Sea Mining Capability News

Australia said on Monday it would accelerate plans to buy advanced sea mines to protect its maritime routes and ports from "potential aggressors" amid China's plans to increase its influence in the Pacific region.The so-called smart sea mines are designed to differentiate between military targets and other types of ships, a defence department spokesperson said in a statement."(Australia) is accelerating the acquisition of smart sea mines, which will help to secure sea lines of communication and protect Australia's maritime approaches," it said.

U.S. naval forces are poorly equipped to counter a growing mine warfare threat and are about to lose the potentially decisive ability to plant sea minefields of their own, a report for the Navy released on Thursday said. A committee of the National Research Council cited the "largely unregulated sale" of underwater mines by Italy, Sweden, Russia and other ex-Soviet bloc states as contributing to the danger to U.S. mobility. More than 50 countries now possess a sea mining capability, it said. "U.S. naval forces are not now likely to be able to adequately handle the plausible near-term threat of mines either offshore or inshore," said the report, prepared at the request of the chief of naval operations, Admiral Vernon Clark.