Simultaneously, since the launch of Epic Fury<\/a> in late February, the U.S. has been coordinating with Israel in a large-scale military campaign to destroy Iran\u2019s leadership, military arsenal and nuclear infrastructure. Tehran is responding by interfering with maritime traffic<\/a> in the Strait of Hormuz on a major global shipping chokepoint for oil, and by attacking U.S. military targets<\/a> around the Middle East with deadly drones and missiles.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, the Navy is enforcing its own blockade on Iranian ports, while the U.S. and Iran remain in a fragile ceasefire set to allow peace talks in Pakistan.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA second aircraft carrier will join the blockade in just a few days,\u201d Hegseth said. \u201cThis growing blockade has also gone global. Just this week, we seized two Iranian \u2018dark fleet\u2019 ships in the Indo-Pacific region that had left Iranian ports before the blockade went into effect.\u201d<\/p>\n The secretary said that transits are currently occurring in the strait, but the rate of passages is limited and they\u2019re happening with \u201cmore risk than people would like to see.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In a social media post on Thursday, Trump announced that he\u2019d ordered the Navy \u201cto shoot and kill any boat \u2026 that is putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d He stated that those activities would be \u201ctripled\u201d in the near term, and that minesweepers were also actively clearing the strait.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of what the president is threatening is ensuring, if there\u2019s attempts to recklessly and irresponsibly lay more mines, we\u2019re going to deal with that. It\u2019s a violation of the ceasefire,\u201d Hegseth said on Friday.<\/p>\n Speaking alongside the secretary, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine indicated that Iranians continue to operate \u201ca variety of smaller Boston Whaler-sized boats\u201d for mine-dropping missions, which reportedly span<\/a> between 13 and 42 feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n The two senior defense officials declined to specify the estimated quantity of mines Iran has placed in the strait, or the U.S. military\u2019s expected timeline for fully clearing them out to allow for safer transits.<\/p>\n Naval mines typically are anchored or placed on seabeds, or float on or just below the surface \u2014 drifting with ocean currents. They can be difficult to locate, and represent cost-effective, passive weapons options that impact enemy naval assets or disrupt maritime navigation by creating dangerous obstacles.<\/p>\n \u201cU.S. forces are actively addressing the matter using a combination of manned and unmanned capabilities to ensure passage through the strait is safe,\u201d a defense official told DefenseScoop on Thursday. \u201cIran likely placed some mines in or near the strait at some point during the conflict. We\u2019re not talking about a high volume.\u201d<\/p>\n The Navy has been fielding and prototyping<\/a> several variants of surface and underwater drones<\/a> to scan for, detect and eliminate water-based mines over the last several years \u2014 including the MK-18 Mod 2 Kingfish, the surface-deployed Knifefish, and the Barracuda mine neutralization vehicle, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t want an enemy or adversary to know what we\u2019re throwing at them, whether it\u2019s a lethal effect or a counter effect,\u201d a U.S. military official told DefenseScoop on Friday. \u201cWhen they know what\u2019s coming or being used, they can better prepare and counter.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, on the sidelines of the Sea-Air-Space conference earlier this week, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle also discussed how drones and accompanying modular platforms will be crucial to revitalizing the Navy\u2019s mine countermeasure operations in the modern era.<\/p>\n \u201cMine warfare traditionally requires a permissive environment. The future is unmanned. We are moving toward autonomous systems and AI that can sense and report mines more safely and quickly than traditional \u2018mowing the grass\u2019 methods. However, those systems still need a \u2018mothership\u2019 to process data,\u201d Caudle said at a media roundtable<\/a> Monday. \u201cWe will bring every capability we have to the fight, including leveraging allies like the Baltic states and the U.K., who excel in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\tWritten by Brandi Vincent![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/9638294.jpg\")
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Air Force Gen. Dan Caine conduct a press briefing about Operation Epic Fury at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., April 24, 2026. (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Eric Brann)<\/p>\n![\"Brandi](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777061171_369_Image-from-iOS-2-e1662581202907.jpg\")
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\n\t\t\tBrandi Vincent is a Senior Reporter at DefenseScoop, where she reports on disruptive technologies and associated policies impacting Pentagon and military personnel. Prior to joining SNG, she produced a documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. Brandi grew up in Louisiana and received a master\u2019s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. She was named Best New Journalist at the 2024 Defence Media Awards.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. military is expanding intelligence-gathering and minesweeping operations to clear out underwater explosive devices that are restricting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5687,27002,12,4049,1615,11286,34,27003,27004,27005,12259,27006,1484,67,74,7066,27007],"class_list":{"0":"post-41996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-donald-trump","8":"tag-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth","9":"tag-distributed-maritime-operations","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-drone","12":"tag-drones","13":"tag-gen-dan-caine","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-mine-countermeasures","16":"tag-mine-sweeping","17":"tag-mine-warfare","18":"tag-mines","19":"tag-naval-mines","20":"tag-operation-epic-fury","21":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","22":"tag-trump","23":"tag-unmanned-systems","24":"tag-uuv"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116461488322845124","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}