A shaky ceasefire in the war between the U.S. and Iran has made it 24 hours without completely collapsing.
President Trump’s top item toward a multi-point temporary truce has not happened: a full re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz that carries 20% of the world’s gas and oil supply.
Operators of oil tankers and cargo ships aren’t just worried about Iranian missiles and drones. They know about the sunken threat-secretly installed by Iranian mine layers in the months leading up to the war.
Far away, in a lab at University of Illinois, a U.S. Navy-funded project is ready to go — aimed at geo-tracking the dangerous underwater explosives and removing a sunken threat that has jittery oil shippers concerned for their lives and livelihood.
Early Wednesday when three cargo ships slowly maneuvered through the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. officials and Gulf nations were optimistic that the crucial Middle East waterway would finally open up. But the day started and ended with just three.
“We have seen an uptick of traffic in the strait today,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. “I will reiterate the president’s expectation and demand that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened immediately, quickly and safely.”
Safely is the operative word. And while recent U.S. airstrikes have taken out small Iranian Navy boats that install underwater mines, there are at least a dozen still in place.
At downstate U of I — roughly 7,000 miles away from the strait and that waterway threat — is a project funded by the U.S. Navy that would diffuse the explosive threat.
Viktor Gruev, an electrical engineering professor, is overseeing a project that focuses on underwater navigation and geo-locating explosive mines remotely, quickly and safely.
“I’ve been working with marine biologists for many, many years, just looking at natural phenomena,” said Gruev. “Then sort of as a side project, we figured it out that we have a technology that we can use for underwater navigation. So, we started off with simple cameras that we can just place them on a little underwater platform, and we develop all the machine learning algorithms behind it.”
Gruev said one of the challenges the U.S. military has is the plethora of mines that are being deployed in one area.
“So, we want to have a way to find these mines in a very reliable way, make sure they are identified, eliminated, or we can let other people know to avoid that particular area,” he said.
Gruev is in discussion with the Navy right now on how to help alleviate the current threat offshore Iran, he said.
“You know, there’s been a few instances when I watch the news, when I read the news and I say, what we have can really make a difference, right?,” he said.
The U of I mine-hunters feature imaging technology on underwater drones that is very accurate within the first 50 meters of the water column.
“So anywhere from the surface down to 50 meters, where the most damage is being done,” he explains. “This is where these mines are being deployed.”
Gruev says the technology is a relatively inexpensive platform, the information that can gather is definitely really important and can be vitally important.
President Trump demanded weeks ago that Iran remove the underwater booby trap bombs from the Strait of Hormuz. But there is no indication that happened.
Plus, U.S. airstrikes have destroyed half of the Iranian ships that could actually accomplish that, which points to another problem: the president has said Iran’s Navy has been sunk. Half of its small boat fleet remains, according to the Pentagon, and is still capable of stirring things up in the Gulf.
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