Sea mines are “simple, uncool weapons,” Scott Savitz, a naval marine warfare expert at RAND who was stationed in Bahrain in 2001, told Fortune. They predate World War I and haven’t advanced much since; they look like the spiky metal balls you’d imagine from the movies, small enough to slip neatly into a fishing boat and packed with TNT and ammonium nitrate.
But when they go off, they can snap ships straight in half, Savitz said. They have a “much greater effect, typically, than a missile,” and can inflict millions of dollars worth of damage for just a few thousand bucks a pop. And they’re pretty effective too: naval mines have caused 77% of all U.S. Navy ship casualties since 1950, per the Strauss Center at the University of Texas.
