force protection

The briefing below is very well done briefing on the layers of port security defenses that need to be implemented to provide maritime force protection and commercial port security. The presentation was presented by Dan Piepgrass, Commander, Naval Installations Command and Chris Powell from Anchor Innovation, Inc.

The overall presentation is professional, comprehensive, and well written. It is worth a quick read if you are interested in port security planning and operations.

One of the most interesting aspects from Wave Dispersion Technologies’ (WDT) perspective is on the slide entitled “Technology Needs:”

PORT SECURITY BARRIERS: Lower cost, stronger, lighter, low maintenance

WDT offers a line of port security barriers that are Commercially available Off-The-Shelf (COTS) and meet the criteria outlined above. WDT would be happy to discuss its line of port security barriers with anyone who is looking for alternative solutions.

Full Briefing: Comprehensive Port Security U.S. Navy Installation Perspective

Waterside security (WSS) is one of the most complex and challenging operational issues for modern navies in the current turbulent global political climate. The growing priority of this issue is reflected in the steadily increasing expenditure on activities in this sphere by many nations around the world.

Although the nature of many of today’s threats remains largely unchanged from those established during the Second World War – hostile frogmen, piloted submarine devices and explosive motor boats – the theatre in which they operate is, unquestionably, entirely different.

“WSS is one of the most complex and challenging operational issues for modern navies.”
Establishing physical exclusion barriers in time of conventional war is one thing; protecting vulnerable assets, infrastructure and lives from asymmetric attack, particularly in brown-water environments, is quite another.

Naval bases typically share their approaches with a myriad of commercial traffic, leisure vessels, fishing and small coastal boats, while replenishment logistics mandate the movement of a further plethora of diverse support craft.

Discerning friend from foe in busy littoral waters is both difficult and, by virtue of the short window available to implement appropriate countermeasures, unforgiving. Add to this the importance of sea transports to the economies of a huge number of countries – including those with no seaboard of their own – and the fact that even blue-water fleets must, at some point, enter harbour, and the importance of waterside security becomes clear.

Full Story

This is a guide produced by the Department of Defense to evaluate waterside security needs for force protection and port security purposes. It provides a very good overview of all aspects of security that need to be considered when implementing a waterside security plan.

DOD Waterside Security Guide

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.

Full Paper

Source: www.defencejobs.gov.au

The crew onboard HMAS Anzac simulates their force protections capabilities as they respond to a mock a small boat attack.

• Town fines Port over portable fence
  
  
  

Protecting the protectors
Navy to spend $4.5m for floating booms around our warships
By CHRIS LAMBIE
TheChronicleHerald.ca

The Canadian navy will spend about $4.5 million to install floating barriers around warships in Halifax Harbour and at Esquimalt, B.C.

Known as force-protection booms, the barriers will stretch as far as 1.6 kilometres along the waterfront. The military hopes to have them in place by this summer.

“They’ll be about 100 metres off the jetties,” said Lt.-Cmdr. Scott Tofflemire, the Queen’s harbourmaster.

“The desire would be to encompass the whole (HMC) Dockyard site from the Macdonald bridge south down to Karlsen’s wharf.”

The barriers are designed to prevent terrorist attacks similar to one in October 2000 when two al-Qaida suicide bombers brought a small boat alongside the USS Cole as it refuelled in Yemen. They detonated explosives hidden in the boat, killing themselves and 17 sailors, and blasting a huge hole in the American destroyer’s hull.

“The threat is always there,” Lt.-Cmdr. Tofflemire said.

The booms should stop a small boat travelling at up to 65 kilometres an hour, he said.

“The U.S. navy has them in place down in Norfolk and in San Diego,” Lt.-Cmdr. Tofflemire said.

The booms will be lit up at night and have several gates to allow ships in and out.

The navy is trying to ensure the barriers don’t “deter from the overall good appearance of Halifax Harbour,” Lt.-Cmdr. Tofflemire said.

But local tour operators fear the booms might block the view of warships, which can be “a highlight” for some visitors.

“We have a lot of people coming into Halifax old veterans and people who have been in the military that’s what they go on the cruise for,” said Peter Murphy of Murphy’s on the Waterfront.

“I just hope that it’s not so high that we can’t see through it or over it.”

The navy says the barriers won’t be any more than two metres high, though some have fences on top designed to catch small boats that go flying when they strike the booms.

“You can’t impede the visual, so if you’re on one side of the boom, you can actually physically look into the other side,” Lt.-Cmdr. Tofflemire said. “It’s not intended to block the vision or sightseers looking in. . . . It actually is going to provide a nice comfort zone for the people to understand that the navy itself is well-protected.”

New Jersey’s Whispr Wave is one of a handful of companies around the world that make the booms.

“It’s built out of modules; they’re 34-sided polygons,” Whispr president Dennis Smith said of the booms. He said it takes 136,000 kilograms of pressure to crush one of them.

Whispr’s floats are made of high-density polyethylene filled with marine-grade foam.

“You can actually shoot it and it’s not going to sink,” Mr. Smith said.

He doesn’t believe Haligonians or visitors will find the barriers ugly.

“We just installed one in San Francisco, which is the most environmentally sensitive place in the United States,” Mr. Smith said. “They sort of think it looks pretty good.”

The booms are “environmentally friendly,” he said.

“Most of the time you get fish underneath it; they live in the shadows,” said Mr. Smith, adding birds will also land on the barriers.

Mr. Murphy remembers fondly the days when civilian boats could sail right up to warships docked in Halifax.

“That was really great when we could steam right alongside them and people were just in amazement looking up at these ships. It’s unfortunate that we have to be that far off now,” he said. “I know they have to do this, but I often wonder if somebody really had a will, (whether) they’d find a way to do some damage.”

Full Story

Source: CBC News

The Canadian navy is poised to begin installation of a floating fence aimed at protecting its ships in Halifax and Esquimalt, B.C.

A floating fence would protect ships in Halifax harbour. For any large ship a continuing concern is the possibility of a small, fast boat loaded with explosives, heading in its direction. It’s the type of attack that damaged the USS Cole in Oct. 2000, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 others.

Now the navy wants to spend about $3.5 million for floating fences at each base, that could be two metres high.

“It’s for force protection, to protect the assets we have here from any potential threats,” said Lt.-Cmdr. Scott Tofflemire who monitors activity in the waters of Halifax harbour.

Full Story

Related Stories:

• Navy seeks designs for barrier
• Warships to get barriers
• Protecting the Protectors
• Navy to Spend $4.5 Million to Protect Ships in Port
• Navy tightens control around ships, dockyards

  Blog Tags: Antiterrorism, Counterterrorism, Force Protection, Homeland Security, Maritime Security, Port Security