ABSTRACT
Although the Soviet Navy's mine warfare tradition dates back to its tsarist origins, the West's response to this threat has been intermittent. For nearly three decades, the US, Navy, which had a "gentlemen do not lay mines" attitude toward mine warfare, preferred to let its Allies and its naval reserve force cope with the major problem of dealing with a Soviet threat that includes an inventory of from 200,000 to 300,000 mines. The mine threat is real, vast, ready and sophisticated. Soviet mine countermeasures ships are for the most part prosaic in design, and many of them are quite old. The tactical approach seems to be brute force rather than sophistication, and minesweeping equipment and handling gear tend to be heavy and awkward. In summary, although the Soviet Navy has large numbers of mine countermeasures units, the ships, craft and helicopters generally lack the specialized equipment that has been available to the Western navies for many years.
