Protection of high value waterside assets: A new paradigm

There is ample evidence of the threat to military and civilian facilities from waterborne threats - both surface and subsurface. Until the attack on the USS COLE, traditional methods developed by the Navy for detecting and defeating waterborne attacks had been applications of blue-water technology. They were based on the premise that there is sufficient waterspace over which the defending agency has control (Restricted Waterspace (RW)) to allow remote sensors to detect, classify and track approaching threats and then vector mobile response forces to intercept the threat before it reaches a critical standoff distance from the protected asset. However, detailed analyses of the RW at Navy bases have shown that the enforceable standoff distance ranges from as little as 160 feet to a maximum of about 1000 feet. Approximately 85% of the sites have RW that extends less than 500 feet from the protected asset. Over half extend less than 300 feet away. The statistics are similar for the vital cooling water intakes for nuclear power generation stations and for the penstocks at large hydroelectric power stations at dams. After the USS COLE attack, the Navy and other agencies recognized that in the available RW at a large percent of waterfront locations, attacks by high-speed surface craft simply were too fast for traditional methods of defense. Nearly all critical Navy waterfronts have now been protected with floating boat barriers of various types. All Navy surface boat barriers are installed at or near the edge of the available RW. Those barriers do defeat a direct collision by the design basis threat. As a result, they can deter attacks. They at least force a surface attacker to spend enough time creating a breach that existing patrols have some chance to detect the attack and respond. They also provide unambiguous indication of hostile intent - boat barriers do not get breached by accident. However, in most cases, the barriers are not complete perimeters and there is no on- board instrumentation to detect a covert breach, Unfortunately, there has been no analogous barrier technology available for subsurface threats at American facilities. Even for the relatively slower attack speed of divers and submersible vehicles, the time required for detection, classification and response for systems based on acoustic sensing and mobile response is too long to deal adequately with threats in the limited waterspace available at most facilities. This paper describes the RW analyses, summarizes the statistics on RW, and derives detailed performance requirements for a waterside defense system.