Underwater mines are lurking in critical waterways around the world. Low-tech but highly destructive, they can blow up ships, destroy oil and natural-gas pipelines and wipe out telephone and Internet cables.
By U.S. Navy estimates, about 50 countries stock more than 250,000 maritime mines that could be dropped in the world’s oceans, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its May 14 issue. China has the most extensive and sophisticated inventory of mines, according to naval analysts. If Iran had shut down the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, as some of its officials threatened, its strategy probably would have involved deploying its stockpile of mines.
“We have traditionally been under-equipped for the mine- sweeping mission” because U.S. allies picked up that role in the aftermath of World War II, says Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “Right now the Navy is looking at mine-sweeping because the problem is getting bigger/.../”