Iran has thousands of naval mines, but the US Navy's minesweepers can't tell the difference between mines and old dishwashers
- Recent increases in tensions between the US and Iran have drawn renewed attention to Iran's naval mines, of which it has thousands it could use to shut down sea traffic in the Persian Gulf.
- The US Navy has specialized mine-hunting ships, but they're long past retirement, and their own crews have doubts about whether they could do their jobs.
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The US Navy officer was eager to talk.
He'd seen his ship, one of the Navy's fleet of 11 minesweepers, sidelined by repairs and maintenance for more than 20 months. Once the ship, based in Japan, returned to action, its crew was only able to conduct its most essential training — how to identify and defuse underwater mines — for fewer than 10 days the entire next year. During those training missions, the officer said, the crew found it hard to trust the ship's faulty navigation system: It ran on Windows 2000.
The officer, hoping that by speaking out he could provoke needed change, wound up delaying the scheduled interview. He apologized. His ship had broken down again.
"We are essentially the ships that the Navy forgot," he said of the minesweepers.
Thousands of miles away in the Persian Gulf, another officer, this one assigned to a minesweeper in the Navy's 5th Fleet, offered much the same account. While tensions with Iran seem to escalate by the day, the officer said the four minesweepers based in the Gulf were so physically unreliable that he doubted his superiors would actually send them into action in a crisis. …………………………..
