How Many Minesweepers Does the U.S. Navy Have? Just Four

The U.S. Navy is facing a fresh round of Iranian mine claims in the Strait of Hormuz with only four dedicated minesweepers left in service, all of them Avenger class mine countermeasures ships forward deployed to Sasebo in southern Japan. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy claimed on November 1 that two oil tankers had exploded after striking mines while sailing what it called an unauthorised route with their identification systems switched off. It had claimed a day earlier that a supertanker hit a mine east of the strait, and named none of the vessels involved in either incident. The claims follow earlier reports of mine strikes on merchant shipping in late October. They highlight how thin the Navy’s purpose-built mine warfare force has become, with half the remaining Avenger fleet retired in 2025 and the Gulf mission handed to ships whose mine-hunting equipment the Pentagon’s own testers were unable to judge effective as recently as March.

Fourteen Avenger class ships were built between 1987 and 1994, with wooden hulls sheathed in fibreglass giving them the low magnetic and acoustic signatures needed to work inside a minefield rather than at its edge. The four based in Bahrain, USS Sentry, USS Devastator, USS Dextrous and USS Gladiator, were decommissioned in 2025 after more than 30 years of service each. A Navy official stated in March that the service has no plans to recommission any ship of the class. That leaves USS Patriot, USS Pioneer, USS Warrior and USS Chief as the entire dedicated force, with Chief and Pioneer having left Singapore on April 10 heading west through the Strait of Malacca as U.S. Central Command began opening a new passage through the Strait of Hormuz, although by late June both were reported back in the western Pacific.

The Navy’s Gulf mine-hunting role passed in 2025 to Independence class littoral combat ships carrying the mine countermeasures mission package, which combines a towed mine-hunting sonar, unmanned surface vessels fitted for minesweeping and mine neutralisation systems flown from an embarked MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter. USS Canberra became the first to reach the Middle East with the package on May 22, 2025, followed by USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara. The aluminium-hulled ships are designed to clear mines from outside the danger zone rather than sail into it as the Avengers did. Program officials stated in January that four packages had been delivered with three more due during 2026, while the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation reported on March 13 that the office could not determine the reliability or effectiveness of the ship fitted with the package.

President Donald Trump declared on August 25 that all mines had been “removed and/or detonated from within the International Waters of the Strait of Hormuz”, a statement no independent survey has confirmed. Pentagon officials had reportedly told lawmakers in the spring that clearance would likely take around six months. Tehran has since offered a two day plan to reopen the waterway if Washington meets its conditions. The four Avengers remaining in Japan are themselves more than three decades old, with Patriot commissioned in 1991 and Chief, the youngest ship of the class, in 1994.