Hormuz Mine Clearance | Interactive Deterrence

Clearing the routes, day by day

A model notional. Defaults marked "source" come from open sources; everything else is a round number you can change in the panel.

Chance one ship meets a live mine on one transit

Click or drag the chart to move the day. The dashed line is the 2026 Hormuz clearance for comparison; the model is not fitted to it.

Hormuz 2026: the sourced timeline

How to read it

Mine clearance has two jobs. Search forces run sonar along each route, and every mine-like object they find has to be identified and, if it is a mine, destroyed, most often by divers or explosive ordnance disposal teams. The model runs both jobs day by day. A route is declared clear when it has been searched enough times to reach the confidence you pick and every contact has been dealt with.

"Clear" is a probability. Each search pass misses some mines, so the model always expects a few to remain. The chart turns that into the chance that one ship meets a live mine on one transit. Connell and Walberg write that mines work "not only by sinking ships but also by deterring underwriters from insuring passage." The residual risk the chart shows is what insurers have to price.

The strip is a schematic. Mine and clutter positions are drawn at random spots to show counts; the tool does not map where mines were laid.

What history says

The 1991 mine strikes show why clearance comes first. On 18 February 1991 the amphibious ship Tripoli, flagship of the minesweeping force, struck a moored contact mine, and less than three hours later the cruiser Princeton set off a bottom-influence mine (NHHC, H-Gram 059). In 1987 the reflagged tanker Bridgeton hit a mine on the first Earnest Will convoy, and in April 1988 the frigate Samuel B. Roberts struck another (Eyer, Proceedings).

Method

Area = route length × number of routes × route width. Passes needed = the smallest number for which a mine survives every pass with probability at or below 1 − confidence, with each pass finding a given mine 85 percent of the time notional.

Daily search = Σ (assets × area coverage rate × seabed factor × working hours). The seabed factors are the ratios of the Thales example rates (0.93, 0.8 and 0.4 square nautical miles per hour). Only the uncrewed-boat rate comes from that source; ship and helicopter rates are notional multiples of it.

Contacts = clutter density × area, plus the mines found. They appear as the first pass covers the route. Teams work through them at a notional rate; the threat level sets working hours and a weekly loss rate for every asset.

Re-mining adds mines inside the routes during clearance and about one square nautical mile of re-search per mine per pass notional.

Risk per transit = 1 − (1 − 0.5 × 60 m ÷ route width)^{mines per route}: a mine fires half the time when it lies within a 60-meter path notional.

Not modeled: mine types and sweep-resistant mines, currents and water depth, weather, clearance of anchorages and port approaches, mine hunting outside the routes.

Left out on purpose: counts of contacts investigated and mines found in 2026, and an IMO mine count, which could not be matched to a source that loaded; and a mining start date earlier than the one the timeline sources support.

Force rates

Clearing the routes, day by day

How to read it

What history says

Method

Force rates

Sources for the model

Timeline sources