Navy Plans Hammerhead Mines To Box In Chinese, Russian Subshttps://breakingdefense.com/2020/10/navy-plans-hammerhead-mines-to-box-in-chinese-russian-subs-bottled-up/WASHINGTON: The Navy is inching closer to fielding a new anti-submarine mine designed to deploy from underwater drones and loiter for weeks at a time around critical chokepoints, looking for enemy submarines to sink.
The idea behind the Hammerhead mine system is to give the Navy’s crewed ships more distance from increasingly capable Chinese and Russian fleets, while potentially making choke points no-go zones, complicating their ability to move at will near areas where US ships are operating.
Late last week, the Navy issued a draft request for proposal for final designs. The RFP comes six months after a virtual industry day laid out some of the specifics of the program, including incorporating an MK 54 lightweight torpedo with a mooring module, an energy module, a sensor module, and a command and control system that would allow it to detect threats and act autonomously.
The Hammerhead would be delivered to sites by underwater drones, and “detect, classify, and defeat†manned or unmanned submarines, according to the Navy.
In WW1 the RN bottled up the German navy by making the passage between Scotland and Norway a choke point. Similarly, USN submarines choked Japan's needed raw materials and oil by dominating the passage between Luzon and Formosa (now Taiwan).
