December 27, 2023:
Norway and Britain have sent Ukraine two Sandown-Class Mine Hunters to help clear the Russian naval mines showing up on the west coast of the Black Sea, where commercial shipping brings supplies to Ukraine and carries Ukrainian wheat and other food products to world markets. These 600-ton ships are already in service for Britian, Estonia, and Saudi Arabia. One was also transferred to Romania, a NATO member country with a coastline just south of Ukraine. Some of the Russian mines are drifting into Romanian waters. Sandowns have fiberglass hulls to protect them from bottom mines that look for metal hulled ships. The Sandowns have special sonar and other sensors to find mines as well as systems to detonate the mines safely. The hull of the Sandon-class ships is built to withstand the shockwave from mines the Sandown found and detonated.
The naval mine problem in the Black Sea became a problem for Ukraine in mid-2023, when there was a sudden increase in the number of free floating mines between Crimea and the shipping lane from the western Ukraine port of Odessa via waters controlled by NATO nations to the narrow straits Turkey controls that lead to the Mediterranean and the world’s oceans. Turkey and other NATO nations control most of the Black Sea coastline, especially the southern and western Black Sea coasts. The Russian navy is believed responsible for more than 400 free floating naval mines showing up west of Crimean since mid-2023.
Few of these mines appear to be tethered mines that broke loose from their chain. That is an old problem with Russian made floating mines. Tethered mines are designed to have their weighted base sink to the bottom of shallow (less than 20 meters) water. Most of the mines currently in the Black Sea were apparently released into the water without any tether. The use of naval mines is diminished because they are not much of a threat to warships, which are constantly on the lookout for them, and most commercial ships are too big to sink after encountering one of these mines. There is some hull damage and flooding, but not enough to sink a ship.
The mines are a danger to smaller commercial ships, especially fishing trawlers, not to mention some large private vessels like yachts. Some NATO counties with Black Sea coastlines have organized a mine clearing operation. Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria contributed mine clearing vessels and equipment. NATO members that do not border the Black Sea but do have a lot of commercial shipping operating in it, are also contributing mines clearing ships and equipment.
Floating contact mines are a 19th century development that has been improved on for over a century and is still used because it is cheap and effective. Iran has acquired a stockpile of 3,000 to 6,000 mines, mostly of Soviet/Russian, Chinese or North Korean origin. Most are unsophisticated but still dangerous moored contact mines, like those that damaged several American warships in the Persian Gulf during 1991. These mines had been released by Iraq. Iran's current arsenal of sea mines is estimated to number around 2,000 and includes the domestically produced Sadaf-01/02 moored contact mines as well as more sophisticated bottom mines that depend on battery-operated sensors to detect ships passing overhead and detonate when a ship of the desired type comes by. These mines put holes in ships’ bottoms, which causes serious flooding that often sinks them. Naval forces with the right equipment can easily find and disable bottom mines and that’s what happened to the ones Iran supplied to the Yemen Shia rebels. The rebels had only a few such mines, and apparently no more were smuggled in after so many were found and destroyed by naval mine clearing ships.