Following AMI’s recent looks at the state of the frigate and submarine markets in Europe and across the globe, this month we turn to a small but relevant component of world navies – mine warfare platforms.
Mine warfare capabilities and ships have traditionally been a small and generally overlooked investment for naval fleets worldwide. The exception to that pattern has been periodic incidents, such as damage to US Navy (USN) ships from mines during the 1991 Gulf War.
The Ukraine conflict has so far not seen significant public information on the use of naval mines in either offensive or defensive roles. Yet there are some indications naval mines are being employed by both sides, and reports of stray mines discovered in Romanian and Turkish waters also calls attention to the continuing requirement for navies to maintain platforms and personnel for mine warfare.
The chart below, drawn from AMI’s World Naval Projects Report (WNPR), shows that forecasted naval mine warfare vessel acquisitions are growing in total investment, but overall remain a small sub-segment of the total global naval market.
AMI’s forecasted 20-year investment in Mine Countermeasures Vessels (MCMV) increased 6.2% (from US$18.9B to US$20.1B) between 2017 and 2022, while the share of spending on new MCMV’s as a percentage of total spending (market share) declined very slightly. Looking at MCMV hull numbers, future MCMV’s make up almost 6 percent of all platform types (171 hulls).
Both the hull number and future spend forecasts capture only a part of naval mine warfare market sub-segment, as spending on unmanned vehicles (surface and subsurface) for mine warfare has increased substantially in the past decade. In response to these structural shifts in the naval mine warfare market, we have expanded our coverage of ship projects to include unmanned maritime vessels (USV and UUV) in WNPR, both as parts of manned vessel acquisitions, and as stand-along programs.
Looking at Europe’s place in the global market for MCMV new build projects, WNPR shows that the region accounts for just under half of MCMV projects, but those 15 projects make up almost 60 percent of global investment in future naval mine warfare, measured by both total spend and numbers of hulls. Notably, there is much less regional variance in average cost per MCMV hulls between Europe and the rest of the world, despite the larger average size of new MCMVs in Europe (1,200 tons compared to almost 900 tons for the rest of the world). This suggests that the design and equipment fits (representing a significant proportion of total ship cost) for new MCMVs tend to much more uniform across regions of the world than is the case for frigates and submarines.
A final analytic insight on the European MCMV market is made possible by AMI’s WNPR database. Here spending on new construction programs remain concentrated in the larger navies of Northern and Western Europe. However, the share of Eastern and Southern Europe spending and hulls represented by Bulgaria, Croatia, Turkey, and Romania are 13% and 17% respectively. As the war in Ukraine grows longer, and the use of naval mines becomes more widespread, these figures could grow as mine warfare becomes a bigger priority for countries near the conflict region in the Black Sea.