Thursday, February 15, 2007

Flying Dutchman of Mass Destruction There was a post I wrote some time ago. I don't remember exactly when. Back at or before the start of the last war. Well technically still the current war. A post which was recently recalled to me. In this post there was a ship, or two, or three. On these ships were all of Saddam Hussien's Weapons of Mass Destruction. He cleared 'em all out, loaded them up on a handful of freighters and sent them to sea to circle the Earth until the curse was lifted and it was safe to come home. I posted this off something I read in the Debka Files; before I realized that what you see on that site is all deliberate bull shit. Now as far as Iraq's WMD's are concerned that situation is settled except for the most determined kool-aiders. That threat was falsely advanced and anyone who choses to still so believe, does so for reasons other than the love of objective truth. Still there was something to the concept of hiding something by sending it off to sea that was within realm of the possible. Once you are outside the shipping lanes the worlds oceans are large and empty. Within shipping lanes, even out in the middle of the ocean, it is more like the Washington beltway during rush hour. Let's consider Iran for the sake of argument. Suppose the powers that be in Tehran decide that a lengthy set of air-strikes by the U S is a possibility and decide therefore to hedge their bets and remove a portion of their facilities from harms way. This would include not only within Iran - say within a mine shaft too deep to be a practical operating facility but beyond destruction. It might also include moving them out of the country. Perhaps even this shipping scenario. Call it the WMD Startup Kit problem. This is a facet of sea control Navies call ocean surveillance. Something that, long ago, briefly occupied my days. Wait I have a short poem: Rainforms are red, Rainforms are blue, but Rainform whites are all I ever got to do... There are probably a few people left out there who know what that means. The problem divides into technical and other components. One of the first things to consider in such a problem is its granularity. By this I mean the relative measure between the event size and the capabilities of your intelligence program. By event size I am simply looking for a term that will connote the physical size of an object of intelligence interest (or operation) along with related facets of its existence such as the time and material it took to make it, or bring it into fruition. If someone is trying to smuggle 12 monkeys past you it changes the problem whether the monkeys are blueprints for missiles and uranium enriching centrifuges, or whether the monkeys are the actual objects The U S Navy is charged with Sea Control: the identification, verification, potential interdiction (or elimination) of all that flows over and through the worlds oceans The Role of the U.S. Navy in Support of the National Strategy for Maritime Security. (and see Winter: The Role of the US Navy in Support of the National Strategy for Maritime Security - Google Scholar for related).This covers the usual submarines, surface combatants, but also cargo ships. If what would be hidden is large enough to require a cargo ship, the Navy has broad ocean surveillance systems in place that would track it. Ships leave harbor with a manifest and a port of destination. Certain ports, shippers, transits will attract routine attention. If the ship puts in at an intermediate port and transfers cargo, picks unscheduled cargo up or tries to obfuscate its identity this sort of shell game should also flag its activity as suspicious. The first part of this lies in coordination of Fleet Intelligence centers ,or activity of a Global Maritime Intelligence Integration Center to undertake comprehensive real time tracking of merchant shipping. More detailed surveillance can be undertaken to confirm suspicions. This could be done with varying levels of obviousness. None of this gets you on the ship. None of this stops the ship from sailing where ever it chooses with its cargo. The difficulty in interdiction is legal. Adherence to international law is in relation to your exposure to anarchy. Commander Peter J. Winter (author of the above paper) states "[t]he use of naval power to interdict suspect shipments of illegal material has become a core competency in the last few decades, but usually under the guidance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)." The sovereignty of a ship at sea is the sovereignty of the nation whose flag it flies. If that nation is not signed to international treaties on missile technology control or nuclear nonproliferation there formerly was little that could be done. William Hawkins in an article in the December 2004 Proceedings (p49-52) (EBSCOhost-INTERDICT WMD SMUGGLERS AT SEA.) goes into this in more detail and describes the different cases of the interdiction of the So San in 2002 and the BBC China in 2003. Both papers point out the United States was inspired to seek a expansion of legitimate action in Naval matters: the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). The PSI Statement of Interdiction Principles indicates the method is to create a large network of nations that will agree to standing sets of reciprocal permissions on boarding and searching of suspect vessels. These will be modeled on existing protocols covering narcotics and migrant worker interdiction. If the U S is able to discover a reason to initiate an air war against a Iran's nuclear facilities, this would presumably cover seizing the cargos of merchants ships as well. The more realistic problem is that a country in Iran's position, still a number of years away from having a functioning nuclear weapon, may try accelerating the process by weapons trade with nations that already have this capability. The Navy has the tools to discover this but not stop it. If you set a program like the PSI up and some nations will sign and some won't, you can at least claim national security. Interdict and hope the inertia of the non-signers works to keep them from becoming too exercised. This is former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton's view - paraphrased somewhat). All you've done is divert material goods. The U S seems committed to the general view that prevalent nuclear arms in the region is harmful to U S national security, destabilizing, impoverishing and leads to a reduction in personal freedom (reduced trade, choice, opportunity). Hawkins ends his short article reaching for a moral high note which has a bit of current cache with the movie Amazing Grace coming out, when the British Navy undertook antislavery patrols off west africa in 1815. Progress only occurred when they unilaterally boarded and removed the human cargo from Portuguese flagged vessels. With little or no open support from any other nation. 11:59:07 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2007 P Bushmiller. Last update: 2/22/07; 8:51:36 PM.