En combat naval, la guerre des mines désigne toutes les opérations et tactiques relatives aux mines sous marines : le mouillage de mines, la lutte contre les mines (dragage et chasse aux mines), et les contre-mesures préventives.The FAS (Federation of American Scientists) site has an article on mine warfare here.
Some observation made at Euronaval 2014:
- [First, an aside: No stands that I noticed boasted anyone's capabilities in mine technology. Only bad guys use mines. The good guy's job is confined strictly to mine countermeasures and the like.]
- Most French-language journalists specialising in defence do not use guerre des mines in the sense given above. Oddly, given the way that they skirt around mines and mine laying, most use guerre des mines to mean lutte anti-mines.
See, for example: Guerre des mines : les systèmes de drones font leurs preuves,
Guerre des mines : Atlas Elektronik et iXBlue dans le consortium EURO-MCM - In such cases the best equivalents are 'mine countermeasures', 'mine countermeasures (MCM)', anti-mine warfare, or just MCM, depending on the context.
- Non-specialist French-language journalists are more likely to use guerre des mines as defined by Wikipédia in which case the best equivalent is 'mine warfare'.
