Mine Countermeasures & Coastal Mine Hunters

The ships that hunt what others fear to find. Avenger-class MCMs are built with wooden hulls and fiberglass sheathing - the lowest magnetic signature in the fleet - because the mines they hunt are designed to kill steel ships. Armed with SLQ-48 mine neutralization ROVs and SQQ-32 sonar, they cleared Iraqi minefields in Desert Storm and have patrolled the Persian Gulf continuously since. Osprey-class MHCs were GRP-hulled coastal mine hunters named for birds, carrying the same sonar into shallow waters where mines are easiest to plant and hardest to find. All twelve Ospreys were decommissioned by 2007. The mine threat they were built to counter has only grown.