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The navy’s remote mine-hunting mini-submarine is highly portable. The sub and the gear used to control it can be loaded into a few shipping containers and sent anywhere in the world.(Contributed)

The navy has started using a mini-submarine that can hunt for mines in Halifax Harbour — or around the world.

The remote mine-hunting system developed by defence scientists in Nova Scotia went into operation earlier this year.

"From a terrorist point of view, the mine is the absolute perfect weapon," said David Hopkin, an engineer at Defence Research and Development Canada’s Dartmouth lab.

Mines can cost as little as $2,000 and they’re highly portable.

"It’s pretty easy for somebody to just sail by casually in the evening, kick something over the side and call the paper the next day and say, ‘I just dumped a mine in Halifax Harbour,’ " Mr. Hopkin said.

Creating mayhem can be even simpler than that if someone knows a country doesn’t have the ability to find mines.

"All I have to do is produce a credible threat and I know I’ve tied that country in knots because they don’t have the tools to actually go out and investigate whether I’m telling the truth or not," he said.

Two U.S. warships hit Iraqi mines during the 1991 Gulf War, causing extensive damage.

"It’s a very real threat," Mr. Hopkin said.

While the navy’s mini-sub — dubbed Dorado after the big fish — is now based in British Columbia, it is highly portable. The sub and the gear used to control it can be loaded into a few shipping containers and sent anywhere in the world.

The navy could use it in the Persian Gulf to find mines, Mr. Hopkin said. "That certainly is a very real possibility."

After working on the mini-sub project for more than a decade, Mr. Hopkin conceded it was difficult to hand Dorado over to the navy.

"It is sort of like cutting the umbilical cord. . . . It’s my baby," he said.

"It’s actually probably the most satisfying thing possible because you’ve demonstrated the goal that we strive for in developing something in the research and development community and actually having it transition into an operational capability for the navy. It just doesn’t get any better than that, really."

The nine-metre-long sub runs on a diesel engine, with its mast providing a path for air to get in and a place to put antennas to control the vehicle from afar. Sailors on a surface ship can operate it from about seven kilometres away.

The mini-sub is difficult to see now that it’s painted navy grey, Mr. Hopkin said. "It used to be painted yellow, so you can imagine the jokes."

About 15 local defence scientists helped put Dorado through its paces last month during a trial at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, Fla.

The trial was aimed at getting various countries to operate their unmanned vehicles together to clear an underwater minefield. The Canadian mini-sub was sent in first because it can scan a large area fairly quickly.

"There really isn’t anything else out there that can provide the same capability," Mr. Hopkin said.

The vessel moves at about 17 kilometres per hour, using high-frequency side-scan sonar towed behind it to hunt for mine-shaped items in shallow waters and on the sea floor.

During the test, after the mini-sub picked out objects that looked like mines, a small autonomous underwater vehicle from the New Zealand navy was sent out to positively identify the devices.

"They weren’t all mines," Mr. Hopkin said. "We actually found a nice stack of tires that someone had thrown down there to give us a bit of a red herring. So needless to say, we didn’t go back and look at that a third time."

Then, a small remote-control U.S. navy crawler vehicle that moves on treads over the sea floor was sent out to videotape the mines.

"While we didn’t have it for this trial, you could actually have a disposal weapon on board that vehicle," he said. "Basically you push the button and it shoots a charge into the mine and detonates the mine, and everything goes up in a puff of smoke."

The Canadian navy relies on clearance divers to dispose of mines. But now it’s looking for a vehicle similar to the crawlers, which sell for about $50,000 each.

"Those little crawlers, like other systems that are developed for this task, are meant to be cheap and so they’re disposable," Mr. Hopkin said. "They call them one-time, one-shot devices. You lose the vehicle when the mine goes up."

The military has spent about $25 million on the remote mine-hunting project.

"Where it gets kind of interesting is when you compare that to part of the development that’s gone on in the U.S, where you’re looking at closer to three quarters of a billion dollars," Mr. Hopkin said.

"We’ve really produced a unique, state-of-the-art product for what I would consider a reasonable investment."

Over the next two years, defence scientists will also look at adding a camera to the sub so it can snap photos of potential mines. "Now you can say, ‘Yup, that’s something that I’ve got to neutralize.’ "

They’ll also work on creating another unmanned vehicle that can conduct clandestine mine-hunting operations.

( clambie@herald.ca)