I've used fighters for this purpose, but unfortunately for that tactic, mines can destroy more than one fighter per mine, if the fighters come in a group. So it's most effective if you can get the fighters in Groups of one, which is slow and tedious. But it is vastly cheaper than using drones. A small fighter with no equipment and just enough engines can be cheaper than a mine. What it's really good for though is not trying to clear dense minefields, but testing locations to see if they are mined... unless the game is set so that fighters don't detonate mines!
Another option is to set drones to not detonate mines, which of course leads to a different set of options...
PvK