Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have unveiled a new four-pronged plan to prevent the use of small vessels such as yachts, speedboats and commercial fishing boats, from being used to smuggle everything from illicit narcotics to weapons of mass destruction.
The plan, developed by the two components within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), looks to meld advanced tracking and detection technologies with a more fluid system of shifting that information across interagency lines, reports our sister publication Defense Daily.
“It is finding a middle ground” between technological applications and more basic methods of detecting potential maritime threats,” Thomas Winkowski, assistant commissioner for Field Operations at CBP, says at a media briefing. “The ultimate goal was to find a “unified way forward” in addressing a continually evolving threat, he adds.
That threat has evolved into DHS’ “biggest areas of vulnerability,” Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft, assistant commandant for Marine Safety, Security and Stewardship for the Coast Guard, says at the briefing.
With thousands of miles of shoreline to cover, along with the vast expanses of U.S. territorial waters to patrol, the use of small vessels as conduits for transporting all types of illicit and dangerous cargo has exposed “inherent vulnerabilities” in the Coast Guard’s ability to ensure those boats do not make it to U.S. shores, Zukunft says. Out of that growing concern, DHS launched the small vessel defense plan, he says.
Plans Seeks Layered Defense
On the technical side the Coast Guard and CBP are looking to implement a “layered, state-of-the-art approach” to detection and mitigation of small vessels attempting to smuggle contraband into the U.S. That layered strategy will include development of next-generation “technical detection, active mitigation, tracking and information sharing” on potential threats, says the 17-page Small Vessel Security Implementation Plan Report to the Public. The new plan follows the 2008 release by DHS of the National Small Vessel Security Strategy.
Those steps include fielding a more “robust surface radar coverage” system in areas not currently tracked by legacy radar systems. Also, the plan calls for an assessment on the expansion of Naval Vessel Protection Zones for Navy ships and submarines deployed in and around the continental U.S.
The expansion of these vessel protection zones is inherently important, Zukunft says, as terrorist groups look increasingly toward attacking large military or commercial vessels such as the 2002 bombing of the USS Cole (DDG-57) while at port in Yemen.
In addition, the plan also calls for an increased investment in technical applications that “enhance the ability to detect, determine intent and …interdict small vessels,” according to the plan.
To reach that goal, Coast Guard and CBP officials want to funnel more federal dollars into developing “low-cost, non-intrusive small vessel identification systems. Those systems could take the form of radio frequency identification tags, miniature transponders or cell phone-based recognition systems,” the plan says.
To streamline information sharing among U.S. government agencies, the plan proposes a slate of initiative to both “improve coordinated small vessel interdiction capabilities” and “leverage the capabilities of [U.S.] partners and foreign governments,” it says.
The layered defense strategy also includes improved detection capabilities of potential maritime radiological and nuclear threats at the federal, state, local, tribal and even private stakeholder levels, the plan says.
It also seeks ways to improve the collection and sharing of security data on small vessels and their operators and to improve data analysis to target high-risk small vessels.
The plan also calls for expanding the use of biometrics to obtain positive identifications.
Through the expansion of joint field operations with those different entities, operating along the mandates of international bilateral agreements and interagency concepts of operations, the full brunt of the technological advances called for in the plan can be brought to bear, the plan says.