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The naval mine, an asymmetric weapon par excellence, is seeing its dominance challenged by a new generation of naval drones capable of detecting and neutralizing explosive devices without exposing any human being.
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The robotic operational chain – mothership, surface drones, autonomous sonars, neutralization drones – radically changes the cost-effectiveness of mine clearance and reduces the traditional advantage of the minelayer.
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In a context of tensions in the Red Sea and Hormuz, where Iran has several thousand mines stored, this technology responds to a concrete and immediate threat.
The naval mine is one of the oldest and most feared weapons of maritime warfare. Inexpensive to manufacture, easy to deploy, it can paralyze a strategic strait, block a commercial port or prohibit access to a coastal area for months. A few dozen mines are enough to render an entire fleet inoperative. The countermeasure has long relied on clearance divers and conventional mine hunters. Slow, vulnerable ships, which exposed their crews to the same dangers as the machines they sought to neutralize. This logic is changing.
Remote mine clearance – AFP infographic Sources: Dutch, Belgian, French and British navies; Exail, Thales, Saab, Raytheon.
A fully robotic operational chain
The AFP infographic, produced using data from the Dutch, Belgian, French and British navies as well as manufacturers Exail, Thales, Saab and Raytheon, describes a four-step operational chain which illustrates the revolution in progress.
It all starts with the mothership, which stays out of the danger zone and launches a coordinated drone system from its secure position. This is the founding principle of this new demining: no human being enters the mined zone. The operator remains on board, sheltered, and remotely controls the entire sequence.
The first detection stage uses two types of complementary sensors. On the surface, a helicopter drone scans the area with laser and radar to detect mines close to the surface – the most dangerous for surface ships. Simultaneously, a towed or autonomous sonar detector, launched from a naval surface drone (DSN), scans the bottom to identify mines placed on the surface. sediment or anchored at depth These high-resolution sonars can map tens of square kilometers of seabed in a few hours, where divers would take weeks.
The second stage is the neutralization itself. A neutralization drone, a small remotely operated underwater device, also launched from a DSN, approaches the identified mine and deposits an explosive charge on contact with it. The detonation is then triggered remotely, with confirmation from the human operator. This final validation is essential: it maintains human control in the lethal decision loop, in accordance with the requirements of the law of armed conflict.
The third stage, particularly ingenious, is active dredging. The minesweeping drone mimics the acoustic and magnetic signatures of a commercial ship, the same signals that would trigger the explosion of an influence mine, to detonate the IEDs without any real ship flying over them. It is a robotic version without human risk of a decades-old dredging technique.
Read also: The naval mine, an asymmetrical weapon par excellence
A strategic paradigm shift
This system represents much more than a technical improvement in conventional mine clearance. It changes the very nature of the operation.
The naval mine derived its formidable effectiveness, in part, from its asymmetrical cost: laying a mine costs a few thousand euros, neutralizing a mine has until now cost hundreds of thousands of euros in equipment and the time of highly qualified personnel, not to mention the human risk. Robotization drastically reduces this imbalance. A neutralization drone is certainly expensive per unit, but it is reusable, it operates twenty-four hours a day and it can be mass produced.
The other change is speed. A conventional minehunter can treat a few square kilometers per day under the best conditions. A coordinated drone system multiplies this rate by a considerable factor, thanks to the capacity for simultaneous deployment of several machines and the continuity of operations without human endurance constraints.
Read also: The naval drone revolution
Operational relevance in 2026
This technology is not theoretical. It responds to concrete and current threats. The tensions in the Red Sea, the context of Hormuz where Iran has several thousand stored naval mines and an established mine warfare doctrine, the repeated exercises of the Iranian navy in the strait, all this gives this type of system immediate operational relevance.
France, with Exail and Thales, is one of the world leaders in this sector. The SLAM-F system (Future Mine Action System) developed in cooperation with Belgium and the Netherlands, precisely integrates the architecture described in this infographic. It will equip the navies of the three countries by the end of the decade.
The naval mine will remain a formidable weapon. But it will no longer be, as it was for a century, a weapon with almost impunity. The drone found its adversary to match.
Read also: Iran, Hormuz and the mine war
Infographic source: AFP, April 23, 2026. Dutch, Belgian, French and British navies; Exail, Thales, Saab, Raytheon.
