”10
The danger of naval mines being employed short of major war is acute in the Middle East. In October 2020, a Maltese-flagged tanker was damaged by a mine while taking on crude oil the Yemeni port of Bir Ali. MV Syra reportedly suffered significant damage, resulting in an oil spill.11 Shortly after this event, in November 2020, a mine in the Red Sea exploded and damaged a Greek oil tanker.12 In December 2020, a Singapore-flagged tanker berthed at the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah was damaged by a mine, with Houthi militia from Yemen strongly linked to this attack.13 In January 2021, an oil tanker off the coast of Iraq discovered a mine attached to its hull.14 Regional navies, assisted by U.S. and U.K. navies, have stepped up mine countermeasures exercises in the Arabian Gulf.15 Most recently, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States conducted the Artemis Trident MCM Exercise in Arabian Gulf.16
As part of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia mined the waters off the Crimean Peninsula. Some of those mines either broke loose or were cut loose and drifted into shipping lanes used by Ukrainian and NATO ships.17 Russia has continued to use sea mines extensively during the conflict in Ukraine. One of the most prominent examples involved Russian forces laying mines along the Dnieper River to the north of Kherson city to make it harder for the Ukrainians to cross.18
Other incidents have included Russian drifting mines that have been found along the coasts of Turkey and Romania, as well as elsewhere in the Black Sea. An Estonian cargo ship in the Black Sea was sunk by a Russian mine during this war.19 More recently, in February 2023, Turkish media claimed that a drifting sea mine exploded near Agva on the Black Sea coast.20
The ability of the U.S. Navy to deal with the growing threat of sea mines is not getting better, it is getting worse. The platforms that embody the U.S. Navy’s primary mine countermeasures (MCM) capability—the MH-53E AMCM aircraft and the Avenger-class minesweeper—are scheduled to retire in the next few years, which will leave the totality of the Navy’s MCM capability in the discrete number of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) to be outfitted with the Mine Countermeasures mission package, which has suffered multiple delays during testing and development.
This is not the MCM capability needed by a global navy facing a pervasive mine threat. Nor is it a solution that eliminates the extreme danger to Sailors who are forced to work in a minefield to accomplish their mission, especially when the minefield is overlayed with the advanced anti-ship and anti-air capabilities of a great power adversary. Fortunately, technology has advanced to the point that with the proper commitment the Navy can conduct MCM remotely by leveraging unmanned systems and take the Sailor out of the minefield.
Leveraging Unmanned Technologies to Defeat Deadly Sea Mines
For all navies, there is only one way to completely take the Sailor out of the minefield and that is to leverage unmanned technologies to hunt and destroy mines from a distance. While this principle is readily acknowledged, it is not a lack of need that has impeded the Navy’s efforts, but rather technological maturity. In the past, unmanned vehicle technologies were not mature enough to take on the complex task of mine hunting. But today, they are now capable enough. These capabilities are no longer based on concepts or early prototypes. Rather, every necessary component has been in the water and tested in operational environments.
The following proposal is based on three subcomponent candidates that can deliver a single-sortie, autonomous mine countermeasures solution with autonomous target recognition. This design can also flexibly accommodate various towed sonars and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).
The MARTAC Devil Ray T38 is intended as the autonomous platform for the package, and will host a communications and data transmission hub, in addition to above-water and underwater sensors.
The ThayerMahan Sea Scout Subsea Imaging System is specifically designed for missions such as mine hunting. The Sea Scout system is based on the in-production COTS Kraken Robotics Katfish-180 tow-body mounted synthetic aperture sonar. The system is designed to search for mine-like objects and is integrated by ThayerMahan’s remote operations and communications system.
The Pluto Gigas is an existing, standalone, third generation ROV with several systems deployed globally and with over 3,000 mines destroyed. The Pluto Gigas deploys an acoustically armed and detonated countermine charge that is low-cost both in production and in logistics and sustainment. Several charges can be loaded onto the T38 to enable single-sortie field clearance.
These three components can combine to deliver an effective mine hunting solution. The driving principle of this solution is to incorporate mature hardware that will minimize risk to the host platform during execution of the MCM mission. To that end, the weight and outside dimensions of the mission package are within a few inches of the dimensions of a common 11-meter RHIB. Launch and recovery should be easily accomplished using standard naval small craft handling procedures for the host vessel.
While this MCM solution is component agnostic, the leading commercial-off-the-shelf candidates for the initial solution were chosen based on their technical maturity, as well as their current use by various navies. Leveraging these commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems will enable this MCM solution to move forward at an accelerated pace to speedily deliver a fleet capability in the near term.
The Need to Take Action Todayto Address the MCM Challenge
Because ships and Sailors operate daily in harm’s way, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps—and by extension other allied navies—would be well-served to accelerate their efforts to deal with deadly sea mines. The essential components for such a system exist today, and a robust COTS MCM solution can reach fruition in the near-term.
While programs of record are developing next-generation technology, navies should invest in parallel-path solutions that leverage mature subsystems that are ready to provide capability today. It is time to put a speedy solution in the hands of Sailors.
To achieve victory, navies must get to the fight in the face of anti-access area denial capabilities of adversaries. Given the low cost, ease of deployment, and increasing proliferation of naval mines, the ability to find and clear these deadly mines makes for a major pacing challenge for navies. Developing and fielding mine countermeasures capabilities, overlooked for too long, should be a first order priority for navies today.
Captain George Galdorisi is a career naval aviator and national security professional. His 30-year career as a naval aviator culminated in 14 years of consecutive service as executive officer, commanding officer, commodore, and chief of staff. He enjoys writing, especially speculative fiction about the future of warfare. He is the author of 18 books, including four consecutive New York Times bestsellers. His latest book, published by the U.S. Naval Institute, is Algorithms of Armageddon: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Future Wars.
References
[1] Tyler Rogoway, “The Revolutionary War Gave Birth to the Age of Naval Mine Warfare,” The War Zone, July 4, 2016, accessed at: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4256/the-revolutionary-war-gave-birth-to-the-age-of-naval-mine-warfare.
[2] Christopher Hevey and Anthony Pollman, “Reimagine Offensive Mining, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2021.
[3] Farragut’s boldness is especially striking because in 1862 a Confederate mine sank USS Cairo in the Yazoo River.
[4] U.S. Navy Fact File, “U.S. Navy Mines,” accessed at: https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/Display-FactFiles/Article/2167942/us-navy-mines/.
[5] See, for example, Paul Ahn, “A Tale of Two Straits,” U.S. Naval Institute Naval History Magazine, December 2020 for a concise history of naval mine warfare.
[6] “NATO Forces Clear Mines off Port of Dieppe,” The Maritime Executive, April 9, 2020, accessed at: https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/royal-navy-clears-mines-off-port-of-dieppe.
[7] US Navy Fact File, “US Navy Mines,” accessed at https://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2100&tid=1200&ct=2).
[10] Yasmin Tadjdeh, “Navy Invests in New Mine Warfare Technology,” National Defense Magazine (online), April 6, 2020, accessed at: https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/4/6/navy-invests-in-new-mine-warfare-technology.
[11] Edward Lundquist, “Tanker Loading Crude Damaged by Floating Mine in Yemen,” Seapower, October 9, 2020, accessed at: https://seapowermagazine.org/tanker-loading-crude-damaged-by-floating-mine-in-yemen/.
[12] Ryan White, “Greek-Operated Tanker Damaged by Mine at Saudi Terminal,” Naval News, November 25, 2020, accessed at: https://navalnews.net/greek-operated-tanker-damaged-by-mine-at-saudi-terminal/.
[13] Sam Chambers, “Hafnia Tanker at Jeddah Becomes Latest Mine Victim,” Splash 247.com, December 14, 2020, accessed at: https://splash247.com/hafnia-tanker-at-jeddah-becomes-latest-mine-victim/.
[14] “Oil Tanker Near Iraq Finds Mine on Hull as Gulf Risks Mount,” Newsmax, January 4, 2021, accessed at: https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/cos-exe-gen-gov/2021/01/01/id/1003892/.
[15] “Saudi, UK, U.S. Naval Forces Conduct Mine Countermeasures Training,” Defense-Aerospace, November 29, 2020, accessed at: https://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/214552/saudi%2C-uk%2C-u.s.-naval-forces-conduct-mine-countermeasures-training.html.
[16] Naval News Staff, “U.S. France and UK Complete Artemis Trident MCM Exercise in Gulf,” Naval News, April 13, 2023.
[17] “Weapons: Naval Mines in The Black Sea,” Strategy Page, February 2, 2023, accessed at: https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htweap/articles/20230202.aspx.
[18] Gerrard Kaonga, “Russia Mines River as Soldiers Prepare Kherson Retreat: Kyiv,” Newsweek, October 25, 2002.
[19] Scott Savitz, “The Drifting Menace,” Real Clear Defense, (undated), accessed at: https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2022/11/16/the_drifting_menace_865111.html.
[20] Tayfun Ozberk, “Sea Mine Explodes on Turkey’s Black Sea Coast,” Naval News, February 14, 2023.
Featured Image: An unmanned surface vehicle is craned aboard the Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Canberra (LCS 30), as a part of the first embarkation of the Mine Countermeasures (MCM) mission package. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Vance Hand)
The United States Navy and its allies have enjoyed uncontested control of the world’s oceans for over thirty years. But the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been ambitiously pursuing the development of its military to compete with the U.S., specifically in the maritime domain. The PRC has invested in a large Navy, a land-based mobile rocket force fielding long-range anti-ship weapons, and a modernized air force. These investments in military buildup and modernization demonstrate the PRC’s urgency to be ready for a conflict sooner rather than later. President Xi has told the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.1 However, the U.S. military, specifically the Navy, does not demonstrate that same sense of urgency. Decades spent fighting insurgents have diverted the Navy’s attention away from its original purpose – establishing and maintaining command of the seas through fleet warfare.
Since World War II, the Navy’s principal means of seizing command of the seas has been the carrier group. However, the service’s warfighting concept of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is fundamentally predicated on a different set of capabilities and force packages. The Tri-Service Maritime strategy – Advantage at Sea – defines DMO as “an operations concept that leverages the principles of distribution, integration, and maneuver to mass overwhelming combat power and effects at the time and place of our choosing.”2 To effectively win a war against a peer competitor, the Navy should transition to the decentralization and distribution inherent in DMO by empowering the surface fleet to take the lead in prosecuting sea control.
The Challenge to Decentralize and Distribute
The decentralization of combat power is required to conduct effective DMO. Following the logic of the memorable Captain Wayne Hughes, DMO aims to secure the operational advantage of firing effectively first.3 It can enable a good offense and subsequently reduce the requirement for a good defense. However, generations of naval officers have matured through their careers using the carrier-centric Composite Warfare Commander (CWC) construct. This construct is inherent to using the CSG as the primary element of naval power projection, but it is in tension with the broader fleet-level principles of DMO.
Since the Gulf War, the CSG employment model has evolved into a managed defense of an aircraft carrier (High-Value Unit – HVU) to ultimately preserve the capabilities of the carrier air wing. The platforms and weapons in today’s surface fleet are those that have been optimized to support the CWC construct as part of a CSG. They are relatively short-range weapons that rely on exquisite platforms to deliver them in large quantities. Aside from the air wing, the rest of the platforms in the CSG are having their armaments, dispositions, and roles mostly driven by defensive imperatives.
Captain Bill Shafley argued that “as the DMO concept suggests, disaggregation of the CSG is driven now by lethality and survivability.”4 The essence of DMO should be to distribute and decentralize combat power based on the long-range fires capability carried by surface combatants. The vast majority of the Navy’s cruise missile firepower and vertical launch cell capacity is fielded by the surface fleet, which operates significant numbers of platforms compared to the handful of capital ships in the fleet. But the surface fleet currently lacks the long-range weapons required to mass anti-ship firepower in coordinated offensive strikes as envisioned by DMO.
The distribution of ships still assigned to a CSG is not DMO in the fullest sense, but rather just a CSG spread out over larger distances, while still using a centralized model of command and control in the form of CWC. The viability of the CSG in a high-end threat environment depends upon an initial campaign of DMO, which sets the conditions and creates a more permissive operating environment for high-value units. Forces that operate under DMO must be able to penetrate into an adversary’s weapons engagement zone and take on risks that high-value units cannot. Tethering the surface fleet to capital ship defense therefore hamstrings the broader operational potential of the fleet and diminishes the extent of physical distribution that is possible.
To realize the full potential of DMO, the Navy must pivot its focus away from platforms and focus on the underlying weapons and effects that deliver the critical enabling capabilities. As Dmitry Filipoff notes, “The ability to combine fires against warships heavily depends upon the traits of the weapons themselves. These traits offer a valuable framework for defining the aggregation potential of individual weapons and the broader force’s ability to mass fires.”5 The transition to a distributed surface force with widely-fielded anti-ship weapons could tip the operational advantage toward the U.S. Navy and set the stage for new fleet-level force packages that are less centered on capital ships the Navy can ill afford to lose.
(Jan. 22, 2020) Ships from Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 23 transit the Pacific Ocean. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nicholas V. Huynh)
Effective DMO Requires Long-Range Fires
The ability to deny an adversary navy the opportunity for a decisive opening salvo depends upon a fleet having a superior first strike capability. However, U.S. naval forces lack meaningful, long-range anti-ship weapons that they can employ in a distributed nature because the fleet has relied principally on the concentrated firepower of the air wing. This critical dependency on carrier aviation’s short-range anti-ship fires significantly limits the degree to which the Navy can effectively execute DMO. In his article “DMO – A Salvo Equation Analysis,” Captain Anthony Cowden (ret.) noted that:
“the single point of failure for a distributed force is the ability to coordinate a strike on another force. This coordination becomes even more complex with greater distribution of one’s force, and even more so when the enemy’s force is distributed. If the distributed force cannot coordinate their fires, they lose in every scenario.”6
This points to how the Navy must ensure it has the requisite long-range anti-ship weapons and the networks to guide them so it has a variety of resilient options for maritime strike. Without the right long-range weapons, the viability of DMO is heavily degraded because forces will struggle to effectively distribute from one another and maintain the ability to concentrate firepower. This is the situation the U.S. Navy is in today with its CSG-centric paradigm that features only a small amount of anti-ship firepower that is almost entirely concentrated in the carrier. As Filipoff notes in his article describing the current state of U.S. anti-ship firepower shortfalls and the challenges of using the air wing to sink warships, “…it would mean coming to terms with how the vast majority of the U.S. Navy’s force structure and missile arsenal is hardly able to threaten modern naval formations with anti-ship firepower.”7 This lack of weapons from a range and quantity perspective severely handicaps the proper implementation of DMO.
The Navy has made some modest strides in increasing the lethality of its surface ships, particularly with SM-6 having the capability of operating in an anti-surface mode. However, the most common variant of SM-6, with a range of about 150 miles, is still well out-sticked by the Chinese surface fleet’s YJ-18 with a range of 330 miles.8 Although newer variants of SM-6 and Tomahawk are expected to provide much longer-range anti-ship capability, it is doubtful whether ships would have the capacity to carry a meaningful amount of these weapons for these roles, since the need for heavily biasing VLS loadouts toward defense is driven by the capital ship-centric design of current U.S. naval operations and force packaging.
The PLA Navy Type-055 guided-missile destroyer Wuxi steams to a designated sea area during a maritime training exercise. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Wang Zezhou)
The transition to surface ships loaded with long-range, offensive weapons substantially changes the overall importance of each individual combatant. No longer will surface ships simply be a defensive adjunct to the carrier and its air wing. Soon surface ships will possess the firepower to execute sea control operations, and in ways that could be more aggressive than what is prudent for capital ships. The transition to fleets centered on numerous distributed surface ships executing core offensive missions, while operating at significant distances from the nearest U.S. capital ship, is the true essence of DMO.
Conclusion
The intent of DMO should not be to render the CSG irrelevant, but rather to ensure that the CSG is not relied upon as the sole vanguard of sea control in the initial stages of a high-end conflict against a peer competitor. DMO must delay and degrade the decision-making of adversaries while denying them the opportunity to engage first. It is about establishing and maintaining temporary sea control for operational needs and sea denial all other times. The transition away from using the air wing to prosecute sea control means fully embracing the true manifestation of DMO – lethal, distributed surface ships that can combine long-range fires across broad geographic spaces.
However, given the state of weapons development and procurement, the Navy’s lack of progress in implementing the DMO concept is concerning. Against a peer competitor, the appropriate type of long-range weapons, fielded in sufficient numbers to support effective DMO, will increase the survivability of fleet and ensure its ability to maintain the initiative by firing effectively first. This transition away from the longstanding muscle memory of fighting under the CWC construct and toward a concept of using large numbers of coordinated but distributed surface units to launch fires will be essential to winning modern fleet warfare.
Commander Anthony LaVopa commanded the USS Hurricane (PC 3) and also served as a DDG-1000 requirements officer at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He recently graduated with a Masters in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College as a Halsey Group Fellow and is currently the Prospective Executive Officer (PXO) of USS Bulkeley(DDG 84).
2. “The US Tri-Service Maritime Strategy,” Strategic Comments 27, no. 5 (2020): p. iv-vi, https://doi.org/10.1080/13567888.2021.1960095.
3. Wayne P. Hughes and Robert Girrier, Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018).
4. Shafley, “A NEW DESRON STAFF – BEYOND THE COMPOSITE WARFARE COMMANDER CONCEPT”
5. Dmitry Filipoff, “FIGHTING DMO, PT. 2: ANTI-SHIP FIREPOWER AND THE MAJOR LIMITS OF THE AMERICAN NAVAL ARSENAL,” Center for International Maritime Security, February 27, 2023, https://cimsec.org/fighting-dmo-pt-2-anti-ship-firepower-and-the-major-limits-of-the-american-naval-arsenal/.
6. Anthony Cowden, “DISTRIBUTED MARITIME OPERATIONS – A SALVO EQUATION ANALYSIS,” Center for International Maritime Security, March 23, 2023, https://cimsec.org/distributed-maritime-operations-a-salvo-equation-analysis/.
7. Filipoff, “FIGHTING DMO, PT. 2: ANTI-SHIP FIREPOWER AND THE MAJOR LIMITS OF THE AMERICAN NAVAL ARSENAL”
Featured Image: Ships participating in Valiant Shield 2020 steam in formation while E/A-18G Growlers and FA-18E Super Hornets from Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5, a P-8 Poseidon assigned to Commander Task Force 72, and U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors and a B-1B Bomber fly over the formation. (U.S. Navy photo)
