U.S. Navy Minesweepers Assigned To Middle East Have Been Moved To Pacific (Updated)

he U.S. Navy Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara, which are configured for minesweeping duties, have appeared in port in Malaysia. Both of these ships were last known to be forward-deployed in the Middle East, having arrived in Bahrain in the past year or so to take the place of a group of now-decommissioned Avenger class mine hunters. Now, as Iranian attacks on commercial ships have caused a virtual halt to maritime traffic through the highly strategic Strait of Hormuz, these ships have emerged thousands of miles away. The extent to which Iran has seeded naval mines in the Strait already is unclear, but this remains a huge threat to the future security of the waterway and will have to be taken into account in any future effort to reopen this critical waterway.

A spotter in Malaysia posted pictures of the USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara, which are said to have been taken today at the North Butterworth Container Terminal (NBCT) in the Port of Penang. Mike Yeo, an Australia-based defense and aviation reporter, was among the first to call attention to the particular significance of the images. TWZ has reached out for more information.

USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara are among a select number of Independence class LCSs fitted with a mine countermeasures mission package, or “module.” In its current form, the package includes towed mine-hunting sonar for the ships, Common Unmanned Surface Vehicles (CUSV) with mine-sweeping gear, and mine detection and neutralization systems carried by embarked MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopters. We will come back to this configuration later on.

When it comes to why the ships are now in Malaysia, TWZ also reached out to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which directed us to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. We were then directed by Fifth Fleet back to CENTCOM. CENTCOM is the top U.S. military command for operations in the Middle East. Fifth Fleet is the Navy’s numbered fleet in the Middle East, with its commander dual-hatted as head of Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT). Fifth Fleet and NAVCENT are headquartered in Manama, Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf.

We have reached out to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), as well.

Pictures available through the U.S. military’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) show USS Tulsa was in port in Bahrain at least as of February 9. Separate images also show USS Santa Barbara operating in the Persian Gulf on January 30. The current disposition of a third Independence class LCS, the USS Canberra, which had also been forward-deployed in the Middle East at least as of January, is unknown. Whether any other mine countermeasures ships may now be headed to the Middle East is also not known.

A review of satellite imagery in Planet Labs’ commercial archive shows no evidence of any U.S. warships being in port in Manama since February 23. The United States and Israel launched their joint operation against Iran on February 28.

Moving U.S. warships out of port in Bahrain ahead of the current conflict was a prudent security measure. The Gulf state is well within range of Iranian missiles and long-range kamikaze drones, and U.S. military facilities in Manama did subsequently come under attack. The U.S. military’s own strikes on Iranian naval vessels in port have underscored the vulnerability of ships sitting pierside.

Why the decision was made to then send the USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara thousands of miles to the east is unknown. A host of factors may have come into play, including the availability of suitable friendly ports and diplomatic considerations.

Regardless, at least two-thirds of the warships intended to be available for tasking for mine countermeasures missions in the Middle East are presently in a completely different part of the world. As noted, USS Tulsa, USS Santa Barbara, and USS Canberra, were forward-deployed to the region in the first place explicitly to fill gaps left by the decommissioning of four Avenger class mine hunters last year. The former USS Devastator, USS Dextrous, USS Gladiator, and USS Sentry left the region for good aboard a heavy lift ship in January. There are only four Avenger class ships left in active Navy service, all of which are forward-deployed in Japan, and are also slated to be decommissioned in the coming years.

How many of the Navy’s Independence class LCSs, in total, have been configured for the mine-clearing mission to date is unknown. In addition to USS Tulsa, USS Santa Barbara, and the USS Canberra, the USS Kansas City was at least being fitted out with this mission module as of last year.

The Independence class LCS is a far more advanced ship than the Avenger class mine hunter, and does offer new standoff mine countermeasures capabilities, including aforementioned CUSV drone boats and helicopter-borne systems. Still, questions continue to be raised about whether metal-hulled LCSs with mine countermeasures packages are adequate replacements for ships purpose-built for this mission. As TWZ previously wrote back in January:

The [Avenger class] ships themselves have fiberglass-coated wooden hulls to reduce their own vulnerability, particularly to mines that detect targets by their magnetic signature.

The Navy has long intended to replace the Avenger class ships with LCSs configured for the mine countermeasures duties. However, delays with the LCS mine countermeasures and other mission packages, or “modules,” as well as other persistent issues with both subclasses of those ships, repeatedly delayed those plans. The LCS program had also originally envisioned it being possible to readily reconfigure the ships for different mission sets by swapping out modules. However, the Navy is now deploying LCSs in largely fixed configurations.

Questions and criticism about the suitability of metal-hulled LCSs to take on the mine countermeasures mission have come up in the past. Both subclasses of LCS are also much larger than the Avenger class design, which could impose limits on how close they can get to mined or potentially mined areas. LCSs are better able to defend themselves against other threats than the Avengers, but they still have relatively limited firepower, which has been a separate source of criticism for years now. There would still be a significant need for tertiary support to protect LCSs during mine-clearing operations, which are slow and complex, and carry significant risks, even in benign environments.

In May 2025, a top U.S. Navy mine warfare officer gave an unclassified briefing detailing significant ongoing issues with the LCS mine countermeasures, according to a story published just this past week by Hunterbrook Media. Copies of the briefing slides that the outlet published say that employing the CUSV requires hours of prep time, and that the drone boat’s sonar sometimes has trouble spotting threats, but that the operators may have no indication of this until data is assessed after a mission. Visual confirmation of mines using the AN/AQS-20 mine-hunting system has also proven challenging “even [in] the relatively benign turbidity of SoCal [Southern California] waters,” another slide explains. The briefing also highlighted a number of potential “single-point failures” both in terms of mine countermeasures systems included in the module, and the equipment required to deploy and recover them.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, one of the briefing slides noted that “LCS was designed as a multi-mission platform” and “all of these other missions reduce time for the ship and Minemen to gain proficiency in MCM [mine countermeasures].” To reiterate, the Avenger class ships were purpose-built for this mission set and had crews trained to match. Mine-clearing operations are slow and complex, and carry significant risks, even when carried out by experienced personnel in benign environments.

In the context of the current conflict, there have been reports in the past week or so saying Iran has at least attempted to lay mines in and around the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military also says it has been actively targeting mine-laying assets. At the same time, Iran has laid mines in and around the Persian Gulf in the past, and this remains a real point of concern. Iranian anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles, kamikaze drones, and uncrewed explosive-laden boats further complicate the threat picture for commercial vessels and any warships attempting to help clear the way.

As it stands now, U.S. officials have said that American warships are unlikely to begin escorting commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz for at least some number of weeks. Convoy operations carry their own risks and will require a host of supporting assets at sea and in other domains, as TWZ has previously explained. Limited availability of mine countermeasures assets would create additional challenges.

It remains to be seen how long the USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara will remain in Malaysia, and where they might sail after they depart. Where USS Canberra is currently is still unknown, as is whether any additional mine countermeasures configured ships are on the way to the Middle East.

For the moment, at least, a substantial portion of the Navy’s minesweeping capacity in the region, amid a major conflict with an opponent experienced in mine warfare, is now thousands of miles away in a completely different part of the world.

U.S. Navy Commander Joe Hontz, a spokesperson for NAVCENT, has provided TWZ with the following statement:

“Tulsa and Santa Barbara are conducting brief logistical stops in Malaysia. U.S. forces routinely make port calls in Malaysia as part of our operations, reflecting the close and enduring military cooperation between the United States and Malaysia.”

“The US Navy has secret mine detectability from Space Force using water penetrating radar.”

Who taught you physics they failed.

Radio above VLF or ELF cannot penetrate salt water due to the dielectric effect. Microwave penetrate inches at most.

Lasers in the blue green spectrum can reach 30-50 meters in clear offshore waters and 10-15 in the littorals. With single digit photon counting detection, tight spectral filtering and being airborne not in space but directly above it in a helo you can reach down triple digit feet the exact amount is classified. Space based won’t work the round trip losses are 180+ Dbi even with Hubble space telescope sized receiver optics the path losses are just too much for imaging underwater via laser backscatter. One way communication space to water theoretically possible as the water filters all the other portions of the light spectrum out at depth so you can detect single digit photons inbound.

One of my master’s is in remote sensing and Geointelligence at the post grad level from the NGA.

There is work being done on using laser to induce sound pulses in water and then read the reflected waves off ripples in the surface of the water like you can use a laser.to listen to a window vibrating across a street doing spy stuff. The chances of it ever working for orbit are near zero, from 100 meters up via helo well that’s the question really.

Thank you for the elucidation.

I am pretty sure that mines can be detected by Space Force. I do not know the exact methods used.That ability comes from being able to detect submarines pretty much anywhere on the globe.

It may have to do with magnetic resonance anomaly (stochastic resonance method).

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Stochastic resonance (SR) is a signal processing method that uses noise energy to enhance signal energy, which has received extensive attention in recent years. Wan first applied the SR method to MAD, and the experimental results showed that the SR method had good performance and could be applied to the detection of non-periodic signals [25]. Sun optimized the structural parameters by using the marine predator algorithm, which improved the adaptability of the SR method to MAD [26]. Huang used the tri-stable stochastic resonance model to detect MAD signals under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments with strong background noise, which improved the detection probability [27]. Zhao proposed an adaptive pure background noise estimation method based on SR, which solved the problem that noise wavelet coefficients are difficult to separate from effective signals in existing wavelet domain denoising methods [28]. Liu proposed a detection strategy based on a parallel monostable SR (PMSR) system to solve the problem that MAD signals may be peak signals, trough signals, or a combination of the two in actual detection, which could ensure good detection performance for all kinds of MAD signals [29]. In addition, Wan also proposed that the MAD signal processing effect was easily affected by the initial value of the SR system in addition to structural parameters, so he proposed a parallel SR (PSR) method, which can detect MAD signals without prior information of target signal parameters and background noise [30]. This parallel SR system structure has also been used in the latest relevant research [31]. Dai proposed a MAD method that relies on a bi-stable SR system. The series dual system structure with different initial states was used to detect signals with different waveforms in real-time [32].

SR technology attracts our attention due to its ability to work without prior target information and its unique advantages in weak signal detection......

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263224125012291

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