Looks like the U.S. Navy is getting serious about a potential war with Iran. Witness the news that four Avenger-class minesweepers are being sent to Bahrain from the U.S., doubling the number of American minesweepers in the Persian Gulf. More minesweeping MH-53E helicopters are also being sent.
Carrier battle groups send a very public signal to Tehran. Minesweepers are practical assets for the nitty gritty of keeping the oil flowing.
While it is accurately noted that we have few mineweeping assets, to be fair we let allies with ports that we want to keep clear to focus on minesweeping in the last 20 miles of a trip while we built the blue water fleet elements to go the other thousand miles or so. Perhaps we need more of our own, but we can't seem to build the numbers of warships we need without having to divert scarce money to these types of ships.
Mine warfare is a vitally important capability that is often ignored in peacetime, but my question is whether our allies make up for our shortfalls. If that's the case, I'm not overly worried about our relatively few assets.
