Mines are the neglected workhorses of naval strategy

end of modern naval forces, observes Duncan Potts, a retired vice-admiral in Britain’s Royal Navy, is stuff like guided-missile destroyers, fast jets and nuclear submarines. But it is often a far humbler device, the naval mine, that does much of the damage. During the second world war, these static underwater bombs are reckoned to have sunk 2,100 vessels. Not as many as the 4,600 accounted for by submarines, but far more than attacks by aircraft or artillery bombardment by other ships. Subsequent conflicts have seen mines cripple or send to the bottom nearly four times as many American warships as all other types of weapons combined. In the latest phase of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, mines struck early. Fighting started on February 24th. Eight days later, on March 3rd, the , an Estonian cargo ship, hit one near Odessa, the largest port controlled by Ukraine, and sank. Another victim, reported on July 2nd, was a -106 landing craft belonging to Russia, which was sunk, apparently, by a Russian-laid mine.