AI-Intelligentized Naval Mines and U.S. Subsea Access in the Paracel Islands
Abstract
According to People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)–affiliated military oceanographers’ assessments of the Paracel Island region, include acoustically attenuated shadow zones created by rugged seamounts and abrupt bathymetry are prime locations for AI-intelligentized seabed mines to establish a subsea anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) zone by obscuring direction and disrupting submarine sonar. Although these AI-enabled systems remain conceptual, they represent a plausible evolution of PLAN mine warfare doctrine capable of selectively engaging vessels while remaining dormant in acoustically complex environments.
Importance of the Paracel Islands
The Paracel Islands remain indispensable to U.S. naval operations, enabling seamless access to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) posture due to their strategic location near Hainan Island, home to China’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) fleet at the Longpo and Yulin bases. The islands are distinctly known as the subject of sovereignty disputes, with notable claimants including Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The United States continues to engage in Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs)in the region to contest Beijing’s claim. Despite this, China has asserted ownership and continues to militarize the Paracel Islands, including 20 reported lily-pad installations with helipads, radar, and berthing for warships across Woody Island and Antelope Reef, as noted in recent satellite imagery as of January 2026.
Amid the PLA’s ongoing militarization of the Paracel Islands, the PLAN-affiliated military oceanographers have assessed that the subsea domain of the region can be exploited to conceal naval mines among the rugged seamounts, using full advantage of natural acoustic blind spots to create persistent kill zones. The PLAN’s effort to militarize surrounding reefs in the Paracels would correspondingly augment its A2/AD framework, the Transparent Ocean Initiative, a multi-layered, seabed-to-space monitoring architecture designed to improve environmental awareness and track submarine activity in the South China Sea and enable uninterrupted control of the general Western Pacific theatre from foreign intervention.
PLAN Subsea Mine Network and AI-Targeting Capabilities
As an asymmetric tool, Chinese maritime doctrine identifies naval mines as a means of securing the sea domain, given their ease of deployment, difficulty of detection and neutralization, and utility in constraining adversary maneuver. The PLAN fields more than thirty types of naval mines – including contact, magnetic, acoustic, pressure, mixed-influence, remote-controlled, rocket-rising, and mobile variants – across an estimated inventory of 50,000 to 100,000 weapons.
Although current references to AI‑enabled naval mines are conceptual rather than operational, open‑source reporting indicates that PLA‑affiliated researchers are actively modeling AI‑intelligentized seabed mines as an extension of existing PLAN architectures. In contrast to current mine systems, which rely on static influence parameters, AI‑augmented variants would be computationally amplified to process volumetric data inputs—including acoustic, magnetic, and optical signals—allowing adaptive target discrimination and selective engagement logic within shadow zones. When emplaced within bathymetrically shielded shadow zones, such systems could retain contextual information across prior detection events, refining classification thresholds over time and thwarting mine countermeasure efforts.
Implications for US Naval Operations
The continual militarization of the Paracel Islands’ surrounding reefs enables the PLAN to determine the undersea battlespace parameters by fortifying its A2/AD infrastructure, limiting U.S. naval maneuverability, and obstructing ISR operational planning. Given the Paracel Island’s sonar shadow zones, these conditions affect the overall effectiveness of U.S. submarine assets and can constrain the situational awareness required for reliable navigation. If hazardous externalities obstruct subsea locomotion, such that assets must adjust transit routes and employ countermeasures to maintain freedom of movement, these factors not only increase resource demands and operational risks but also create localized control zones signifying a loss of domain access and effectively ceding control of key approaches to PLAN forces, validating Beijing’s claims and militarization of the Islands.
Recommended Actions for the United States
The United States should counter AI‑enabled Chinese seabed mines by combining advanced mine‑detection systems with asymmetric electronic warfare measures tailored to acoustically complex shadow‑zone environments. To preserve undersea access, U.S. forces should leverage complementary sensing platforms: existing capabilities such as high‑frequency mine‑hunting sonar and emerging expeditionary sensing platforms, including photoacoustic systems deployed from unmanned assets, can provide pre‑mission cueing and environmental characterization to preserve undersea access. To offset AI‑targeting advantages without physical clearance, US forces should prioritize electronic attack techniques—jamming, spoofing, and deception—to degrade sensor inputs, disrupt autonomous decision‑making, and create localized maneuver windows in contested undersea battlespaces.
Conclusion
Since 2017, Beijing has continued to pursue AI-enhanced military capabilities with the formalization of the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, as well as exploiting U.S. naval vulnerabilities to gain uninterrupted access in the region and deter foreign intervention. The PLAN’s military research indicates that the state will not only continue to illicitly militarize the Islands despite persistent sovereignty claims but also leverage the unique subsea domain of the region and emerging technology to create a kill zone, operating in tandem to restrict U.S. undersea maneuver, degrade situational awareness, and challenge freedom of navigation within acoustically complex environments.
AI-optimized systems remain conceptual; current mines collectively offer a flexible and dynamic layered ecosystem that can be tailored to different depth regimes, trigger requirements, and operational conditions. Although little is known about the general characteristics of Chinese naval mine infrastructure, MAFOS-1 is described as an autonomous search-and-identification mine with a rudimentary ability to classify limited information while retaining semi-autonomous mobility. This information suggests a high likelihood that future iterations of AI-enabled mines could integrate adaptive sensing and selective engagement capabilities, thereby obfuscate U.S. undersea operations and constraining the freedom of maneuverability in contested areas.
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