The Navy Sends in the Robots to Clear Hormuz of Mines
Drones minimize risks to sailors and could give the U.S. negotiating leverage if they help open the waterway
April 19, 2026 The Wall Street Journal
The U.S. military is using sea drones to help clear the Strait of Hormuz of mines that might be lurking there, in a quiet effort to ease Iran’s stranglehold on the waterway and begin reopening it to commercial shipping.
Iran on Saturday closed the strait again and fired on at least two vessels to protest the American blockade of its ports. Earlier, it said any shippers allowed to cross must use new traffic lanes that swing by Iran’s coast, warning of mines in the main channels of the strait.
The risk of getting attacked is the main deterrent to ship traffic, and U.S. officials have made contradictory comments about the number of mines and the risk they pose. But military analysts say clearing them is a necessary condition for ships to be able to sail again through the middle of the strategic waterway rather than the slower and more congested Iranian routes.
Sea drones, including uncrewed surface vessels and submarines, are an increasingly important part of the U.S. Navy’s countermine capabilities as it retires traditional minesweepers. They use sonar to scan the bottom of the ocean for mines without putting sailors at risk.
“You’re less concerned about attrition, so sending them through the minefield is much more palatable, and if you lose some they can be replaced,” said Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at Rand who previously provided on-site analytical support for the Navy’s mine warfare command and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.
A U.S. defense official said the military was using a combination of manned and unmanned capabilities in the countermine operation, but declined to comment on operational specifics.
Though the Navy’s minehunting capabilities have declined in recent years, it maintains a range of options that include helicopters, littoral combat ships and even trained dolphins as a part of its marine mammals program. It also uses drones.
The Common Uncrewed Surface Vessel, a drone made by RTX that tows a new floating sonar system called the AQS-20, scans the bottom of the sea for mines, patrolling columns that are 100 feet wide at a time.
Battery-powered submarine drones, called the MK18 Mod 2 Kingfish and the Knifefish, made by General Dynamics can be dropped in the water from a small boat and then scan for mines in a pattern.
The military could do an initial scan for mines relatively quickly in the confines of the strait, military analysts said. After locating the mines, a second wave of sea robots could be sent out to destroy them by using explosives or by setting them off remotely.
“You can get a small channel in that area surveyed in days not weeks using Unmanned Underwater Vehicles,” said Kevin Donegan, a former U.S. Navy vice admiral and former commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet based in the Gulf.
After clearing one lane, he said, “Traffic can then begin to flow in this smaller channel that could be widened over time.”
The minesweeping mission comes as the U.S. is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports in an attempt to turn the tables on the Iranian regime, which seized control of the strait during the war, causing a global oil-supply shock that has put pressure on the Trump administration to end the war.
Iran’s foreign minister said Friday the strait was now ”completely open,” a declaration hailed by President Trump. But on Saturday the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the waterway was again closed and fired on at least two civilian ships, underscoring that traffic in the strait for now will be subject to Iran’s decisions.
Of the 27 large trading ships that have crossed the strait since April 13, some 15 used the mandated route, which hugs the Iranian coastline, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
“If you’re the U.S. and you can start to check for mines and start moving your own ships up and down the strait, and the Iranians can start to see that their grip over the strait is starting to loosen, they might be more inclined to go to the negotiating table,” said Bryan Clark, a former senior official with the U.S. Navy and now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank.
U.S. officials, citing American intelligence, said in March that Iran had deployed mines in the strait, but the scale of threat has remained unclear. Clark, the former navy official, said that Iran had likely laid fewer mines than expected because of American military pressure that prevented Tehran from using large minelaying ships.
“They were probably a small number of mines that you could deploy from small vessels of opportunity, so fishing boats, small cargo boats that go up and down the strait,” Clark said. “It’s much more kind of a clandestine deployment with vessels of opportunity that happens in the dead of night. And that’s probably more like a dozen or two dozen.”
Minesweeping is one step that the U.S. can take to prepare the way for military convoys that could protect ships crossing in and out of the strait. It would take weeks, if not months, to begin clearing the backlog in the Gulf.
Convoys would likely only move five or 10 ships at a time, far fewer than the roughly 130 a day that crossed before the war. As of March there were at least 1,129 vessels in the Gulf that had made at least one port call outside the Gulf in the past year, according to the shipping consulting firm Clarksons.
Any operation to open the strait also would hand another challenge to a Navy already under strain from long deployments.
The U.S. last conducted military escorts for ships in the Persian Gulf during the 1980s’ so-called Tanker War with Iran. At the time, the Navy had more than 500 active ships compared with a battle force of around 292 ships now, according to the U.S. Naval Institute, a nonprofit.
Trump in a social-media post on Friday said, “Iran, with the help of the U.S.A., has removed, or is removing, all sea mines!”
Shipping industry leaders warned that the statement wasn’t accurate. Jakob Larsen, chief safety and security officer at Bimco, one of the world’s largest international shipowners’ associations, said credible reports indicate a risk of mines, and “shipping should consider avoidance of the area.”