Minesweeper

minesweeper

Naval vessel used to clear submarine mines from an expanse of water. In naval warfare, they are used to clear mines from sea-lanes to protect merchant shipping as well as to clear paths for warships to engage in battle or amphibious warfare. The earliest examples used sweeping wires with sawlike projections to cut the cables anchoring submarine mines and allow them to rise to the surface, where they would be destroyed by gunfire. The wide use of magnetic mines (set off by the magnetic field of steel ships) in the Korean War led to wood-hulled minesweepers.

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minesweeper [′mīn‚swēp·ər]

(naval architecture)

A ship specially designed and equipped to remove or destroy underwater mines.

(ordnance)

Heavy road roller pushed in front of a tank, to destroy land mines by exploding them.

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Minesweeper 

a warship intended for the detection and destruction of naval mines with the aid of sweeps and for conducting warships behind the sweeps.

Minesweepers are subdivided into the following categories: fleet minesweepers, which escort warships at sea and sweep in areas far from their own bases; coastal and inshore minesweepers, which sweep in their own waters; motorboat minesweepers, which sweep in roadsteads and coastal areas; and river minesweepers, which sweep mines and escort ships in rivers.

Large minesweepers have a displacement of up to 800 tons and a speed of 15–20 knots. Such minesweepers are equipped with powerful engines, sonar and television for mine detection, and equipment for towing the sweeps. The main armament of minesweepers consists of various types of sweeps, the use of which depends on the type of mines the enemy has laid. For self-defense, minesweepers are armed with small-caliber antiaircraft guns.