IRAQi  MINES found from Iraqi freedom battle from Don DeCrona LCDR ret.
What we have here is an illustration of Fourth Generation Naval Warfare, in which a commercial tug masquerades as a minelayer, with the mines hidden inside oil drums, and stored inside an innocent looking Conex. Cheers for the Aussies.  For those that didn't get to see them on the news, these are the mines we found on the tugs by Australian navy sailors. The (gray) ones with the horns are the floating contacts i.e. float partially submerged and make direct contact with the side of the ship, and the (green) cone shaped ones are the bottom dwelling magnetic influence type which sit on the shallow bottom and wait for the ship to go over the top. When the mine senses the magnetic attraction decreasing it will go off. You can see how they hid one lot inside some cut out oil drums, and the others were inside the pontoon attached to the tug. Looks as though they could be launched undetected through the sides of the pontoon on the rail system as the tug moves through the Gulf. The red container on the pontoon had the soft patch inside under the floor boards, which is how they got down inside the pontoon where the mines were.  

Click on picture to see a larger view

 mine1.jpg (39726 bytes)  mine2.jpg (51239 bytes)  mine4.jpg (42811 bytes)  mine5.jpg (46355 bytes)

mine6.jpg (47162 bytes)  mine7.jpg (56320 bytes)  mine10.jpg (39619 bytes)  tug1.jpg (36069 bytes)
 
tug2.jpg (18815 bytes)  tug3.jpg (40014 bytes)

mine3.jpg (47908 bytes)  mine9.jpg (39917 bytes) 

fantial.jpg (29939 bytes)

lugmines.jpg (15715 bytes)