Somewhere, Beyond the Sea

In a modern maritime extension of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy has announced plans to track the nearly 121,000 merchant vessels around the world. (American Submariner 05). The system will employ the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), satellite, and other resources in much the same way that Soviet submarines were tracked. Existing ocean surveillance equipment will be married with certain improvements and sophisticated database methods to create a world SitRep of global maritime assets.

As a sailor I welcome the Navy’s commitment to maritime ocean surveillance. The nation needs to know the nature of the threats that present themselves to our shipping and transportation. The more they know about shipping traffic, the less they need to rely on random searches and intimidation. I was in San Pedro (Los Angeles Harbor) on September 11th 2001. To me, the sense of vulnerability of the port was palpable. In 2001 the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles handled 9.65 million TEUS (Twenty-Foot-Equivalent-Units). Although efforts to screen this cargo for contraband, from Chinese illegal-immigrants to dirty bombs, of the hundreds of thousands of containers flooding into the L.A. Harbor monthly, less than 5% are being screened. But this could easily be more than enough if you knew which containers to search.

Since September 11th 2001, the presence of the Naval surveillance in Southern California has been on the increase. Aircraft carriers anchor off of San Diego. While sailing the Newport to Ensenada race in 2004, the entire fleet had to detour around an aircraft carrier that had ‘parked’ itself in the direct path of over 500 racers headed south. Just about every weekend channel 16 is spammed with constant threats at day sailors to stay from naval vessels. It borders on the absurd. In San Diego Bay I witnessed a 22 foot sailboat rental as it was reprimanded over channel 16 by a fierce navy chief. The thirty something mother and her three adolescent children were not keeping up with the drill. They had no idea that their life was in peri when they approach the insurmountable cordon of buoys that surrounded the aircraft carrier near the Coronado Bridge while affecting a dirty tack, a Navy security boat storms in with its’ 30 cals pointed at the mom and her kiddies in their Catalina 22. The fear in the womans face from the confusion of sailing turns into a look of real terror as she stares into the eyes of the Naval Security Unit that looks like it is ready to blow her out of the water. The fin keel sailboat could not be used to breach the security cordon, but orders are orders and an uneasy peace is kept at the end of a gun. National security and tourism aren’t working in San Diego Bay.

On the late morning of October the 12th, 2000, an inflatable boat approaches the U.S.S. Cole in the naval base in Aden, southern Yemen. The boat is of a familiar type and maneuvers in a manner that tender boats have approached her before; the occupants have done their homework. In the final seconds, the crew on the small boat gestures with what was described by witnesses as a salute. At the moment of impact the boat explodes. The ensuing explosion rips a large gash into the side of the Cole, the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan have nearly become the first naval power since World War II to sink a U.S. naval vessel.

On one day-sail, I am listening to the banter on channel 16. A U.S. warship asks a freighter to identify itself; “What is your destination and what are you carrying?” The warship asks again and calls out the position of the ship. Finally, realizing that they were being hailed, the sea captain answers in a thick Middle Eastern accent. “We have a few containers and a hold full of fertilizer”. I imagine the fuel-fertilizer bomb that leveled the port of Texas City in 1947 and vow not to get into the port until this potential bomb, the size of a city block, has passed. The entrance to Shelter Island where I’ll dock my sailboat is along the eastern side of Point Loma where the sub base is located. I pass the bait dock and head up into the wind to furl my headsail. Navy personnel are on the dock with a bullhorn warning me to turn away. I am waiting for the bullets to start flying but am able stow my sail before DEFCON 1 is reached. With naval facilities on both sides of the bay and a 100 yard keep away distance there is barely room to tack in San Diego Bay when naval vessels are present, which is pretty much everywhere everyday.

"San Diego Bay - Boaters must stay clear of all naval vessels. Maintain a distance of at least 100 yards from any naval vessel, and when within 500 yards of a naval vessel, boaters must maintain minimum speed.” Department of Boating and Waterways.

At 11:00pm Thursday on an October day last year, a friend of mine and I set out of San Diego Bay on a course to the South Eastern end of Catalina Island. In the darkness I became aware of a small inflatable following my boat in the shadow of the night. I watched in mild concern for a half hour or more until I can see the U.S. Coast Guard boat with a crew of three come along side my boat. They ask where I was coming from and where I was going. I tell them that I had left San Diego Bay and was following a course that would put me off of Catalina. I asked them if they hadn’t tracked me on radar. They said no. I couldn’t believe it. I have a radar reflector to help illuminate me while transiting the shipping lane. I don’t mind getting pulled over in the middle of the night on a sail but am appalled that this is the best security that can be mustered.

Random searches are chaotic and arguably a waste of time. Tracking threats from around the world has the potential of putting intelligence into security operations, but even so, intelligence alone will not ensure security. In the case of the U.S.S. Cole, while en route to the region, the NSA had information that a terrorist operation was in full swing, but this information never found itself to the Cole.

The U.S. armed services are constantly reinventing themselves to keep pace with emerging threats. While the Navy is seeking to improve its capability and reach in littoral warfare, it is also leveraging past lessons of the Cold War with new technology. Databases once developed to support intelligence analysis and data fusion have become nearly ubiquitous in the commercial computing sector. Data-mining techniques are being used increasingly to peer through the clutter and to assemble patterns of action. Link analysis can connect the dots, an arms merchant in Chechnya, a mosque in Bangladesh, and a missing merchant ship presumed lost in the South China Sea draw a picture that can lead to actionable intelligence. Advances of commercial technology combined with Cold War relics are being fused into a new force for future security.

“This is never going to be successful unless you have the interagency union with the Coast Guard and homeland defense agencies, and allies and friends around the world. And that’s the kind of effort I think we need to see, because their concerns are similar. They have problems from the sea… therefore this can also be of utility to them” Vice Admiral Joseph A. Sestak Jr.