The Pentagon faces mounting questions over why the US Navy's mine-clearing ships were thousands of miles from the Strait of Hormuz, berthed in Singapore, in the weeks before America went to war with Iran.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on 29 April 2026 for the first time since the Trump administration launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on 28 February. The hearing was formally convened to scrutinise the Pentagon's record budget request for fiscal year 2027, with Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine expected to make the case for more drones, missile defence systems and warships. But the session quickly moved beyond dry budget lines into a pointed examination of strategic failures, not least the bewildering movement of America's minesweeping fleet away from the Persian Gulf on the eve of the conflict.
The Ships That Weren't There
The question of the minesweepers strikes at something fundamental: what the Pentagon knew, and when it knew it.
The US Navy's Independence class Littoral Combat Ships USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara, configured for minesweeping duties and last known to be forward-deployed in Bahrain, emerged thousands of miles away in port in Malaysia in mid-March 2026, just weeks after hostilities began. Malaysian authorities confirmed that both LCSs had departed the Port of Penang on 16 March 2026. By 18 March, local spotters had photographed the two warships arriving in Singapore, a city-state roughly 370 miles south-east of Penang.
Two Avenger class ships, USS Chief and USS Pioneer, were subsequently spotted arriving in Singapore on 8 April and were seen heading west on 10 April, representing half of the remaining Avenger class inventory in the entire US Navy fleet. All four Avenger class ships are forward-deployed in Sasebo, Japan. The War Zone, which first reported the movements in detail, noted that while removing the ships from Bahrain ahead of conflict was broadly a prudent security measure, it remained 'unclear why the decision was made to send them literally to the other side of the globe amid the obvious threat of Iran mining the highly strategic Strait of Hormuz.'
JUST IN: HEGSETH QUESTIONED ON THE RISK OF IRAN CLOSING THE STRAIT
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) April 29, 2026
MOULTON: Did you consider the risk of Iran closing the strait?
HEGSETH: Of course
MOULTON: So then why did you send the only minesweepers we had in the Gulf to Singapore weeks before the war started? pic.twitter.com/x89CbxxMN5
A Fleet Stripped Before the Fight
The strategic picture is made considerably worse by decisions taken before the war even began.
In January 2026, the US Navy loaded four decommissioned Avenger class minesweepers onto a heavy-lift cargo ship in Bahrain and sent them home for scrap. Those wooden-hulled ships had spent the entire post-Cold War era keeping the Persian Gulf's sea lanes clear, the only vessels in the American fleet at the time purpose-built to find and destroy naval mines. Their fledgling replacements, the LCS ships outfitted with new unmanned mine countermeasures systems, had just arrived in theatre when the war broke out. The timing proved disastrous.
According to a classified briefing obtained by Hunterbrook Media, the leader of the US Navy's Mine Countermeasures Technical Division had flagged serious problems with the LCS replacement system months before the conflict. Operators reported that the drone boats' sonar sometimes failed to detect threats without any visible indication of the failure until data was assessed after a mission. One pre-deployment exercise with USS Tulsa off San Diego resulted in a runaway mine countermeasures drone near Mexico's territorial waters that could not be recovered by the mothership LCS.
Congressman @RepGaramendi just eviscerated Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump on the war in Iran:
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) April 29, 2026
"Secretary Hegseth, you have been lying to the American public about this war since day one, and so has the President. You have misled the public about why we are at war. You and the… pic.twitter.com/8mYzzEi5MH
Hegseth Under Fire at His First Congressional Test
When Hegseth finally sat before Congress on 29 April, the minesweeper question formed part of a broader broadside over strategic preparedness. A defiant Hegseth repeatedly defended President Donald Trump's decision to strike Iran and accused Democrats and some Republicans of being 'reckless, feckless and defeatist' about the war.
Ranking Democrat Rep. Adam Smith challenged Hegseth directly on strategic coherence, saying: 'As we sit here today, Iran's nuclear programme is exactly what it was before this war started. They have not lost their capacity to inflict pain, they still have a ballistic missile programme, they're still able to blockade the Strait of Hormuz and have the ships that are capable of doing that. What is the plan to get that to change?' Hegseth responded that Iran's nuclear facilities had been 'obliterated.' Smith dismissed the answer, saying the war had 'left us at exactly the same place we were before.'
Pentagon officials separately told lawmakers during a classified House Armed Services Committee briefing that it would likely take six months to clear the mines Iran has laid in the strait. When asked about the estimate, Hegseth told reporters: 'Allegedly that was something that was said. But we feel confident in our ability, in the correct period of time, to clear any mines that we identify.' He did not deny the six-month estimate.
The hearing also addressed Hegseth's recent ousting of top military leaders during a period of active conflict. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who had been a crucial vote in confirming Hegseth, said the firings had caused him to have second thoughts. 'He may be able to clean it up, but on its face, you don't go through the number of highly reputable, senior-level officials, admirals and generals,' Tillis said. Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican, called the firing of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George 'an extreme disservice to the United States Army' and 'reckless conduct.'
Military analyst and retired admiral James Foggo noted that before minesweepers could even begin operating in the strait, a combat air patrol would need to be established above the waterway. Only after minesweepers completed their work could destroyers be sent in to escort oil tankers. If that effort had begun immediately, he estimated it would still take a month to get underway. With the mine-clearing LCS ships in Singapore as the conflict began, that timeline was pushed back further still.
The Strait of Hormuz remains the world's most consequential chokepoint, and the question of why America's mine-clearing ships were on the other side of the world when the war began remains, as yet, unanswered.
