The US Navy decommissioned Middle East minesweepers last year. Here’s what they did.

The U.S. Navy decommissioned half of its Avenger-class mine countermeasure ships last year and began replacing them with littoral combat ships that possess anti-mine capabilities.

The USS Devastator, USS Dextrous, USS Gladiator and USS Sentry — which were all stationed in Bahrain in the Middle East — were put to pasture in 2025 after each serving for over 30 years, leaving only four remaining minesweepers in the U.S. Navy fleet.

Navy Times

Those remaining Avenger-class minesweepers are currently forward deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet at U.S. Fleet Activities Sasebo, Japan.

A Navy official told Military Times the Navy has no plans to recommission any Avenger-class Mine Countermeasures Ships.

Naval mine warfare is a major tenet of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy military doctrine, according to a 2017 Office of Naval Intelligence report, and looks to be a factor in the ongoing Iran war.

Iran reportedly began laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz this week, with U.S. Central Command announcing Tuesday that it had struck 16 Iranian mine-layers.

Navy Times

It remained unknown Thursday if the Pentagon intended to forward deploy minesweepers from Japan to the Middle East in support of Operation Epic Fury.

The Navy began stationing Independence-class littoral combat ships equipped with the mine countermeasures (MCM) mission package in the U.S. Fifth Fleet last year to replace the decommissioned minesweepers in Bahrain.

The USS Canberra was the first LCS with the MCM package to arrive in the Middle East on May 22.

The USS Santa Barbara and USS Tulsa, two other littoral combat ships with the MCM package, were also stationed in the U.S. Fifth Fleet as of Sept. 25, 2025, with a yet-to-be-named fourth LCS on its way, according to USNI News.

A Navy official told Military Times that the littoral combat ship MCM mission package is a sophisticated suite of manned and unmanned systems designed to locate, identify, and neutralize sea mines at a safer distance from minefields than the Avenger-class MCMs.

Unlike the minesweepers, which have a long history of being battle-tested, the LCS with the MCM package has never been deployed in combat, and if the LCS is used during Operation Epic Fury to address Iranian mines it will be a first.

The LCS with the MCM package possesses similar counter-mine capabilities as minesweepers, but the fundamental difference is that the LCS operates outside the mine threat zone and deploys counter-mine devices, while the minesweepers can operate near or directly inside the mine-threat zone.

Navy Times

Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. manufactured 14 deployable Avenger-class ships in total, according to the Navy, and those ships were deployed in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war, Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm.

After the Gulf War, U.S. Avenger-class minesweepers participated in efforts to hunt down more than 1,000 mines off of Kuwait that Iraq laid, and retired Navy Capt. Sam Howard explained the operational differences between mine hunting and minesweeping, including use of MH 53 Sea Dragon helicopters with side-scan sonar, high-frequency sonar and tethered remote operating vehicles, acoustic devices, the Mark 105 Hydrofoil Magnetic Minesweeping Sled, and towed cables and cutters to detonate or surface and destroy moored and bottom mines.