John Femiani
US military officials said the Navy has begun the process of clearing mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical choke point for global shipping. Iranian forces have deployed a small number of mines in the strait. The move gave the Iranians a means, along with missiles and drones, of threatening ships.
The US Navy recently decommissioned the minesweeping vessels that it had operating in the Persian Gulf region. However, it has other ships and aircraft for finding and destroying mines.
As a computer scientist who researches how to detect mines, I have been researching how artificial intelligence techniques, such as machine learning, can help navies detect modern sea mines. Here’s what I’ve learned about how the mines work and how they can be neutralized.
Types of mines
The mines most people picture, like those seen in films such as “Godzilla Minus One,” are floating spheres tethered to the seabed, with small protrusions called Hertz horns that trigger the mine when it makes contact with a ship. These are called moored mines.
In the film, characters use a small wooden boat to sweep mines without triggering them because the mines responded to a metal-hulled ship’s magnetic field. Detecting magnetic fields is characteristic of influence mines, which respond to a ship’s magnetic, acoustic or pressure signature, as opposed to simple contact mines that detonate when ships run into them.
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