Navy to use underwater drones to help clear Iranian mines from Strait of Hormuz

Re:Navy to use underwater drones to help clear Iranian mines... by HHC-Hunter on Sunday April 12, 2026 @10:06PM (#47746720)

Genuine question here: What's the cost-exchange ratio here? Naval mines are cheap, dumb, and can be deployed in enormous quantities. Mine-clearing USVs and drones are comparatively expensive, slow, and bottlenecked on operator attention even when they're autonomous-ish. If one side can lay mines an order of magnitude faster than the other side can clear them, this "drones solve it" narrative falls apart pretty quickly.

Also, stepping back, I'd love to see the strategic objective for this war that aren't Zionist talking points. Every public justification I've seen either assumes a regime-change end state that historically hasn't worked in the region, or quietly relies on the premise that the costs for the war are someone else's problem.

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Re:Navy to use underwater drones to help clear Iranian mines... by ranger207 on Sunday April 12, 2026 @10:32PM (#47746904)

For minesweepers (and air defense missiles too for that matter) the cost-benefit isn't just "cost of minesweeper over cost of mine", it's "cost of minesweeper over cost of mine plus cost of ships that run into mines". Also, minesweepers have an advantage in terms of concentration: you have to mine an entire area for mines to be fully effective, but you only need to proof one mine-free lane for the minesweepers to get their cargo through. (That being said, the best use of minefields is to canalize targets so they show up in areas you're expecting and are prepared for, which can shift the balance back the other way too.)

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