Mines: Weapons That Wait
The U.S. is ignoring one of the most serious threats to its naval dominance -- the naval mine.
Barrett Tillman | March 27, 2026
Leading his fleet into Mobile Bay in 1864, Admiral David Farragut voiced the famous line, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”
Actually, the Confederates had no torpedoes as we know them today. Farragut used the contemporary term for mines, which sank the 2,100-ton monitor Tecumseh and damaged several other Union vessels.
Since then, mines have been a constant in naval warfare, recognized as “weapons that wait.” Often they are used offensively and defensively by both sides in a war, threatening passage of enemy vessels or deterring them from entering friendly waters.
In 1945 the U.S. Navy and Army Air Force bottled up Japan’s remaining naval and merchant ships by mining home island waters. The once all-conquering Imperial Navy was reduced to rusting in place.
Frequently months to years are required to remove mines after peace returns. In five months of 1919, the U.S. Navy helped sweep 70,000 Allied mines from the 240-mile stretch of the North Sea between Norway and Scotland. The extensive mine “barrage” was an effective counter to German U-boats but required removal for commerce to proceed.
One of the best-known examples of postwar mine removal was Operation End Sweep after the Vietnam War. With the signing of the Paris accords in January 1973, the U.S. deployed surface vessels and aircraft to meet the requirement for removing thousands of mines from North Vietnamese coastal and riverine waters. Though many mines has gone “sterile” by then, the process took six months, with the task completed in July.
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