The U.S. Navy faces growing scrutiny over its ability to clear sea mines in the Persian Gulf as Iran threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global oil shipping route. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the U.S. is preparing to reopen the waterway but offered no details on specific measures. The Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, has released video footage of strikes on Iranian naval vessels it claims are capable of laying mines. Sea mines have historically posed a severe threat to U.S. warships, damaging or disabling 15 Navy vessels since World War II—more than from all other weapons combined—including three incidents in the Persian Gulf since 1988 that injured dozens of sailors.
Despite this record, mine warfare has long been underfunded, receiving less than 1% of the Navy's budget, according to maritime security expert Scott C. Truver, who described the field as the "stepchild of the U.S. Navy." The Navy is retiring its Avenger-class minesweepers, wooden-hulled ships used since the 1980s, and replacing them with Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) that rely on unmanned systems and helicopters to detect and destroy mines from a safe distance. Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute said the strategy is to keep LCS vessels out of minefields while deploying drones and aircraft for mine neutralization. However, the LCS program has faced persistent issues, including cost overruns, mechanical failures, and combat readiness concerns. A 2022 Government Accountability Office report highlighted the ships' inability to defend themselves and frequent breakdowns of essential equipment.
Currently, the only LCS equipped with mine-countermeasures packages—the USS Canberra—is stationed in Asia, along with the USS Santa Barbara and USS Tulsa. Emma Salisbury of the Foreign Policy Research Institute expressed disbelief that mine-clearing assets are not positioned near the Middle East, stating that having such capabilities outside the region offers little operational value. NATO allies, particularly European nations like Poland, the U.K., France, and Turkey, maintain more robust mine-clearing fleets, but most have declined U.S. requests for assistance. The Pentagon's March report revealed that no operational testing was conducted in 2025 on the LCS with its mine countermeasures package, leaving its real-world effectiveness undetermined.
When Emma Salisbury says she is "honestly completely baffled" about the absence of U.S. mine-clearing ships near the Persian Gulf, she is exposing a strategic miscalculation: the Navy is betting on untested technology while real threats escalate. The LCS, plagued by failures and absent from the region, cannot be relied upon to counter Iranian mines—especially when the system has never been proven under combat conditions. Relying on drones and distant ships isn't innovation; it's avoidance of a core naval responsibility. The U.S. may soon discover that unproven systems and budget neglect cannot clear a mined strait—or the fog of war.
