"This is not merely the question of a theoretical threat, but it's the question of a threat that has already come to pass," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Monday, addressing several hundred members of the boating industry at an event sponsored by the National Marine Manufacturers Association. "And we have to, therefore, accept the reality that there is a risk to our security that comes from someone misusing a boat for terrorist purposes."
BUY, RENT OR COMMANDEER
Small recreational boats and commercial vessels are easy to buy or rent – or even commandeer – in the United States. There are more than 20 million pleasure craft, 82,000 fishing vessels and 100,000 other small commercial vessels in the U.S. Unlike private aircraft, most of them don't require a license to operate. They can be used as delivery vehicles or as platforms for launching missiles or grenades. And many have interior spaces large enough to smuggle in large amounts of explosives or even nuclear or radiological bombs.
US Air Force Staff Sgt. Dominic HauserCoast Guard members receive briefing prior to boat interception procedures during exercise Harbor Shield, an anti-terrorism exercise in Charleston, S.C.
"We know that small boats can essentially become vehicles for bombs," says Stephen Flynn, a former Coast Guard officer who's now a homeland security scholar at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. "You can get these boats anywhere, and they are virtually unpoliced."
The Coast Guard shares that concern. "We've gotten a lot better on [tracking] big ships, but there's one remaining gap – the large volume of smaller vessels, which do not have anywhere near the same degree of visibility," says Rear Admiral Brian Salerno, assistant commandant of the Coast Guard for boating safety, security and seamanship, who is overseeing the small boat security effort. "It's an issue that people are concerned about."
On Monday, Chertoff spoke in terms of balancing government action with boaters' needs in order to mitigate risks. "The only way to really guarantee the risk could never come to pass would be to ban the activity outright, which I hasten to add we have no intention of doing," he said, adding that, "We try not to eliminate the risk but to manage the risk, to reduce the risk to a reasonable level at a reasonable cost, recognizing that that's not an insurance against anything ever happening."
To be sure, the government hasn't simply stood still on small-boat security. The Coast Guard has stepped up its boardings of small craft, and is intensifying its intelligence-gathering on such vessels and at marinas and other shore facilities. It's also providing armed escorts for liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers and other potential targets. It has set up restricted zones in high-risk areas. And DHS is requiring persons who work on commercial vessels or in shoreside port facilities to obtain federal identification credentials.
The service has begun activating its new Rescue 21 satellite-linked vessel-positioning and communications system. While Rescue 21 is designed primarily to enhance search-and-rescue operations, officials say it also will help keep tabs on potential terrorists by making it easier to spot and track small boats.
Finally, the Coast Guard has launched an America's Waterways Watch program – similar to the Neighborhood Watch effort that has long been in place in shoreside communities – to enlist boaters' aid in identifying suspicious happenings on rivers, bays and other bodies of water and reporting them to homeland security officials.
