title: Carbon cycle

text: Since the industrial revolution, and especially since the end of WWII, human activity has substantially disturbed the global carbon cycle by redistributing massive amounts of carbon from the geosphere. Humans have also continued to shift the natural component functions of the terrestrial biosphere with changes to vegetation and other land use. Man-made (synthetic) carbon compounds have been designed and mass-manufactured that will persist for decades to millennia in air, water, and sediments as pollutants. Climate change is amplifying and forcing further indirect human changes to the carbon cycle as a consequence various positive and negative feedbacks.


title: Carbon cycle

text: Since the invention of agriculture, humans have directly and gradually influenced the carbon cycle over century-long timescales by modifying the mixture of vegetation in the terrestrial biosphere. Over the past several centuries, direct and indirect human-caused land use and land cover change (LUCC) has led to the loss of biodiversity, which lowers ecosystems' resilience to environmental stresses and decreases their ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere. More directly, it often leads to the release of carbon from terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere.


title: Carbon cycle

text: Deforestation for agricultural purposes removes forests, which hold large amounts of carbon, and replaces them, generally with agricultural or urban areas. Both of these replacement land cover types store comparatively small amounts of carbon so that the net result of the transition is that more carbon stays in the atmosphere. However, the effects on the atmosphere and overall carbon cycle can be intentionally and/or naturally reversed with reforestation.


title: Carbon cycle

text: Increased herbivore populations can alter the amount of carbon dioxide produced from a ecosystem, overall impacting the carbon cycle. Large mobile herbivores have the ability to alter both the above and below ground composition of a ecosystem, through selective feeding, trampling, and waste, all of which decrease plant production. Selectively feeding on high quality plants decreases the aboveground plant composition, on the other hand trampling results in soil compaction resulting in higher soil bulk density and less soil oxygen. The amount of carbon dioxide released back into the atmosphere is increased due to large herbivores waste. The impact large herbivores have on the ecosystem suggest their importance to the carbon cycle, as with the help of natural disturbances, increased herbivore populations can shift a carbon sink to a source. The boreal forest is a prime example of how increased herbivore populations can negatively impact a ecosystem. Increased herbivore populations significant negative impact on the ecosystem, suggests that they can even be identified as a invasive species.


title: Carbon cycle

text: The largest and one of the fastest growing human impacts on the carbon cycle and biosphere is the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, which directly transfer carbon from the geosphere into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is also produced and released during the calcination of limestone for clinker production. Clinker is an industrial precursor of cement.


title: Carbon cycle

text: , about 450 gigatons of fossil carbon have been extracted in total; an amount approaching the carbon contained in all of Earth's living terrestrial biomass. Recent rates of global emissions directly into the atmosphere have exceeded the uptake by vegetation and the oceans. These sinks have been expected and observed to remove about half of the added atmospheric carbon within about a century. Nevertheless, sinks like the ocean have evolving saturation properties, and a substantial fraction (20–35%, based on coupled models) of the added carbon is projected remain in the atmosphere for centuries to millennia. Fossil carbon extraction that increases atmospheric greenhouse gases is thus described by the IPCC, atmospheric and oceanic scientists as "a long-term commitment by society to living in a changing climate and, ultimately, a warmer world."


title: Carbon cycle

text: Smaller amounts of man-made petrochemicals, containing fossil carbon, can have unexpected and outsized effects on the biological carbon cycle. This occurs in part because they have been purposely created by humans to decompose slowly, which enables their unnatural persistence and buildup throughout the biosphere. In many cases their pathways through the broader carbon cycle are also not yet well-characterized or understood.


title: Carbon cycle

text: Close to 400 million tons of plastic were manufactured globally during year 2018 with annual growth rates approaching 10%, and over 6 gigatons produced in total since 1950. Plastics eventually undergo fragmentation as a typical first step in their decay, and this enables their widespread distribution by air and water currents. Animals easily internalize microplastics and nanoplastics through ingestion and inhalation, accompanied by risks of bioaccumulation. Biodegradable plastics placed into landfills generate methane and carbon dioxide which cycles through the atmosphere unless captured. A major review of the scientific evidence as of year 2019 did not identify major consequences for human society at current levels, but does foresee substantial risks emerging within the next century. A 2019 study indicated that degradation of plastics through sun exposure, releases both carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Bioplastics with a more natural and rapid carbon cycle have been developed as an alternative to other petroleum-based single-use plastics.


title: Carbon cycle

text: Halocarbons are less prolific compounds developed for diverse uses throughout industry; for example as solvents and refrigerants. Nevertheless, the buildup of relatively small concentrations (parts per trillion) of chlorofluorocarbon, hydrofluorocarbon, and perfluorocarbon gases in the atmosphere is responsible for about 10% of the total direct radiative forcing from all long-lived greenhouse gases (year 2019); which includes forcing from the much larger concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane. Chlorofluorocarbons also cause stratospheric ozone depletion. International efforts are ongoing under the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocol to control rapid growth in the industrial manufacturing and use of these environmentally potent gases. For some applications more benign alternatives such as hydrofluoroolefins have been developed and are being gradually introduced.


title: Carbon cycle

text: Current trends in climate change lead to higher ocean temperatures and acidity, thus modifying marine ecosystems. Also, acid rain and polluted runoff from agriculture and industry change the ocean's chemical composition. Such changes can have dramatic effects on highly sensitive ecosystems such as coral reefs, thus limiting the ocean's ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere on a regional scale and reducing oceanic biodiversity globally.


title: Carbon cycle

text: The exchanges of carbon between the atmosphere and other components of the Earth system, collectively known as the carbon cycle, currently constitute important negative (dampening) feedbacks on the effect of anthropogenic carbon emissions on climate change. Carbon sinks in the land and the ocean each currently take up about one-quarter of anthropogenic carbon emissions each year.


title: Carbon cycle

text: These feedbacks are expected to weaken in the future, amplifying the effect of anthropogenic carbon emissions on climate change. The degree to which they will weaken, however, is highly uncertain, with Earth system models predicting a wide range of land and ocean carbon uptakes even under identical atmospheric concentration or emission scenarios. Arctic methane emissions indirectly caused by anthropogenic global warming also affect the carbon cycle and contribute to further warming.


title: Naval mine

text: A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, any vessel or a particular vessel type, akin to anti-infantry vs. anti-vehicle mines. Naval mines can be used offensively, to hamper enemy shipping movements or lock vessels into a harbour; or defensively, to protect friendly vessels and create "safe" zones. Mines allow the minelaying force commander to concentrate warships or defensive assets in mine-free areas giving the adversary three choices: undertake an expensive and time-consuming minesweeping effort, accept the casualties of challenging the minefield, or use the unmined waters where the greatest concentration of enemy firepower will be encountered.


title: Naval mine

text: Although international law requires signatory nations to declare mined areas, precise locations remain secret; and non-complying individuals may not disclose minelaying. While mines threaten only those who choose to traverse waters that may be mined, the possibility of activating a mine is a powerful disincentive to shipping. In the absence of effective measures to limit each mine's lifespan, the hazard to shipping can remain long after the war in which the mines were laid is over. Unless detonated by a parallel time fuze at the end of their useful life, naval mines need to be found and dismantled after the end of hostilities; an often prolonged, costly, and hazardous task.


title: Naval mine

text: Modern mines containing high explosives detonated by complex electronic fuze mechanisms are much more effective than early gunpowder mines requiring physical ignition. Mines may be placed by aircraft, ships, submarines, or individual swimmers and boatmen. Minesweeping is the practice of the removal of explosive naval mines, usually by a specially designed ship called a minesweeper using various measures to either capture or detonate the mines, but sometimes also with an aircraft made for that purpose. There are also mines that release a homing torpedo rather than explode themselves.


title: Naval mine

text: Mines can be laid in many ways: by purpose-built minelayers, refitted ships, submarines, or aircraft—and even by dropping them into a harbour by hand. They can be inexpensive: some variants can cost as little as US$2,000, though more sophisticated mines can cost millions of dollars, be equipped with several kinds of sensors, and deliver a warhead by rocket or torpedo.


title: Naval mine

text: Their flexibility and cost-effectiveness make mines attractive to the less powerful belligerent in asymmetric warfare. The cost of producing and laying a mine is usually between 0.5% and 10% of the cost of removing it, and it can take up to 200 times as long to clear a minefield as to lay it. Parts of some World War II naval minefields still exist because they are too extensive and expensive to clear. Some 1940s-era mines may remain dangerous for many years.


title: Naval mine

text: Mines have been employed as offensive or defensive weapons in rivers, lakes, estuaries, seas, and oceans, but they can also be used as tools of psychological warfare. Offensive mines are placed in enemy waters, outside harbours, and across important shipping routes to sink both merchant and military vessels. Defensive minefields safeguard key stretches of coast from enemy ships and submarines, forcing them into more easily defended areas, or keeping them away from sensitive ones.


title: Naval mine

text: Shipowners are reluctant to send their ships through known minefields. Port authorities may attempt to clear a mined area, but those without effective minesweeping equipment may cease using the area. Transit of a mined area will be attempted only when strategic interests outweigh potential losses. The decision-makers perception of the minefield is a critical factor. Minefields designed for psychological effect are usually placed on trade routes to stop ships from reaching an enemy nation. They are often spread thinly, to create an impression of minefields existing across large areas. A single mine inserted strategically on a shipping route can stop maritime movements for days while the entire area is swept. A mine's capability to sink ships makes it a credible threat, but minefields work more on the mind than on ships.


title: Naval mine

text: International law, specifically the Eighth Hague Convention of 1907, requires nations to declare when they mine an area, to make it easier for civil shipping to avoid the mines. The warnings do not have to be specific; for example, during World War II, Britain declared simply that it had mined the English Channel, North Sea and French coast.


title: Naval mine

text: Precursors to naval mines were first invented by Chinese innovators of Imperial China and were described in thorough detail by the early Ming dynasty artillery officer Jiao Yu, in his 14th-century military treatise known as the "Huolongjing". Chinese records tell of naval explosives in the 16th century, used to fight against Japanese pirates ("wokou"). This kind of naval mine was loaded in a wooden box, sealed with putty. General Qi Jiguang made several timed, drifting explosives, to harass Japanese pirate ships. The "Tiangong Kaiwu" ("The Exploitation of the Works of Nature") treatise, written by Song Yingxing in 1637, describes naval mines with a ripcord pulled by hidden ambushers located on the nearby shore who rotated a steel wheellock flint mechanism to produce sparks and ignite the fuse of the naval mine. Although this is the rotating steel wheellock's first use in naval mines, Jiao Yu described their use for land mines in the 14th century.


title: Naval mine

text: The first plan for a sea mine in the West was by Ralph Rabbards, who presented his design to Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1574. The Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel was employed in the Office of Ordnance by King Charles I of England to make weapons, including the failed "floating petard". Weapons of this type were apparently tried by the English at the Siege of La Rochelle in 1627.


title: Naval mine

text: American David Bushnell developed the first American naval mine, for use against the British in the American War of Independence. It was a watertight keg filled with gunpowder that was floated toward the enemy, detonated by a sparking mechanism if it struck a ship. It was used on the Delaware River as a drift mine, destroying a small boat near its intended target, a British warship.


title: Naval mine

text: The 1804 Raid on Boulogne made extensive use of explosive devices designed by inventor Robert Fulton. The 'torpedo-catamaran' was a coffer-like device balanced on two wooden floats and steered by a man with a paddle. Weighted with lead so as to ride low in the water, the operator was further disguised by wearing dark clothes and a black cap. His task was to approach the French ship, hook the torpedo to the anchor cable and, having activated the device by removing a pin, remove the paddles and escape before the torpedo detonated. Also to be deployed were large numbers of casks filled with gunpowder, ballast and combustible balls. They would float in on the tide and on washing up against an enemy's hull, explode. Also included in the force were several fireships, carrying 40 barrels of gunpowder and rigged to explode by a clockwork mechanism.


title: Naval mine

text: In 1812, Russian engineer Pavel Shilling exploded an underwater mine using an electrical circuit. In 1842 Samuel Colt used an electric detonator to destroy a moving vessel to demonstrate an underwater mine of his own design to the United States Navy and President John Tyler. However, opposition from former president John Quincy Adams, scuttled the project as "not fair and honest warfare". In 1854, during the unsuccessful attempt of the Anglo-French fleet to seize the Kronstadt fortress, British steamships HMS "Merlin" (9 June 1855, the first successful mining in history), HMS "Vulture" and HMS "Firefly" suffered damage due to the underwater explosions of Russian naval mines. Russian naval specialists set more than 1,500 naval mines, or "infernal machines", designed by Moritz von Jacobi and by Immanuel Nobel, in the Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War of 1853–1856. The mining of "Vulcan" led to the world's first minesweeping operation. During the next 72 hours, 33 mines were swept.


title: Naval mine

text: The Jacobi mine was designed by German-born, Russian engineer Jacobi, in 1853. The mine was tied to the sea bottom by an anchor. A cable connected it to a galvanic cell which powered it from the shore, the power of its explosive charge was equal to of black powder. In the summer of 1853, the production of the mine was approved by the Committee for Mines of the Ministry of War of the Russian Empire. In 1854, 60 Jacobi mines were laid in the vicinity of the Forts Pavel and Alexander (Kronstadt), to deter the British Baltic Fleet from attacking them. It gradually phased out its direct competitor the Nobel mine on the insistence of Admiral Fyodor Litke. The Nobel mines were bought from Swedish industrialist Immanuel Nobel who had entered into collusion with the Russian head of navy Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov. Despite their high cost (100 Russian rubles) the Nobel mines proved to be faulty, exploding while being laid, failing to explode or detaching from their wires, and drifting uncontrollably, at least 70 of them were subsequently disarmed by the British. In 1855, 301 more Jacobi mines were laid around Krostadt and Lisy Nos. British ships did not dare to approach them.


title: Naval mine

text: In the 19th century, mines were called torpedoes, a name probably conferred by Robert Fulton after the torpedo fish, which gives powerful electric shocks. A spar torpedo was a mine attached to a long pole and detonated when the ship carrying it rammed another one and withdrew a safe distance. The submarine used one to sink on 17 February 1864. A Harvey torpedo was a type of floating mine towed alongside a ship and was briefly in service in the Royal Navy in the 1870s. Other "torpedoes" were attached to ships or propelled themselves. One such weapon called the Whitehead torpedo after its inventor, caused the word "torpedo" to apply to self-propelled underwater missiles as well as to static devices. These mobile devices were also known as "fish torpedoes".


title: Naval mine

text: The American Civil War of 1861–1865 also saw the successful use of mines. The first ship sunk by a mine, , foundered in 1862 in the Yazoo River. Rear Admiral David Farragut's famous/apocryphal command during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" refers to a minefield laid at Mobile, Alabama.


title: Naval mine

text: After 1865 the United States adopted the mine as its primary weapon for coastal defense. In the decade following 1868, Major Henry Larcom Abbot carried out a lengthy set of experiments to design and test moored mines that could be exploded on contact or be detonated at will as enemy shipping passed near them. This initial development of mines in the United States took place under the purview of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which trained officers and men in their use at the Engineer School of Application at Willets Point, New York (later named Fort Totten). In 1901 underwater minefields became the responsibility of the US Army's Artillery Corps, and in 1907 this was a founding responsibility of the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps.


title: Naval mine

text: The Imperial Russian Navy, a pioneer in mine warfare, successfully deployed mines against the Ottoman Navy during both the Crimean War and the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878).


title: Naval mine

text: During the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), the Peruvian Navy, at a time when the Chilean squadron was blockading the Peruvian ports, formed a brigade of torpedo boats under the command of the frigate captain Leopoldo Sánchez Calderón and the Peruvian engineer , who perfected the naval torpedo or mine system to be electrically activated when the cargo weight was lifted. This is how, on July 3, 1880, in front of the port of Callao, the gunned transport "" flies when capturing a sloop mined by the Peruvians. A similar fate occurred with the gunboat schooner "" in front of the port of Chancay, on September 13, 1880, which having captured and checked a beautiful boat, it exploded when hoisting it on its side.


title: Naval mine

text: During the Battle of Tamsui (1884), in the Keelung Campaign of the Sino-French War, Chinese forces in Taiwan under Liu Mingchuan took measures to reinforce Tamsui against the French; they planted nine torpedo mines in the river and blocked the entrance.


title: Naval mine

text: During the Boxer Rebellion, Imperial Chinese forces deployed a command-detonated mine field at the mouth of the Peiho river before the Dagu forts, to prevent the western Allied forces from sending ships to attack.


title: Naval mine

text: The next major use of mines was during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Two mines blew up when the struck them near Port Arthur, sending the holed vessel to the bottom and killing the fleet commander, Admiral Stepan Makarov, and most of his crew in the process. The toll inflicted by mines was not confined to the Russians, however. The Japanese Navy lost two battleships, four cruisers, two destroyers and a torpedo-boat to offensively laid mines during the war. Most famously, on 15 May 1904, the Russian minelayer "Amur" planted a 50-mine minefield off Port Arthur and succeeded in sinking the Japanese battleships and .


title: Naval mine

text: Following the end of the Russo-Japanese War, several nations attempted to have mines banned as weapons of war at the Hague Peace Conference (1907).


title: Naval mine

text: Many early mines were fragile and dangerous to handle, as they contained glass containers filled with nitroglycerin or mechanical devices that activated a blast upon tipping. Several mine-laying ships were destroyed when their cargo exploded.


title: Naval mine

text: Beginning around the start of the 20th century, submarine mines played a major role in the defense of U.S. harbours against enemy attacks as part of the Endicott and Taft Programs. The mines employed were controlled mines, anchored to the bottoms of the harbours, and detonated under control from large mine casemates onshore.


title: Naval mine

text: During World War I, mines were used extensively to defend coasts, coastal shipping, ports and naval bases around the globe. The Germans laid mines in shipping lanes to sink merchant and naval vessels serving Britain. The Allies targeted the German U-boats in the Strait of Dover and the Hebrides. In an attempt to seal up the northern exits of the North Sea, the Allies developed the North Sea Mine Barrage. During a period of five months from June 1918, almost 70,000 mines were laid spanning the North Sea's northern exits. The total number of mines laid in the North Sea, the British East Coast, Straits of Dover, and Heligoland Bight is estimated at 190,000 and the total number during the whole of WWI was 235,000 sea mines. Clearing the barrage after the war took 82 ships and five months, working around the clock. It was also during World War I, that the British hospital ship, HMHS "Britannic", became the largest vessel ever sunk by a naval mine. The "Britannic" was the sister ship of the RMS Titanic, and the RMS Olympic.


title: Naval mine

text: During World War II, the U-boat fleet, which dominated much of the battle of the Atlantic, was small at the beginning of the war and much of the early action by German forces involved mining convoy routes and ports around Britain. German submarines also operated in the Mediterranean Sea, in the Caribbean Sea, and along the U.S. coast.


title: Naval mine

text: Initially, contact mines (requiring a ship to physically strike a mine to detonate it) were employed, usually tethered at the end of a cable just below the surface of the water. Contact mines usually blew a hole in ships' hulls. By the beginning of World War II, most nations had developed mines that could be dropped from aircraft, some of which floated on the surface, making it possible to lay them in enemy harbours. The use of dredging and nets was effective against this type of mine, but this consumed valuable time and resources and required harbours to be closed.


title: Naval mine

text: Later, some ships survived mine blasts, limping into port with buckled plates and broken backs. This appeared to be due to a new type of mine, detecting ships by their proximity to the mine (an influence mine) and detonating at a distance, causing damage with the shock wave of the explosion. Ships that had successfully run the gantlet of the Atlantic crossing were sometimes destroyed entering freshly cleared British harbours. More shipping was being lost than could be replaced, and Churchill ordered the intact recovery of one of these new mines to be of the highest priority.


title: Naval mine

text: The British experienced a stroke of luck in November 1939, when a German mine was dropped from an aircraft onto the mudflats off Shoeburyness during low tide. Additionally, the land belonged to the army and a base with men and workshops was at hand. Experts were dispatched from to investigate the mine. The Royal Navy knew that mines could use magnetic sensors, Britain having developed magnetic mines in World War I, so everyone removed all metal, including their buttons, and made tools of non-magnetic brass. They disarmed the mine and rushed it to the labs at HMS Vernon, where scientists discovered that the mine had a magnetic arming mechanism. A large ferrous object passing through the Earth's magnetic field will concentrate the field through it, due to its magnetic permeability; the mine's detector was designed to trigger as a ship passed over when the Earth's magnetic field was concentrated in the ship and away from the mine. The mine detected this loss of the magnetic field which caused it to detonate. The mechanism had an adjustable sensitivity, calibrated in milligauss.


title: Naval mine

text: From this data, known methods were used to clear these mines. Early methods included the use of large electromagnets dragged behind ships or below low-flying aircraft (a number of older bombers like the Vickers Wellington were used for this). Both of these methods had the disadvantage of "sweeping" only a small strip. A better solution was found in the "Double-L Sweep" using electrical cables dragged behind ships that passed large pulses of current through the seawater. This created a large magnetic field and swept the entire area between the two ships. The older methods continued to be used in smaller areas. The Suez Canal continued to be swept by aircraft, for instance.


title: Naval mine

text: While these methods were useful for clearing mines from local ports, they were of little or no use for enemy-controlled areas. These were typically visited by warships, and the majority of the fleet then underwent a massive degaussing process, where their hulls had a slight "south" bias induced into them which offset the concentration-effect almost to zero.


title: Naval mine

text: Initially, major warships and large troopships had a copper "degaussing coil" fitted around the perimeter of the hull, energized by the ship's electrical system whenever in suspected magnetic-mined waters. Some of the first to be so fitted were the carrier HMS "Ark Royal" and the liners and . It was a photo of one of these liners in New York harbour, showing the degaussing coil, which revealed to German Naval Intelligence the fact that the British were using degaussing methods to combat their magnetic mines. This was felt to be impractical for smaller warships and merchant vessels, mainly because the ships lacked the generating capacity to energise such a coil. It was found that "wiping" a current-carrying cable up and down a ship's hull temporarily canceled the ships' magnetic signature sufficiently to nullify the threat. This started in late 1939, and by 1940 merchant vessels and the smaller British warships were largely immune for a few months at a time until they once again built up a field.


title: Naval mine

text: The cruiser is just one example of a ship that was struck by a magnetic mine during this time. On 21 November 1939, a mine broke her keel, which damaged her engine and boiler rooms, as well as injuring 46 men with one man later dying from his injuries. She was towed to Rosyth for repairs. Incidents like this resulted in many of the boats that sailed to Dunkirk being degaussed in a marathon four-day effort by degaussing stations.


title: Naval mine

text: The Allies and Germany deployed acoustic mines in World War II, against which even wooden-hulled ships (in particular minesweepers) remained vulnerable. Japan developed sonic generators to sweep these; the gear was not ready by war's end. The primary method Japan used was small air-delivered bombs. This was profligate and ineffectual; used against acoustic mines at Penang, 200 bombs were needed to detonate just 13 mines.


title: Naval mine

text: The Germans developed a pressure-activated mine and planned to deploy it as well, but they saved it for later use when it became clear the British had defeated the magnetic system. The U.S. also deployed these, adding "counters" which would allow a variable number of ships to pass unharmed before detonating. This made them a great deal harder to sweep.


title: Naval mine

text: Mining campaigns could have devastating consequences. The U.S. effort against Japan, for instance, closed major ports, such as Hiroshima, for days, and by the end of the Pacific War had cut the amount of freight passing through Kobe–Yokohama by 90%.


title: Naval mine

text: When the war ended, more than 25,000 U.S.-laid mines were still in place, and the Navy proved unable to sweep them all, limiting efforts to critical areas. After sweeping for almost a year, in May 1946, the Navy abandoned the effort with 13,000 mines still unswept. Over the next thirty years, more than 500 minesweepers (of a variety of types) were damaged or sunk clearing them.


title: Naval mine

text: Since World War II, mines have damaged 14 United States Navy ships, whereas air and missile attacks have damaged four. During the Korean War, mines laid by North Korean forces caused 70% of the casualties suffered by U.S. naval vessels and caused 4 sinkings.


title: Naval mine

text: During the Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, the belligerents mined several areas of the Persian Gulf and nearby waters. On 24 July 1987, the supertanker "SS" Bridgeton was mined by Iran near Farsi Island. On 14 April 1988, struck an Iranian mine in the central Persian Gulf shipping lane, wounding 10 sailors.


title: Naval mine

text: In the summer of 1984, magnetic sea mines damaged at least 19 ships in the Red Sea. The U.S. concluded Libya was probably responsible for the minelaying. In response the U.S., Britain, France, and three other nations launched "Operation Intense Look", a minesweeping operation in the Red Sea involving more than 46 ships.


title: Naval mine

text: On the orders of the Reagan administration, the CIA mined Nicaragua's Sandino port in 1984 in support of the Contra guerrilla group. A Soviet tanker was among the ships damaged by these mines. In 1986, in the case of "Nicaragua v. United States", the International Court of Justice ruled that this mining was a violation of international law.


title: Naval mine

text: During the Gulf War, Iraqi naval mines severely damaged and . When the war concluded, eight countries conducted clearance operations.


title: Naval mine

text: Houthi forces in the Yemeni Civil War have made frequent use of naval mines, laying over 150 in the Red Sea throughout the conflict.


title: Naval mine

text: In the first month of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine accused Russia of deliberately employing drifting mines in the Black Sea area. Around the same time, Turkish and Romanian military diving teams were involved in defusing operations, when stray mines were spotted near the coasts of these countries. London P&I Club issued a warning to freight ships in the area, advising them to "maintain lookouts for mines and pay careful attention to local navigation warnings". Ukrainian forces have mined "from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea which banks the critical city of Odesa."


title: Naval mine

text: The earliest mines were usually of this type. They are still used today, as they are extremely low cost compared to any other anti-ship weapon and are effective, both as a psychological weapon and as a method to sink enemy ships. Contact mines need to be touched by the target before they detonate, limiting the damage to the direct effects of the explosion and usually affecting only the vessel that triggers them.


title: Naval mine

text: Early mines had mechanical mechanisms to detonate them, but these were superseded in the 1870s by the "Hertz horn" (or "chemical horn"), which was found to work reliably even after the mine had been in the sea for several years. The mine's upper half is studded with hollow lead protuberances, each containing a glass vial filled with sulfuric acid. When a ship's hull crushes the metal horn, it cracks the vial inside it, allowing the acid to run down a tube and into a lead–acid battery which until then contained no acid electrolyte. This energizes the battery, which detonates the explosive.


title: Naval mine

text: Earlier forms of the detonator employed a vial of sulfuric acid surrounded by a mixture of potassium perchlorate and sugar. When the vial was crushed, the acid ignited the perchlorate-sugar mix, and the resulting flame ignited the gunpowder charge.


title: Naval mine

text: During the initial period of World War I, the Royal Navy used contact mines in the English Channel and later in large areas of the North Sea to hinder patrols by German submarines. Later, the American antenna mine was widely used because submarines could be at any depth from the surface to the seabed. This type of mine had a copper wire attached to a buoy that floated above the explosive charge which was weighted to the seabed with a steel cable. If a submarine's steel hull touched the copper wire, the slight voltage change caused by contact between two dissimilar metals was amplified and detonated the explosives.


title: Naval mine

text: Limpet mines are a special form of contact mine that are manually attached to the target by magnets and remain in place. They are named because of the similarity to the limpet, a mollusk.


title: Naval mine

text: Generally, this type of mine is set to float just below the surface of the water or as deep as five meters. A steel cable connecting the mine to an anchor on the seabed prevents it from drifting away. The explosive and detonating mechanism is contained in a buoyant metal or plastic shell. The depth below the surface at which the mine floats can be set so that only deep draft vessels such as aircraft carriers, battleships or large cargo ships are at risk, saving the mine from being used on a less valuable target. In littoral waters it is important to ensure that the mine does not become visible when the sea level falls at low tide, so the cable length is adjusted to take account of tides. During WWII there were mines that could be moored in -deep water.


title: Naval mine

text: A special form of moored contact mines are those equipped with a plummet. When the mine is launched (1), the mine with the anchor floats first and the lead plummet sinks from it (2). In doing so, the plummet unwinds a wire, the deep line, which is used to set the depth of the mine below the water surface before it is launched (3). When the deep line has been unwound to a set length, the anchor is flooded and the mine is released from the anchor (4). The anchor begins to sink and the mooring cable unwinds until the plummet reaches the sea floor (5). Due to the decreasing tension on the deep line, the mooring cable is clamped. The anchor sinks further down to the bottom of the sea pulling the mine as deep below the water surface as the deep line has been unwound (6). Thus, even without knowing the exact depth, an exact depth of the mine below the water surface can be set, limited only by the maximum length of the mooring cable.


title: Naval mine

text: Drifting mines were occasionally used during World War I and World War II. However, they were more feared than effective. Sometimes floating mines break from their moorings and become drifting mines; modern mines are designed to deactivate in this event. After several years at sea, the deactivation mechanism might not function as intended and the mines may remain live. Admiral Jellicoe's British fleet did not pursue and destroy the outnumbered German High Seas Fleet when it turned away at the Battle of Jutland because he thought they were leading him into a trap: he believed it possible that the Germans were either leaving floating mines in their wake, or were drawing him towards submarines, although neither of these was the case.


title: Naval mine

text: After World War I the drifting contact mine was banned, but was occasionally used during World War II. The drifting mines were much harder to remove than tethered mines after the war, and they caused about the same damage to both sides.


title: Naval mine

text: Churchill promoted "Operation Royal Marine" in 1940 and again in 1944 where floating mines were put into the Rhine in France to float down the river, becoming active after a time calculated to be long enough to reach German territory.


title: Naval mine

text: Frequently used in combination with coastal artillery and hydrophones, controlled mines (or command detonation mines) can be in place in peacetime, which is a huge advantage in blocking important shipping routes. The mines can usually be turned into "normal" mines with a switch (which prevents the enemy from simply capturing the controlling station and deactivating the mines), detonated on a signal or be allowed to detonate on their own. The earliest ones were developed around 1812 by Robert Fulton. The first remotely controlled mines were moored mines used in the American Civil War, detonated electrically from shore. They were considered superior to contact mines because they did not put friendly shipping at risk. The extensive American fortifications program initiated by the Board of Fortifications in 1885 included remotely controlled mines, which were emplaced or in reserve from the 1890s until the end of World War II.


title: Naval mine

text: These mines are triggered by the influence of a ship or submarine, rather than direct contact. Such mines incorporate electronic sensors designed to detect the presence of a vessel and detonate when it comes within the blast range of the warhead. The fuses on such mines may incorporate one or more of the following sensors: magnetic, passive acoustic or water pressure displacement caused by the proximity of a vessel.


title: Naval mine

text: First used during WWI, their use became more general in WWII. The sophistication of influence mine fuses has increased considerably over the years as first transistors and then microprocessors have been incorporated into designs. Simple magnetic sensors have been superseded by total-field magnetometers. Whereas early magnetic mine fuses would respond only to changes in a single component of a target vessel's magnetic field, a total field magnetometer responds to changes in the magnitude of the total background field (thus enabling it to better detect even degaussed ships). Similarly, the original broadband hydrophones of 1940s acoustic mines (which operate on the integrated volume of all frequencies) have been replaced by narrow-band sensors which are much more sensitive and selective. Mines can now be programmed to listen for highly specific acoustic signatures (e.g. a gas turbine powerplant or cavitation sounds from a particular design of propeller) and ignore all others. The sophistication of modern electronic mine fuzes incorporating these digital signal processing capabilities makes it much more difficult to detonate the mine with electronic countermeasures because several sensors working together (e.g. magnetic, passive acoustic and water pressure) allow it to ignore signals which are not recognised as being the unique signature of an intended target vessel.


title: Naval mine

text: Modern influence mines such as the BAE Stonefish are computerised, with all the programmability this implies, such as the ability to quickly load new acoustic signatures into fuses, or program them to detect a single, highly distinctive target signature. In this way, a mine with a passive acoustic fuze can be programmed to ignore all friendly vessels and small enemy vessels, only detonating when a very large enemy target passes over it. Alternatively, the mine can be programmed specifically to ignore all surface vessels regardless of size and exclusively target submarines.


title: Naval mine

text: Even as far back as WWII it was possible to incorporate a "ship counter" function in mine fuzes. This might set the mine to ignore the first two ships passing over it (which could be minesweepers deliberately trying to trigger mines) but detonate when the third ship passes overhead, which could be a high-value target such as an aircraft carrier or oil tanker. Even though modern mines are generally powered by a long life lithium battery, it is important to conserve power because they may need to remain active for months or even years. For this reason, most influence mines are designed to remain in a semi-dormant state until an unpowered (e.g. deflection of a mu-metal needle) or low-powered sensor detects the possible presence of a vessel, at which point the mine fuze powers up fully and the passive acoustic sensors will begin to operate for some minutes. It is possible to program computerised mines to delay activation for days or weeks after being laid. Similarly, they can be programmed to self-destruct or render themselves safe after a preset period of time. Generally, the more sophisticated the mine design, the more likely it is to have some form of anti-handling device to hinder clearance by divers or remotely piloted submersibles.


title: Naval mine

text: The moored mine is the backbone of modern mine systems. They are deployed where water is too deep for bottom mines. They can use several kinds of instruments to detect an enemy, usually a combination of acoustic, magnetic and pressure sensors, or more sophisticated optical shadows or electro potential sensors. These cost many times more than contact mines. Moored mines are effective against most kinds of ships. As they are cheaper than other anti-ship weapons they can be deployed in large numbers, making them useful area denial or "channelizing" weapons.


title: Naval mine

text: Moored mines usually have lifetimes of more than 10 years, and some almost unlimited. These mines usually weigh , including of explosives (RDX). In excess of of explosives the mine becomes inefficient, as it becomes too large to handle and the extra explosives add little to the mine's effectiveness.


title: Naval mine

text: Bottom mines (sometimes called ground mines) are used when the water is no more than deep or when mining for submarines down to around . They are much harder to detect and sweep, and can carry a much larger warhead than a moored mine. Bottom mines commonly use multiple types of sensors, which are less sensitive to sweeping.


title: Naval mine

text: The bouquet mine is a single anchor attached to several floating mines. It is designed so that when one mine is swept or detonated, another takes its place. It is a very sensitive construction and lacks reliability.


title: Naval mine

text: The anti-sweep mine is a very small mine ( warhead) with as small a floating device as possible. When the wire of a mine sweep hits the anchor wire of the mine, it drags the anchor wire along with it, pulling the mine down into contact with the sweeping wire. That detonates the mine and cuts the sweeping wire. They are very cheap and usually used in combination with other mines in a minefield to make sweeping more difficult. One type is the Mark 23 used by the United States during World War II.


title: Naval mine

text: The mine is hydrostatically controlled to maintain a pre-set depth below the water's surface independently of the rise and fall of the tide.


title: Naval mine

text: The ascending mine is a floating distance mine that may cut its mooring or in some other way float higher when it detects a target. It lets a single floating mine cover a much larger depth range.


title: Naval mine

text: A Russian invention, the rocket mine is a bottom distance mine that fires a homing high-speed rocket (not torpedo) upwards towards the target. It is intended to allow a bottom mine to attack surface ships as well as submarines from a greater depth. One type is the Te-1 rocket propelled mine.


title: Naval mine

text: A torpedo mine is a self-propelled variety, able to lie in wait for a target and then pursue it e.g. the Mark 60 CAPTOR. Generally, torpedo mines incorporate computerised acoustic and magnetic fuzes. The U.S. Mark 24 "mine", code-named Fido, was actually an ASW homing torpedo. The mine designation was disinformation to conceal its function.


title: Naval mine

text: The mine is propelled to its intended position by propulsion equipment such as a torpedo. After reaching its destination, it sinks to the seabed and operates like a standard mine. It differs from the homing mine in that its mobile stage is set before it lies in wait, rather than as part of the attacking phase.


title: Naval mine

text: One such design is the Mk 67 submarine-launched mobile mine (which is based on a Mark 37 torpedo), capable of traveling as far as through or into a channel, harbour, shallow water area, and other zones which would normally be inaccessible to craft laying the device. After reaching the target area they sink to the sea bed and act like conventionally laid influence mines.


title: Naval mine

text: During the Cold War, a test was conducted with a naval mine fitted with tactical nuclear warheads for the "Baker" shot of Operation Crossroads. This weapon was experimental and never went into production. There have been some reports that North Korea may be developing a nuclear mine. The Seabed Arms Control Treaty prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons on the seabed beyond a 12-mile coast zone.


title: Naval mine

text: This comprises two moored, floating contact mines which are tethered together by a length of steel cable or chain. Typically, each mine is situated approximately away from its neighbor, and each floats a few meters below the surface of the ocean. When the target ship hits the steel cable, the mines on either side are drawn down the side of the ship's hull, exploding on contact. In this manner it is almost impossible for target ships to pass safely between two individually moored mines. Daisy-chained mines are a very simple concept which was used during World War II. The first prototype of the Daisy-chained mine and the first combat use came in Finland, 1939.


title: Naval mine

text: Plastic drums filled with sand or concrete are periodically rolled off the side of ships as real mines are laid in large mine-fields. These inexpensive false targets (designed to be of a similar shape and size as genuine mines) are intended to slow down the process of mine clearance: a mine-hunter is forced to investigate each suspicious sonar contact on the sea bed, whether it is real or not. Often a maker of naval mines will provide both training and dummy versions of their mines.


title: Naval mine

text: Historically several methods were used to lay mines. During WWI and WWII, the Germans used U-boats to lay mines around the UK. In WWII, aircraft came into favour for mine laying with one of the largest examples being the mining of the Japanese sea routes in Operation Starvation.


title: Naval mine

text: Laying a minefield is a relatively fast process with specialized ships, which is today the most common method. These minelayers can carry several thousand mines and manoeuvre with high precision. The mines are dropped at predefined intervals into the water behind the ship. Each mine is recorded for later clearing, but it is not unusual for these records to be lost together with the ships. Therefore, many countries demand that all mining operations be planned on land and records kept so that the mines can later be recovered more easily.


title: Naval mine

text: In some cases, mines are automatically activated upon contact with the water. In others, a safety lanyard is pulled (one end attached to the rail of a ship, aircraft or torpedo tube) which starts an automatic timer countdown before the arming process is complete. Typically, the automatic safety-arming process takes some minutes to complete. This allows the people laying the mines sufficient time to move out of its activation and blast zones.


title: Naval mine

text: In the 1930s, Germany had experimented with the laying of mines by aircraft. It became a crucial element in their overall mining strategy. Aircraft had the advantage of speed, and they would never get caught in their own minefields. German mines held a large explosive charge. From April to June 1940, the Luftwaffe laid 1,000 mines in British waters. Soviet ports were mined, as was the Arctic convoy route to Murmansk. The Heinkel He 115 could carry two medium or one large mine while the Heinkel He 59, Dornier Do 18, Junkers Ju 88 and Heinkel He 111 could carry more.


title: Naval mine

text: The USSR was relatively ineffective in its use of naval mines in WWII in comparison with its record in previous wars. Small mines were developed for use in rivers and lakes, and special mines for shallow water. A very large chemical mine was designed to sink through ice with the aid of a melting compound. Special aerial mine designs finally arrived in 1943–1944, the AMD-500 and AMD-1000. Various Soviet Naval Aviation torpedo bombers were pressed into the role of aerial mining in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, including Ilyushin DB-3s, Il-4s and Lend-Lease Douglas Boston IIIs.


title: Naval mine

text: In September 1939, the UK announced the placement of extensive defensive minefields in waters surrounding the Home Islands. Offensive aerial mining operations began in April 1940 when 38 mines were laid at each of these locations: the Elbe River, the port of Lübeck and the German naval base at Kiel. In the next 20 months, mines delivered by aircraft sank or damaged 164 Axis ships with the loss of 94 aircraft. By comparison, direct aerial attacks on Axis shipping had sunk or damaged 105 vessels at a cost of 373 aircraft lost. The advantage of aerial mining became clear, and the UK prepared for it. A total of 48,000 aerial mines were laid by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the European Theatre during World War II.


title: Naval mine

text: As early as 1942, American mining experts such as Naval Ordnance Laboratory scientist Dr. Ellis A. Johnson, CDR USNR, suggested massive aerial mining operations against Japan's "outer zone" (Korea and northern China) as well as the "inner zone", their home islands. First, aerial mines would have to be developed further and manufactured in large numbers. Second, laying the mines would require a sizable air group. The US Army Air Forces had the carrying capacity but considered mining to be the navy's job. The US Navy lacked suitable aircraft. Johnson set about convincing General Curtis LeMay of the efficacy of heavy bombers laying aerial mines.


title: Naval mine

text: B-24 Liberators, PBY Catalinas and other bomber aircraft took part in localized mining operations in the Southwest Pacific and the China Burma India (CBI) theaters, beginning with a successful attack on the Yangon River in February 1943. Aerial minelaying operations involved a coalition of British, Australian and American aircrews, with the RAF and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) carrying out 60% of the sorties and the USAAF and US Navy covering 40%. Both British and American mines were used. Japanese merchant shipping suffered tremendous losses, while Japanese mine sweeping forces were spread too thin attending to far-flung ports and extensive coastlines. Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, who directed nearly all RAAF mining operations in CBI, heartily endorsed aerial mining, writing in July 1944 that "aerial mining operations were of the order of 100 times as destructive to the enemy as an equal number of bombing missions against land targets."


title: Naval mine

text: A single B-24 dropped three mines into Haiphong harbour in October 1943. One of those mines sank a Japanese freighter. Another B-24 dropped three more mines into the harbour in November, and a second freighter was sunk by a mine. The threat of the remaining mines prevented a convoy of ten ships from entering Haiphong, and six of those ships were sunk by attacks before they reached a safe harbour. The Japanese closed Haiphong to all steel-hulled ships for the remainder of the war after another small ship was sunk by one of the remaining mines, although they may not have realized no more than three mines remained.


title: Naval mine

text: Using Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, the US Navy mounted a direct aerial mining attack on enemy shipping in Palau on 30 March 1944 in concert with simultaneous conventional bombing and strafing attacks. The dropping of 78 mines deterred 32 Japanese ships from escaping Koror harbour, and 23 of those immobilized ships were sunk in a subsequent bombing raid. The combined operation sank or damaged 36 ships. Two Avengers were lost, and their crews were recovered. The mines brought port usage to a halt for 20 days. Japanese mine sweeping was unsuccessful; and the Japanese abandoned Palau as a base when their first ship attempting to traverse the swept channel was damaged by a mine detonation.


title: Naval mine

text: In March 1945, Operation Starvation began in earnest, using 160 of LeMay's B-29 Superfortress bombers to attack Japan's inner zone. Almost half of the mines were the US-built Mark 25 model, carrying of explosives and weighing about . Other mines used included the smaller Mark 26. Fifteen B-29s were lost while 293 Japanese merchant ships were sunk or damaged. Twelve thousand aerial mines were laid, a significant barrier to Japan's access to outside resources. Prince Fumimaro Konoe said after the war that the aerial mining by B-29s had been "equally as effective as the B-29 attacks on Japanese industry at the closing stages of the war when all food supplies and critical material were prevented from reaching the Japanese home islands." The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific War) concluded that it would have been more efficient to combine the United States's effective anti-shipping submarine effort with land- and carrier-based air power to strike harder against merchant shipping and begin a more extensive aerial mining campaign earlier in the war. Survey analysts projected that this would have starved Japan, forcing an earlier end to the war. After the war, Dr. Johnson looked at the Japan inner zone shipping results, comparing the total economic cost of submarine-delivered mines versus air-dropped mines and found that, though 1 in 12 submarine mines connected with the enemy as opposed to 1 in 21 for aircraft mines, the aerial mining operation was about ten times less expensive per enemy ton sunk.


title: Naval mine

text: Between 600,000 and 1,000,000 naval mines of all types were laid in WWII. Advancing military forces worked to clear mines from newly-taken areas, but extensive minefields remained in place after the war. Air-dropped mines had an additional problem for mine sweeping operations: they were not meticulously charted. In Japan, much of the B-29 mine-laying work had been performed at high altitude, with the drifting on the wind of mines carried by parachute adding a randomizing factor to their placement. Generalized danger areas were identified, with only the quantity of mines given in detail. Mines used in Operation Starvation were supposed to be self-sterilizing, but the circuit did not always work. Clearing the mines from Japanese waters took so many years that the task was eventually given to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.


title: Naval mine

text: For the purpose of clearing all types of naval mines, the Royal Navy employed German crews and minesweepers from June 1945 to January 1948, organised in the German Mine Sweeping Administration (GMSA), which consisted of 27,000 members of the former "Kriegsmarine" and 300 vessels. Mine clearing was not always successful: a number of ships were damaged or sunk by mines after the war. Two such examples were the liberty ships "Pierre Gibault" which was scrapped after hitting a mine in a previously cleared area off the Greek island of Kythira in June 1945, and "Nathaniel Bacon" which hit a minefield off Civitavecchia, Italy in December 1945, caught fire, was beached, and broke in two.


title: Naval mine

text: The damage that may be caused by a mine depends on the "shock factor value", a combination of the initial strength of the explosion and of the distance between the target and the detonation. When taken in reference to ship hull plating, the term "Hull Shock Factor" (HSF) is used, while keel damage is termed "Keel Shock Factor" (KSF). If the explosion is directly underneath the keel, then HSF is equal to KSF, but explosions that are not directly underneath the ship will have a lower value of KSF.


title: Naval mine

text: Usually only created by contact mines, direct damage is a hole blown in the ship. Among the crew, fragmentation wounds are the most common form of damage. Flooding typically occurs in one or two main watertight compartments, which can sink smaller ships or disable larger ones. Contact mine damage often occurs at or close to the waterline near the bow, but depending on circumstances a ship could be hit anywhere on its outer hull surface (the mine attack being a good example of a contact mine detonating amidships and underneath the ship).


title: Naval mine

text: The bubble jet effect occurs when a mine or torpedo detonates in the water a short distance away from the targeted ship. The explosion creates a bubble in the water, and due to the difference in pressure, the bubble will collapse from the bottom. The bubble is buoyant, and so it rises towards the surface. If the bubble reaches the surface as it collapses, it can create a pillar of water that can go over a hundred meters into the air (a "columnar plume"). If conditions are right and the bubble collapses onto the ship's hull, the damage to the ship can be extremely serious; the collapsing bubble forms a high-energy jet similar to a shaped charge that can break a metre-wide hole straight through the ship, flooding one or more compartments, and is capable of breaking smaller ships apart. The crew in the areas hit by the pillar are usually killed instantly. Other damage is usually limited.


title: Naval mine

text: The Baengnyeong incident, in which the ROKS "Cheonan" broke in half and sank off the coast South Korea in 2010, was caused by the bubble jet effect, according to an international investigation.


title: Naval mine

text: If the mine detonates at a distance from the ship, the change in water pressure causes the ship to resonate. This is frequently the most deadly type of explosion, if it is strong enough. The whole ship is dangerously shaken and everything on board is tossed around. Engines rip from their beds, cables from their holders, etc.. A badly shaken ship usually sinks quickly, with hundreds, or even thousands of small leaks all over the ship and no way to power the pumps. The crew fare no better, as the violent shaking tosses them around. This shaking is powerful enough to cause disabling injury to knees and other joints in the body, particularly if the affected person stands on surfaces connected directly to the hull (such as steel decks).


title: Naval mine

text: The resulting gas cavitation and shock-front-differential over the width of the human body is sufficient to stun or kill divers.


title: Naval mine

text: Weapons are frequently a few steps ahead of countermeasures, and mines are no exception. In this field the British, with their large seagoing navy, have had the bulk of world experience, and most anti-mine developments, such as degaussing and the double-L sweep, were British inventions. When on operational missions, such as the invasion of Iraq, the US still relies on British and Canadian minesweeping services. The US has worked on some innovative mine-hunting countermeasures, such as the use of military dolphins to detect and flag mines. However, they are of questionable effectiveness. Mines in nearshore environments remain a particular challenge. They are small and as technology has developed they can have anechoic coatings, be non-metallic, and oddly shaped to resist detection. Further, oceanic conditions and the sea bottoms of the area of operations can degrade sweeping and hunting efforts. Mining countermeasures are far more expensive and time-consuming than mining operations, and that gap is only growing with new technologies.


title: Naval mine

text: Ships can be designed to be difficult for mines to detect, to avoid detonating them. This is especially true for minesweepers and mine hunters that work in minefields, where a minimal signature outweighs the need for armour and speed. These ships have hulls of glass fibre or wood instead of steel to avoid magnetic signatures. These ships may use special propulsion systems, with low magnetic electric motors, to reduce magnetic signature, and Voith-Schneider propellers, to limit the acoustic signature. They are built with hulls that produce a minimal pressure signature. These measures create other problems. They are expensive, slow, and vulnerable to enemy fire. Many modern ships have a mine-warning sonar—a simple sonar looking forward and warning the crew if it detects possible mines ahead. It is only effective when the ship is moving slowly.


title: Naval mine

text: A steel-hulled ship can be "degaussed" (more correctly, de-oerstedted or depermed) using a special degaussing station that contains many large coils and induces a magnetic field in the hull with alternating current to demagnetize the hull. This is a rather problematic solution, as magnetic compasses need recalibration and all metal objects must be kept in exactly the same place. Ships slowly regain their magnetic field as they travel through the Earth's magnetic field, so the process has to be repeated every six months.


title: Naval mine

text: A simpler variation of this technique called "wiping", was developed by Charles F. Goodeve which saved time and resources.


title: Naval mine

text: Between 1941 and 1943 the US Naval Gun factory (a division of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory) in Washington, D.C., built physical models of all US naval ships. Three kinds of steel were used in shipbuilding: mild steel for bulkheads, a mixture of mild steel and high tensile steel for the hull, and special treatment steel for armor plate. The models were placed within coils which could simulate the Earth's magnetic field at any location. The magnetic signatures were measured with degaussing coils. The objective was to reduce the vertical component of the combination of the Earth's field and the ship's field at the usual depth of German mines. From the measurements, coils were placed and coil currents were determined to minimize the chance of detonation for any ship at any heading at any latitude.


title: Naval mine

text: Some ships are built with magnetic inductors, large coils placed along the ship to counter the ship's magnetic field. Using magnetic probes in strategic parts of the ship, the strength of the current in the coils can be adjusted to minimize the total magnetic field. This is a heavy and clumsy solution, suited only to small-to-medium-sized ships. Boats typically lack the generators and space for the solution, while the amount of power needed to overcome the magnetic field of a large ship is impractical.


title: Naval mine

text: Active countermeasures are ways to clear a path through a minefield or remove it completely. This is one of the most important tasks of any mine warfare flotilla.


title: Naval mine

text: A sweep is either a contact sweep, a wire dragged through the water by one or two ships to cut the mooring wire of floating mines, or a distance sweep that mimics a ship to detonate the mines. The sweeps are dragged by minesweepers, either purpose-built military ships or converted trawlers. Each run covers between , and the ships must move slowly in a straight line, making them vulnerable to enemy fire. This was exploited by the Turkish army in the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, when mobile howitzer batteries prevented the British and French from clearing a way through minefields.


title: Naval mine

text: If a contact sweep hits a mine, the wire of the sweep rubs against the mooring wire until it is cut. Sometimes "cutters", explosive devices to cut the mine's wire, are used to lessen the strain on the sweeping wire. Mines cut free are recorded and collected for research or shot with a deck gun.


title: Naval mine

text: Minesweepers protect themselves with an oropesa or paravane instead of a second minesweeper. These are torpedo-shaped towed bodies, similar in shape to a Harvey Torpedo, that are streamed from the sweeping vessel thus keeping the sweep at a determined depth and position. Some large warships were routinely equipped with paravane sweeps near the bows in case they inadvertently sailed into minefields—the mine would be deflected towards the paravane by the wire instead of towards the ship by its wake. More recently, heavy-lift helicopters have dragged minesweeping sleds, as in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.


title: Naval mine

text: The distance sweep mimics the sound and magnetism of a ship and is pulled behind the sweeper. It has floating coils and large underwater "drums". It is the only sweep effective against bottom mines.


title: Naval mine

text: During WWII, RAF Coastal Command used Vickers Wellington bombers Wellington DW.Mk I fitted with degaussing coils to trigger magnetic mines. In a parallel development the Luftwaffe adapted some Junkers 52/3m aircraft to also carry a coil operated by electricity supplied from an onboard generator. The Luftwaffe called this adaption "Minensuch" (lit. mine-search). In both cases pilots were required to fly at low altitude (up to about 200 feet above the sea) and at fairly low speeds to be effective.


title: Naval mine

text: Modern influence mines are designed to discriminate against false inputs and are, therefore, much harder to sweep. They often contain inherent anti-sweeping mechanisms. For example, they may be programmed to respond to the unique noise of a particular ship-type, its associated magnetic signature and the typical pressure displacement of such a vessel. As a result, a mine-sweeper must accurately mimic the required target signature to trigger detonation. The task is complicated by the fact that an influence mine may have one or more of a hundred different potential target signatures programmed into it.


title: Naval mine

text: Another anti-sweeping mechanism is a ship-counter in the mine fuze. When enabled, this allows detonation only after the mine fuze has been triggered a pre-set number of times. To further complicate matters, influence mines may be programmed to arm themselves (or disarm automatically—known as "self-sterilization") after a pre-set time. During the pre-set arming delay (which could last days or even weeks) the mine would remain dormant and ignore any target stimulus, whether genuine or false.


title: Naval mine

text: When influence mines are laid in an ocean minefield, they may have various combinations of fuze settings configured. For example, some mines (with the acoustic sensor enabled) may become active within three hours of being laid, others (with the acoustic and magnetic sensors enabled) may become active after two weeks but have the ship-counter mechanism set to ignore the first two trigger events, and still others in the same minefield (with the magnetic and pressure sensors enabled) may not become armed until three weeks have passed. Groups of mines within this mine-field may have different target signatures which may or may not overlap. The fuzes on influence mines allow many different permutations, which complicates the clearance process.


title: Naval mine

text: Mines with ship-counters, arming delays and highly specific target signatures in mine fuzes can falsely convince a belligerent that a particular area is clear of mines or has been swept effectively because a succession of vessels have already passed through safely.


title: Naval mine

text: As naval mines have become more sophisticated, and able to discriminate between targets, so they have become more difficult to deal with by conventional sweeping. This has given rise to the practice of mine-hunting.


title: Naval mine

text: Mine hunting is very different from sweeping, although some minehunters can do both tasks. Minehunting pays little attention to the nature of the mine itself. Nor does the method change much. At the current state of the art, Minehunting remains the best way to deal with influence mines proving to be both safer and more effective than sweeping. Specialized high-frequency sonars and high fidelity sidescaning sonar are used for mine location. Mines are hunted using sonar, then inspected and destroyed either by divers or ROVs (remote controlled unmanned mini-submarines). It is slow, but also the most reliable way to remove mines. Minehunting started during the Second World War, but it was only after the war that it became truly effective.


title: Naval mine

text: Sea mammals (mainly the bottlenose dolphin) have been trained to hunt and mark mines, most famously by the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program. Mine-clearance dolphins were deployed in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq War in 2003. The US Navy claims that these dolphins were effective in helping to clear more than 100 antiship mines and underwater booby traps from Umm Qasr Port.


title: Naval mine

text: French naval officer Jacques Yves Cousteau's Undersea Research Group was once involved in mine-hunting operations: They removed or detonated a variety of German mines, but one particularly defusion-resistant batch—equipped with acutely sensitive pressure, magnetic, and acoustic sensors and wired together so that one explosion would trigger the rest—was simply left undisturbed for years until corrosion would (hopefully) disable the mines.


title: Naval mine

text: A more drastic method is simply to run a ship through the minefield, letting other ships safely follow the same path. An early example of this was Farragut's actions at Mobile Bay during the American Civil War. However, as mine warfare became more developed this method became uneconomical.


title: Naval mine

text: This method was revived by the German "Kriegsmarine" during WWII. Left with a surfeit of idle ships due to the Allied blockade, the "Kriegsmarine" introduced a ship known as "Sperrbrecher" ("block breaker"). Typically an old cargo ship, loaded with cargo that made her less vulnerable to sinking (wood for example), the "Sperrbrecher" was run ahead of the ship to be protected, detonating any mines that might be in their path. The use of "Sperrbrecher" obviated the need to continuous and painstaking sweeping, but the cost was high. Over half the 100 or so ships used as "Sperrbrecher" were sunk during the war. Alternatively, a shallow draught vessel can be steamed through the minefield at high speed to generate a pressure wave sufficient to trigger mines, with the minesweeper moving fast enough to be sufficiently clear of the pressure wave so that triggered mines do not destroy the ship itself. These techniques are the only way to sweep pressure mines that is publicly known to be employed. The technique can be simply countered by use of a ship-counter, set to allow a certain number of passes before the mine is actually triggered. Modern doctrine calls for ground mines to be hunted rather than swept. A new system is being introduced for sweeping pressure mines, however counters are going to remain a problem.


title: Naval mine

text: An updated form of this method is the use of small unmanned ROVs (such as the "Seehund" drone) that simulate the acoustic and magnetic signatures of larger ships and are built to survive exploding mines. Repeated sweeps would be required in case one or more of the mines had its "ship counter" facility enabled i.e. were programmed to ignore the first 2, 3, or even 6 target activations.


title: Naval mine

text: Another expedient for clearing mines, especially in a hurry, is counter-mining. By this method an explosive is detonated in the area of a known or suspected minefield and the blast either trips off the fuses or the actual explosive contained within the mine or mines. This latter is known as a sympathetic detonation. Counter-mining is normally used as a last resort or if other equipment is not available. One example was at the entrance to Grand Harbour, Valletta, Malta in WW2 when the British dropped depth charges into the harbour entrance to detonate suspected mines prior to the arrival of an important convoy. It is especially useful against acoustic or pressure mines due to their activation by sound or increases in water pressure.


title: Naval mine

text: The United States Navy MK56 ASW mine (the oldest still in use by the United States) was developed in 1966. More advanced mines include the MK60 CAPTOR (short for "encapsulated torpedo"), the MK62 and MK63 Quickstrike and the MK67 SLMM (Submarine Launched Mobile Mine). Today, most U.S. naval mines are delivered by aircraft.


title: Naval mine

text: The SLMM was developed by the United States as a submarine deployed mine for use in areas inaccessible for other mine deployment techniques or for covert mining of hostile environments. The SLMM is a shallow-water mine and is basically a modified Mark 37 torpedo.


title: Naval mine

text: The Quickstrike is a family of shallow-water aircraft-laid mines used by the United States, primarily against surface craft. The MK65 is a dedicated, purpose-built mine. However, other Quickstrike versions (MK62, MK63, and MK64) are converted general-purpose bombs. These latter three mines are actually a single type of electronic fuze fitted to Mk82, Mk83 and Mk84 air-dropped bombs. Because this latter type of Quickstrike fuze only takes up a small amount of storage space compared to a dedicated sea mine, the air-dropped bomb casings have dual purpose i.e. can be fitted with conventional contact fuzes and dropped on land targets, or have a Quickstrike fuze fitted which converts them into sea mines.


title: Naval mine

text: ...the Royal Navy does not have any mine stocks and has not had since 1992. Notwithstanding this, the United Kingdom retains the capability to lay mines and continues research into mine exploitation. Practice mines, used for exercises, continue to be laid in order to retain the necessary skills.


title: Naval mine

text: However, a British company (BAE Systems) does manufacture the Stonefish influence mine for export to friendly countries such as Australia, which has both war stock and training versions of Stonefish, in addition to stocks of smaller Italian MN103 Manta mines. The computerised fuze on a Stonefish mine contains acoustic, magnetic and water pressure displacement target detection sensors. Stonefish can be deployed by fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, surface vessels and submarines. An optional kit is available to allow Stonefish to be air-dropped, comprising an aerodynamic tail-fin section and parachute pack to retard the weapon's descent. The operating depth of Stonefish ranges between 30 and 200 metres. The mine weighs 990 kilograms and contains a 600 kilogram aluminised PBX explosive warhead.


title: Naval mine

text: Mine warfare remains the most cost-effective form of asymmetrical naval warfare. Mines are relatively cheap and being small allows them to be easily deployed. Indeed, with some kinds of mines, trucks and rafts will suffice. At present there are more than 300 different mines available. Some 50 countries currently have mining ability. The number of naval mine producing countries has increased by 75% since 1988. It is also noted that these mines are of an increasing sophistication while even the older type mines present a significant problem. It has been noted that mine warfare may become an issue with terrorist organizations. Mining busy shipping straits and mining shipping harbours remain some of the most serious threats.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Devendra Gangadharrao Fadnavis (Marathi pronunciation:], born 22 July 1970) is an Indian politician serving as the 9th and current Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra since 30 June 2022. He served as the 18th Chief Minister of Maharashtra from 31 October 2014 to 12 November 2019. Having been sworn in at the age of 44, he's the second-youngest Chief Minister in Maharashtra's history after Sharad Pawar. He served a 5-day long second term as Chief Minister during the 2019 Maharashtra political crisis, before resigning on 28 November 2019. On 30 June 2022, he took oath as the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, following the 2022 Maharashtra political crisis. He is an activist with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Fadnavis represents the Nagpur South West constituency in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis was born in a Marathi Hindu Deshastha Rigvedi Brahmin family to Gangadhar Fadnavis and Sarita Fadnavis in Nagpur.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: His father, Gangadhar Fadnavis, served as a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council from Nagpur. His mother, Sarita Fadnavis, a descendant of the Kaloti family of Amravati, was a former director of the Vidarbha Housing Credit Society.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis did his initial schooling at Indira Convent, named after then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. During the Emergency, Fadnavis' father, being a member of the Jan Sangh, was imprisoned for participating in anti-government protests. Fadnavis subsequently refused to continue his schooling at Indira Convent as he did not want to attend a school named after the Prime Minister he held responsible for imprisoning his father. He was then transferred to the Saraswati Vidyalaya School, Nagpur, where he received most of his schooling.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis holds a graduate degree in law from Government Law College, Nagpur University, a post-graduate degree in Business Management and a diploma in Methods and Techniques of Project Management from DSE-German Foundation for International Development, Berlin, Germany.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis began his political career in the mid-nineties. Since that time he served in multiple leadership roles for both his political party and as an elected representative. As a college student, Fadnavis was an active member of the BJP affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). in the year 1992 at the age of 22 and became a Corporator. 5 years later, in 1997, Fadnavis at 27 became the youngest mayor of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation and became the second-youngest mayor in the history of India.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis is representing Nagpur in the Legislative Assembly of Maharashtra State (Vidhan Sabha) since 1999.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis took over as the legislative party leader by the BJP MLAs in the presence of the party's central observers, Union Home minister Rajnath Singh and the party's National General Secretary Jagat Prakash Nadda after being elected to the position. As the leader of the largest party in Maharashtra state assembly, Fadnavis was appointed as the chief minister of Maharashtra on 31 October 2014. His government won a confidence motion by voice vote on 12 November 2014 allowing it to govern.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis to announced Satyamev Jayate Water Cup, an initiative kickstarted by Aamir's Not-For-Profit company, Paani Foundation in association with the Maharashtra government to solve the state's water crisis, the Dangal actor expressed his desire to join hands with Nana Patekar to help solve the water crunch faced by Maharashtra farmers.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In 2014, Fadnavis launched the Jalyukta Shivar Abhiyan to address the water shortage issue of Maharashtra's hinterland. The programme was aimed at enabling water percolation and groundwater level improvement across 25,000 drought-affected villages in Maharashtra.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis launched ‘Mumbai Next' on 30 January 2015, which was termed a roadmap to convert the country's financial capital into a global financial and entertainment hub. On 6 February, the Fadnavis government held a high-profile conference under the project's umbrella, which was attended by Tata Sons Ltd chairman Cyrus Mistry, Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani, and other prominent business leaders.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: On 15 September 2015, Fadnavis inaugurated the Maharashtra Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) in Nagpur, advancing the state's ambition to digitise its police force. The measure was intended to increase transparency, enhance cooperation across police stations, and increase accountability. Fadnavis, who was also the state home minister, stated, "The CCTNS initiative would put all police stations in the state online and paperless."


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: The initiative acquired pace over the course of six months and has been in operation in Nagpur. After the implementation of CCTNS, Maharashtra became the country's first state to establish India's first crime-criminal tracking network (CCTNS). 43 cyber labs were inaugurated concurrently.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In 2016, under his chief ministership, Maharashtra launched several digital initiatives to mark 70th Independence Day.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In 2018 the Maharashtra state government launched an ambitious project named, State of Maharashtra Agribusiness and Rural Transformation (SMART), in 10,000 villages with an objective to achieve sustainable farming within the next three years.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: The project, undertaken across the 40,913 villages of the state, would cover almost one-fourth of Maharashtra. The focus was on villages that were reeling under the worst agriculture crisis compounded by a lack of infrastructure and assured value chains to channelise the farm produce. Fadnavis launched the project, followed by the signing of 50 memoranda of understandings (MoUs) between corporates and farmers producer groups.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Under the Chief Ministership of Fadnavis, the Maharashtra Government proposed an initiative for Nagpur-Mumbai Super Communication Way. This infrastructure was initiated to be built as a part to boost economic development in the rural areas of Maharashtra. This said highway was proposed in 2015, and the pre-construction activities began in 2019. This Mahamarg is built to enable a safe and fast commute between Mumbai and Nagpur along with new towns equipped at the intersections. The expressway will reduce the travel time from 16 hours to 8 hours. This expressway will be consisting of charging stations along its length for Electrical Vehicles (EV). The Samruddhi Mahamarg will open new job and employment doors in the coming years, which will bridge rural and urban gaps. The highway has now been renamed as “Hindu Hrudaysamarat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Highway” by the government on 22 December 2019, and is now planned to complete the entire work of the project by September 2022.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In 2018, Fadnavis announced a 1% Government Reservation in the open category for orphans education and government jobs in Maharashtra. Maharashtra is the foremost state to obtain such a policy.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis had initiated this policy after an orphan Amruta Karvande, was declined a job despite clearing Maharashtra State Public Service Commission (MPSC) exam. She then met Fadnavis and shared her resentment.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: The 1% open category reservation quota shall apply to those children who are granted certificates of being orphans by the Juvenile Homes and the Women and Child Development department. The GR policy states that the Maharashtra Government will create a separate category within the general category which means it will not have to increase its caste reservation quota.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis, under his chief ministership, had launched The Chief Minister Fellowship program in 2015. CM Fellowship is an 11-month long fellowship program run by the CM's office, the Government of Maharashtra. This program was launched with the aim of providing administrative experience to the youth. This initiative offers graduates and postgraduates an 11-month stint with the Maharashtra government and carries with its stipend and other perks.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: The eligibility criteria to apply for the Chief Minister Fellowship Program is the age between 21 and 26 years, graduation with first-class, one-year work experience, and knowledge of Marathi. This CM Fellowship Program offers an opportunity to work with Government. It allows participation in policymaking, execution, monitoring, and evaluation of programs. It offers opportunities to visit different institutions in the state. Interactions with the geniuses in the industry of art, literature, journalism, entertainment make the fellowship a one-of-the-kind experience. This program provides prospects for growth and learning professionally. It trains fellows for higher education in policy, governance, management, etc. It gives an added advantage for public or private sector careers.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Maharashtra Government launched the 'Magel Tyala Shettale' scheme in 2016 to overcome the drought and sustainable agriculture in the state. Under this 'Magel Tyala Shettale', 108.33 percent of the target was achieved. Fadnavis had been touring drought-prone areas in Maharashtra, meanwhile, farmers in the state had demanded to make few farms available for sustainability in agricultural production and increasing availability of irrigation through watersheds and water conservation of drylands in the state


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: These farms have benefited the farmers during the intermittent rainy seasons. The Government under the Chief Ministership of Fadnavis had decided to deposit a specific amount directly to the beneficiary's account for the farm work, which was deposited when the process began for this Agricultural Pond.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Likewise, every year, even in 2018, under the Government of Fadnavis in Nashik, the palanquin of Saint Nivruttinath Maharaj, was set on its way to Nashik under the direction and guidance of the worshippers and Warkaris. The devotees at Nashik have a tradition of welcoming the palanquin with enthusiasm in the traditional way. This palanquin comes to Nashik every monsoon season, during Ashadi Wari which falls in the rainy season, Warakaris have to walk in the rains to many places with the palanquin and so Fadnavis decided to distribute 5 Lakh raincoats to the Warkaris across the state.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: During the Fadnavis-led Government in 2017, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Krushi Sanman Yojana was announced by Fadnavis, where a Rs 34,022 Crore loan waiver provided relief to 89 Lakh farmers across the state of Maharashtra. This scheme also benefited crop and medium-term borrowers.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: This was called a 'Historic Decision'. Fadnavis had shared that the waiver declared by Maharashtra Government is the highest. After the farmers' 11-day strike, Fadnavis had declared that loans up to Rs 1 Lakh would be waived. But the farmers were unsatisfied and hence the Government of Maharashtra had to take a fresh review of the waiver scheme thus Rs 34,022 were raised as a farm loan waiver.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In 2019, the Fadnavis-led Governance initiated a scheme to set up a water grid project in Marathwada to address the drought situation. The cost of the scheme was proposed at Rs 4,293 Crore. Fadnavis initiated this water grid project and lifted water from Konkan to the Godavari basin to make droughts in Marathwada "A history".


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: The water grid and other new schemes were introduced to make Marathwada shed the tag of being a drought-prone region. This region comprises eight districts that have always been a low rainfall region and this grid project aims to create an integrated piped network to supply water for industrial, agricultural, and drinking purposes throughout the year. This ambitious project came to hold due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. As of March 2022, Israel is preparing a plan for the water grid project along with the Maharashtra Government.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In 2016, Fadnavis during his ministership initiated to launch of Automated Weather Stations (AWS) to prevent huge losses and provide accurate weather stations for farmers in Maharashtra as early and untimely rains and hailstorms cause enormous losses to farmers. The AWS helps measure the accuracy of rain pattern, humidity & expected rainfall along with information on the best crop for farmers. Close to 2,065 such stations were planned to come up in the state on PPP (public-private partnership) models. Maharashtra State Government had collaborated with a private weather forecasting organization under which a network of AWS was planned to launch. Initially, around 12×12 km area of each taluka was said to have one AWS each. With the capability to record important farming parameters the AWS was said to be a significant role in the life of the farmers in Maharashtra.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: On 23 November 2019, Fadnavis formed a government with the help of Ajit Pawar of NCP; however, this government only lasted for a few days. During this short period, Fadnavis chaired a climate resilience meeting with representatives of the World Bank, restarted the Chief Minister's refund cell, and sanctioned 5380 crores in aid for farmers.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Following the 2022 Maharashtra political crisis, on 30 June 2022, Fadnavis took oath as the 9th Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra with Eknath Shinde as the chief minister.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: Fadnavis has been conferred with Honorary Doctorate by Osaka City University, Japan. The 120-year-old university then had so far conferred its supreme honorary degree on only 10 distinguished persons in the world and Fadnavis was the first Indian to be conferred with the same for the socio-economic development in Maharashtra.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In June 2018, Fadnavis received the Outstanding Leadership in Development Award by Georgetown University, The USA which he dedicated to the people of Maharashtra.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In April 2016, while addressing a rally in Nashik, Fadnavis said that every Indian will have to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', and those who refuse to chant the slogan should not live in the country and instead go to Pakistan or China. The day after these statements, Fadnavis issued a clarification after he found himself embroiled in a controversy over the issue.


title: Devendra Fadnavis

text: In November 2020, Fadnavis stated that the view of the BJP is advocacy for Indian reunification in the form of an Akhand Bharat. He declared that "Karachi will be part of India."


title: Tantō

text: A is one of the traditionally made Japanese swords () that were worn by the samurai class of feudal Japan. The tantō dates to the Heian period, when it was mainly used as a weapon but evolved in design over the years to become more ornate. Tantō were used in traditional martial arts (tantojutsu). The term has seen a resurgence in the West since the 1980s as a point style of modern tactical knives, designed for piercing or stabbing.


title: Tantō

text: The "tantō" is a single or double edged dagger with a length between 15 and 30 cm (1 Japanese shaku). The tantō was designed primarily as a stabbing weapon, but the edge can be used for slashing as well.


title: Tantō

text: Tantō are generally forged in "hira-zukuri" (平造) style (without ridgeline), meaning that their sides have no ridge line and are nearly flat, unlike the "shinogi-zukuri" (鎬造) structure of a "katana". Some tantō have particularly thick cross-sections for armor-piercing duty, and are called "yoroi toshi".


title: Tantō

text: Tantō were mostly carried by samurai; commoners did not generally wear them. Women sometimes carried a small tantō called a "kaiken" in their "obi" primarily for self-defense. Tantō were sometimes worn as the "shōtō" (小刀) in place of a "wakizashi" in a "daishō", especially on the battlefield. Before the advent of the "wakizashi/tantō" combination, it was common for a samurai to carry a "tachi" and a tantō as opposed to a "katana" and a "wakizashi".


title: Tantō

text: It has been noted that the tachi would be paired with a "tantō" and later the "katana" would be paired with another shorter "katana". With the advent of the "katana", the wakizashi eventually was chosen by samurai as the short sword over the tantō. Kanzan Satō in his book "The Japanese Sword" notes that there did not seem to be any particular need for the "wakizashi" and suggests that the "wakizashi" may have become more popular than the "tantō" due to the "wakizashi" being more suited for indoor fighting. He mentions the custom of leaving the "katana" at the door of a castle or palace when entering while continuing to wear the "wakizashi" inside.


title: Tantō

text: The tantō was invented partway through the Heian period. With the beginning of the Kamakura period, tantō were forged to be more aesthetically pleasing, and "hira" and "uchi-sori" tantō becoming the most popular styles. Near the middle of the Kamakura period, more tantō artisans were seen, increasing the abundance of the weapon, and the "kanmuri-otoshi" style became prevalent in the cities of Kyoto and Yamato. Because of the style introduced by the "tachi" in the late Kamakura period, tantō began to be forged longer and wider. The introduction of the Hachiman faith became visible in the carvings in the hilts around this time. The "hamon" (line of temper) is similar to that of the "tachi", except for the absence of "choji-midare", which is "nioi" and "utsuri". "Gunomi-midare" and "suguha" are found to have taken its place.


title: Tantō

text: During the era of the Northern and Southern Courts, the tantō were forged to be up to forty centimeters as opposed to the normal one "shaku" (about thirty centimeters) length. The blades became thinner between the "ura" and the "omote", and wider between the "ha" and "mune". At this point in time, two styles of "hamon" were prevalent: the older style, which was subtle and artistic, and the newer, more popular style. With the beginning of the Muromachi period, constant fighting caused the mass production of blades, meaning that with higher demand, lower-quality blades were manufactured. Blades that were custom-forged still were of exceptional quality, but the average blade suffered greatly. As the end of the period neared, the average blade narrowed and the curvature shallowed.


title: Tantō

text: "Katana" originates from "sasuga" (刺刀), a kind of "tantō" used by lower-ranking samurai who fought on foot in the Kamakura period. Their main weapon was a long "naginata" and "sasuga" was a spare weapon. In the Nanboku-chō period which corresponds to the early Muromachi period, long weapons such as "ōdachi" were popular, and along with this, "sasuga" lengthened and finally became "katana".


title: Tantō

text: Approximately two hundred and fifty years of peace accompanied the unification of Japan, in which there was little need for blades. In this period, both the "katana" and "wakizashi" were invented, taking the place of the tantō and "tachi" as the most-used pair of weapons, and the number of tantō forged was severely decreased. Since this period, "tantō" have often been carved with splendid decorations. Of the "tantō" and "wakizashi" forged during this period, three masterpieces are called the "Nihon santō" (Three Blades in Japan).


title: Tantō

text: There were still a few tantō being forged during this period, and the ones that were forged reflected the work of the Kamakura, Nambokucho, or Muromachi eras. Suishinshi Masahide was a main contributor towards the forging of tantō during this age. There are now only prehistoric tantō being used in combat.


title: Tantō

text: Many tantō were forged before World War II, due to the restoration of the Emperor to power. Members of the Imperial Court began wearing the set of "tachi" and tantō once more, and the number of tantō in existence increased dramatically. After World War II, a restriction on sword forging caused tantō manufacture to fall very low. American and European interest in Japanese martial arts since the war created a demand for the tantō outside Japan from the 1960s through the present time.


title: Tantō

text: Tantō with blunt wooden or blunt plastic blades are used to practice martial arts. Versions with a blunt metal blade are used in more advanced training and in demonstrations. Martial arts that employ the tantō include:


title: Canada's Drag Race

text: Canada's Drag Race is a Canadian reality competition television series based on the American series "RuPaul's Drag Race" and is the Canadian edition of the "Drag Race" franchise, produced by Blue Ant Studios. In a similar format to the American version, the show features a crop of Canadian drag queens as they compete for a grand prize of $100,000 and the title of "Canada's Next Drag Superstar". The series airs on Crave in Canada, the United Kingdom's BBC Three, and worldwide on WOW Presents Plus.