Application and prospect of anti-mine warfare

With the rapid advancement of unmanned intelligent maritime combat platforms, integrating Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) with mine countermeasure (MCM) technologies has become a crucial development direction in this operational domain. This paper conducts a comprehensive study on the key technologies of AUVs, thoroughly exploring their application methods in MCM mission planning and operational procedures. Additionally, it takes into full account the performance characteristics of new-generation intelligent mines and anticipates future confrontation modes and development trends, aiming to provide support and assurance for the capability enhancement of our naval combat system.

With the continuous development and deployment of new mine equipment featuring remote control, covert delivery, and time-sensitive strike capabilities, future mine countermeasures are trending towards an escalation in system confrontation and a shift from energy dominance to information dominance. Unmanned underwater combat systems, due to their diverse mission capabilities, excellent stealth performance, and flexible decision-making control, offer a broader range of applications compared to traditional mine hunting and sweeping methods that rely primarily on manned vessels, enhancing both safety and intelligence levels. These systems play a crucial role in this framework due to their comprehensive and versatile nature, good environmental adaptability, and strong mobility capabilities.

Key Technology Research

The key technologies are the foundation for achieving ocean exploration and utilization. These technologies include overall design technology, structure and material design, power and propulsion systems, navigation and control, as well as detection and communication technology. Overall design involves comprehensive performance, such as the relationship between the ultimate depth of the pressure hull and the resurfacing ratio, as well as high-dimensional surrogate model prediction techniques. Structure and material design must consider not only mechanical strength and corrosion resistance but also the lightweight properties of materials to enhance mobility and durability.

Power and propulsion systems are critical for enabling long-term autonomous operation underwater, which includes battery technology and more efficient thruster designs. Navigation and control technologies ensure accurate mission execution, involving the use of sonar and other sensors for positioning, as well as sophisticated algorithms to process data and manage movement. Detection and communication technologies pertain to how data is collected and transmitted back to the control center, which is vital for deep-sea exploration and long-term monitoring missions.

The advancement of these technologies has not only facilitated their use in scientific research and commercial applications but also supported the achievement of marine strategic objectives. With technological progress, the future will become more intelligent, capable of executing more complex tasks, while also becoming more clustered and systematic to enable broader application scenarios.

目前任何单一的反水雷手段，都难以独自应对先进水下武器系统带来的挑战。为此必须充分运用海陆空三军力量构建无人作战体系，其包括由无人机、探测传感系统等组成的无人空中系统、无人艇、布放回收系统等构成的无人水面平台以及包含水下航行器、无人预置系统的无人水下装备等，并有效结合猎、扫、炸等多种方式共同完成作战任务。其中作为典型的无人水下装备，集成了总体设计、导航通信、航行控制、能源动力及综合保障等多项技术，在水下战场的侦察监视、感知识别及应急预警等领域已广泛使用。

(1) Overall Design Technology

During the overall design process, it is essential to fully consider various requirements such as fluid dynamics calculations and linear optimization, cabin structure and equipment layout, load configuration, and low magnetic noise reduction. This includes providing installation space and interfaces for equipment, enabling the transmission and relay of electrical and communication signals, buoyancy adjustment necessary for navigation, reconnaissance and detection, buoyancy compensation after the deployment of mission payloads for attack and countermeasures, and emergency functions like releasing ballast or water intake for self-sinking. Currently, the overall design of navigational vehicles predominantly adopts modular and bionic design approaches.

(2) New Material Technologies

New materials also bring more possibilities for development. In terms of overall structure, high-performance composites and ceramic composites not only reduce weight but also enhance pressure resistance and corrosion resistance in extreme marine environments. The application of these materials enables withstanding greater diving depths, extending mission duration, and improving maneuverability and stability in complex underwater terrains.

In the field of power and propulsion technology, the use of new materials has significantly improved the energy efficiency ratio. For instance, the adoption of high-energy-density battery materials enables the storage of more energy without increasing volume, thereby achieving longer autonomous operation. Additionally, the development of new coating materials, such as anti-biofouling coatings, reduces maintenance requirements during prolonged underwater operations, enhancing their application efficiency throughout the entire lifecycle.

(3) Navigation and Communication Technology

Safe and stable positioning and navigation capabilities are crucial foundations for accomplishing operational missions, with a navigation system capable of providing real-time, precise vehicle pose information being the key factor in achieving these objectives. The system primarily consists of high-frequency navigation components and auxiliary devices such as Doppler velocity logs, which effectively correct or suppress cumulative errors. It adeptly overcomes challenges such as the short transmission range of electromagnetic waves underwater and the inability to use satellite navigation and positioning. Additionally, it determines the impact of surface calibration on the vehicle's stealth performance.

Inertial navigation technology, geophysical field navigation technology, and underwater acoustic positioning and navigation technology have been widely applied. By integrating these technologies with the protocol mechanisms of underwater acoustic communication networks, the positional relationship between mobile underwater nodes and the main node can be obtained, achieving collaborative navigation enhancement effects. This provides reliable communication support for formations.

(4) Navigation Control Technology

The harsh and variable conditions of the maritime battlefield environment pose severe challenges to decision-making, perception analysis, and autonomous action capabilities. Navigation control technology is a prerequisite for enhancing spatial adaptability and ensuring the completion of predetermined tasks. After obtaining the current platform's motion state through the navigation system and completing the desired path planning, it is necessary to rely on control algorithm models and allocation strategies to quickly judge and process data, simulate action processes, and calculate the output of actuators. This enhances the convergence of actual trajectory errors while making route changes, obstacle avoidance, emergency surfacing, and other actions as needed. Currently, the use of sliding mode control, adaptive control, backstepping control, and fuzzy control algorithms, as well as direct allocation, optimal allocation, and pseudo-inverse methods, is quite common.

Coordination control and communication between implementations enable them to undertake more complex tasks, requiring high precision and reliability. First, it is necessary to establish an effective communication protocol, which typically involves underwater acoustic communication technology, as radio wave propagation is severely limited in underwater environments. The underwater acoustic communication protocol must be able to adapt to the special conditions of the underwater environment, such as signal attenuation, multipath propagation, and noise interference. Second, coordination control relies on precise positioning and navigation systems that can provide real-time location information, ensuring the ability to follow predetermined paths and perform obstacle avoidance when necessary.

Additionally, task planning and allocation algorithms are key to achieving collaborative control. They can dynamically assign tasks and adjust paths based on task priority and complexity, as well as the capabilities and status of each unit. To enhance the system's robustness and fault tolerance, a distributed control architecture is often adopted. This ensures that even if one unit fails, the others can continue to perform their tasks. Finally, safety is a critical consideration in the design, requiring measures to prevent collisions between units and avoid harm to the marine environment.

(5) Energy and Power Technology

所搭载的猎雷装备和通信设备需要消耗大量的能源，因此其能源动力系统的性能和质量决定了航行器的水下运行的速度、工作范围、续航力、负载能力等战技指标。出于安全可靠性和安装尺寸等方面的考虑，电能依旧是目前能源系统的主要供给方式。其中锂离子电池的能量密度较高，无电池记忆效应且充电时间短，在理想的情况下无需进行维护，近年来已被大量采用。航行器电池能源系统设计的核心则在于电池管理系统，它对延长锂离子电池的使用寿命、提高电池的工作效率和保持电池组平衡状态存在重要意义。

(6) Comprehensive Support Technology

The deployment and recovery, technical state preparation, maintenance, and storage and transportation operations equipment together form its integrated support system. Among these, deployment and recovery serve as critical links, which can be divided into surface and underwater modes. They ensure that the vehicle can smoothly enter the water during the mission launch phase, return safely after completing its mission for inspection and cleaning, replenish energy, and download operational data, among other functions.

The surface deployment is typically carried out using the inclined slide rail or mechanical arm of its carrier, while retrieval relies on mechanical hooks or slides. Underwater deployment and retrieval often require the assistance of submarines, including both in-hull and outboard launch and recovery methods. The former deployment technology is more mature and better suited for torpedo-shaped vehicles, effectively capturing underwater characteristics. The latter has a lower space occupancy rate, but presents relatively greater development challenges and alters the platform's hydrodynamic properties.

2. Application in Mine Countermeasure Operations

Combining anti-mine warfare can significantly reduce personnel casualties, lower the lifecycle costs of platforms, and enhance the level of unmanned operations in minefields. It plays a crucial role in key aspects such as mission generation and planning, as well as mine hunting and sweeping operations (see figure).

(1) Marine Battlefield Environment Surveillance

The system primarily relies on CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) instruments and sensors to measure, record, and calculate physical properties of the marine battlefield environment such as pressure, turbidity, conductivity, temperature, and sound speed. It also collects underwater noise through hydroacoustic signal transducer arrays. The built-in units and supporting software of the instruments can store and process the relevant data. Additionally, by utilizing surface and underwater communication methods such as radio, satellite, and hydroacoustic communication, the system receives navigation information and control commands, accurately transmits the status of system equipment, and delivers real-time monitoring results based on wireless packet service technology. This ensures coordinated operations among clusters and other platforms, expands the sensing range, and can be used to support the pre-capture of marine battlefield environmental conditions and database construction for anti-mine warfare mission generation.

(2) Autonomous Mission Planning

任务规划处于反水雷作战指挥控制的重要阶段，通常涉及到任务、环境、平台等多方面要素，因此需作为复杂强耦合的多目标优化与决策问题来考虑。力求在获取作战任务且满足战技指标、使用条件、平台性能约束的前提下进行兵力配置和计划制定，将任务合理分配实现装备资源的优化配置。任务管理系统可根据航线校准、目标侦察、水雷清除等作战行动类型提供针对性的规划向导，支持岸基、水面、水下单体和编队等模式的扩展，在线路配置、猎雷机制、效果预测等方面可作为人工定制方案的参考。

(3) Mine Target Detection and Identification

By configuring acoustic equipment such as side-scan sonar, multibeam echo sounder, and synthetic aperture sonar, and integrating optical and magnetic methods, it can be achieved.