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torginus 8 hours ago

I'm not a military guy, but I would think you can make mines nowadays that do exactly that.

dzhiurgis 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yep. IIRC Norway and Sweden has actually have a network of smart mines deployed.

Pay08 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

With what communication protocol? Does high-frequency radio have the range for that?

dzhiurgis 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Sonar can work over 100km. Mines obvs need to maintain radio silence so passive mode only.

torginus 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I was thinking you could run a fiber optic cable. Those have proven themselves to work over 10s of miles in Ukraine with drones.

beedeebeedee 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s an interesting idea. I think the fiber optics for drones works because it is only used once over a short period of time. It seems like a cable connected to a mine could be easily disrupted by dragging an anchor with a small robot boat.

And as another commenter noted, mines get moved by currents, so the cable could get tangled and snap.

mikkupikku 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In the modern era, the difference between sea mine and drone or torpedo can be a lot fuzzier than you may expect. People think of spikey balls, but some sea mines today can do stuff like use passive sonar to match targets against an internal database before firing a homing torpedo. I doubt Iran has these, but they certainly have the proficiency to think creatively about the problem.

torginus 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

> I doubt Iran has these

According to guys in the know, they have quite the hardware:

https://www.hisutton.com/Iranian-Naval-Mines.html

torginus an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean you could have some slack in the cable easily, and have the mine become intert should its cable snap.

You have to be mindful of enemy tampering, but overal I would say the idea's worth investigating.

On an unrelated note, I was also thinking of using fiber optic drones to rapidly set up an unjammable communications network on the battlefield. Surely that would be useful for something?