Navy Mine Warfare

Enemy sea mines were responsible for 14 of the 18 Navy ships destroyed or damaged since 1950, and producing countries have developed mines that are even more difficult to detect and neutralize. After the Persian Gulf War, during which two Navy ships were severely damaged by sea mines, the Navy began to take steps to improve its mine warfare capabilities. This report (1) discusses the Navy's plans for improving mine countermeasures capabilities; (2) provides information on the status of current research, development, test, and evaluation programs; and (3) evaluates the process that the Defense Department used to prepare the annual certification required by law.

GAO noted that: (1) the Navy has not decided on the mix of on-board and special purpose forces it wants to maintain in the future and committed the funding needed for developing and sustaining those capabilities; (2) this decision will determine the types and quantities of systems to be developed and their priority; (3) it also affects the schedule and cost of those developments and the design and cost of the platforms on which they will operate; (4) a final force structure decision will likely be determined by the level of resources the Navy decides to dedicate to the MCM mission in the future; (5) a few systems are scheduled for production decisions within the next 2 to 3 years, while other systems were not produced because the Navy never funded their procurement; (6) since 1992, the Navy has spent about $1.2 billion in RDT&E funds to improve its mine warfare capabilities; (7) however, this investment has not produced any systems that are ready to transition to production; (8) delaying factors include funding instability, changing requirements, cost growth, and unanticipated technical problems; (9) the Navy plans to spend an additional $1.5 billion for RDT&E over the next 6 years; (10) most officials interviewed said the annual certification process has served to increase the visibility of MCM requirements within DOD and the Navy, with positive results and should continue to be required; (11) however, as currently conducted, the annual certification process does not address the adequacy of overall resources for this mission, nor does it contain any measures against which the Navy's progress in enhancing its MCM capabilities can be evaluated; (12) the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staffs' review for resource sufficiency occurs after the Navy's budget proposals for its MCM program have been formalized; and (13) the review does not affect specific Navy MCM acquisition programs or overall MCM resource decisions.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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