Minefields designed for psychological effect are usually placed on trade routes to stop ships from reaching an enemy nation. The decision-makers' perception of the minefield is a critical factor.
Transit of a mined area will be attempted only when strategic interests outweigh potential losses. Port authorities may attempt to clear a mined area, but those without effective minesweeping equipment may cease using the area. Shipowners are reluctant to send their ships through known minefields. Defensive minefields safeguard key stretches of coast from enemy ships and submarines, forcing them into more easily defended areas, or keeping them away from sensitive ones. Offensive mines are placed in enemy waters, outside harbours, and across important shipping routes to sink both merchant and military vessels. Mines have been employed as offensive or defensive weapons in rivers, lakes, estuaries, seas, and oceans, but they can also be used as tools of psychological warfare. Some 1940s-era mines may remain dangerous for many years. Parts of some World War II naval minefields still exist because they are too extensive and expensive to clear. The cost of producing and laying a mine is usually between 0.5% and 10% of the cost of removing it, and it can take up to 200 times as long to clear a minefield as to lay it. Their flexibility and cost-effectiveness make mines attractive to the less powerful belligerent in asymmetric warfare.
They can be inexpensive: some variants can cost as little as US$2,000, though more sophisticated mines can cost millions of dollars, be equipped with several kinds of sensors, and deliver a warhead by rocket or torpedo. Mines can be laid in many ways: by purpose-built minelayers, refitted ships, submarines, or aircraft-and even by dropping them into a harbour by hand. There are also mines that release a homing torpedo rather than explode themselves. Minesweeping is the practice of the removal of explosive naval mines, usually by a specially designed ship called a minesweeper using various measures to either capture or detonate the mines, but sometimes also with an aircraft made for that purpose. Mines may be placed by aircraft, ships, submarines, or individual swimmers and boatmen. Modern mines containing high explosives detonated by complex electronic fuze mechanisms are much more effective than early gunpowder mines requiring physical ignition. Unless detonated by a parallel time fuze at the end of their useful life, naval mines need to be found and dismantled after the end of hostilities an often prolonged, costly, and hazardous task. In the absence of effective measures to limit each mine's lifespan, the hazard to shipping can remain long after the war in which the mines were laid is over. While mines threaten only those who choose to traverse waters that may be mined, the possibility of activating a mine is a powerful disincentive to shipping.
Īlthough international law requires signatory nations to declare mined areas, precise locations remain secret and non-complying individuals might not disclose minelaying. Mines allow the minelaying force commander to concentrate warships or defensive assets in mine-free areas giving the adversary three choices: undertake an expensive and time-consuming minesweeping effort, accept the casualties of challenging the minefield, or use the unmined waters where the greatest concentration of enemy firepower will be encountered. Naval mines can be used offensively, to hamper enemy shipping movements or lock vessels into a harbour or defensively, to protect friendly vessels and create "safe" zones. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, any vessel or a particular vessel type, akin to anti-infantry or anti-vehicle mines. A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines.
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