Seapower - May 2008

SWEEPING

PROBLEM

Abandoning Cold War precautions leaves U.S. ports vulnerable to mines

By OTTO KREISHER, Special Correspondent

Whose Job Is It?

At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy took the threat of sea mines blocking major U.S. ports seriously. Plans were developed and assets assigned that would have allowed rapid action to restore access to strategically important harbors if that happened. Those preparations, however, generally were abandoned when the collapse of the Soviet Union appeared to remove that threat.

But with the emergence of global terrorist networks determined to inflict the greatest possible damage on the United States with any means available, national leaders must again consider the possibility that deadly underwater weapons could shut down a vital maritime gateway or naval base.

America’s vulnerability to such a threat is high.

“Under the cloak of legal activity, groups that would do us harm can enter the U.S. homeland anywhere along more than 95,000 miles of coastlines and through some 360 ports from Maine to Guam,” Scott Truver, national security adviser at Gryphon Technologies and a contributor to Navy and the Naval Institute’s publications on mine warfare, wrote in the latest Naval War College Review.

And the potential consequences of mines or less sophisticated improvised explosive devices — dubbed

underwater IEDs — in a major port could be enormous in human and economic terms.

“While small devices might have no more than nuisance value … larger mines can be placed surreptitiously in channels and harbors to achieve spectacular effects — against, for example, the Staten Island Ferry, crammed with 2,500 commuters during an evening rush hour, or a cruise ship with 4,000 vacationers and crew onboard leaving Miami or Seattle,” Truver wrote.

Beyond the potential human tragedy, the economic loss of a single day of operations at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which combined are the nation’s busiest container entry point, was estimated at more than $2 billion by a University of California–Berkeley study done following a strike by dock workers along the U.S. West Coast in 2002. That strike paralyzed more than 20 West Coast ports for 10 days.

There also could be serious military impact.

A single mine sinking a large ship in the narrow entrance to San Diego Harbor could trap one-third of the Pacific Fleet for days. Mines in other critical ports could delay the movement of vital military cargo during a crisis.

The ease with which mines can wreak havoc on key waterways was demonstrated in 1984, when at least 23 ships were damaged by underwater explosions in the Red Sea near the Suez Canal, one of the world’s busiest maritime routes. It took a multinational minesweeping force weeks to declare the route clear.

Later, it was revealed that Libya had used a commercial ferry to sow dozens of mines in the critical waterway.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Iraq used innocent-appearing dhows to spread mines in the Persian Gulf, which caused damage to two U.S. warships.