It was just before midnight on a June evening in the north Arabian Gulf when I entered the combat information center of the USS Cushing (DD-985). As I expected, the night was getting busy. The Cushing's commanding officer already was in the space. He was not in the tactical chain of command for any boardings that night, but he had a direct interest in the surveillance effort. The helicopter reporting the movement of the dhows and transmitting an infrared television picture to us was one of the destroyer's Seahawks, and it was doing a good job. We saw very clearly that the dhows were moving as a group and that they were laden—and thus illegal. The only cargo carriers allowed out of Iraq under the United Nations' regime of sanctions are the supertankers that work under the "oil for food" program.
Since U.N. sanctions were first enforced after the invasion of Kuwait, the multinational Maritime Interception Force (MIF) has worked to ensure Iraq has complied with Security Council resolutions. This has been a protracted and complex campaign, waged along the length of the Arabian Gulf and outside it as well. Many countries have been involved, with a constant U.S. Navy presence supported most often by Britain, Canada, Australia, and Kuwait. The work has been hard and unremitting, with one of the highest priorities being to stop the illegal trade in oil.
Private business interests purchase oil at cut rates from the Iraqi government and then attempt to get that oil to markets elsewhere in the region where they can sell it at a vast profit. The real target of the MIF is the flow of easy money to the Iraqi government, but the only way to stop it is to make it less than worthwhile for the business interests involved to buy the oil in the first place.
The efforts of the MIF over the previous 12 months had hit the oil smugglers hard. MIF units pursued an aggressive campaign of noncompliant boardings up and down the Gulf—with some smugglers being caught after chases lasting more than a month. The Iranian Navy played a role on occasion, ejecting smugglers from Iranian territorial waters. This balanced the tendency of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to allow the smugglers passage inside territorial waters after the payment of protection money.
The smugglers have not made it easy for the MIF. Their ships have been fitted with increasingly sophisticated passive defenses, including steel plates over bridge doors and windows, barring access to engine rooms and internal spaces, and even greasing decks and handrails. The MIF boarding teams have developed their own countermeasures and have become adept at forcing entry and taking control.
It is becoming just too risky for the illegal oil carriers to attempt the trip. In the first half of this year, many smugglers gave up and emerged empty from Iraqi waters. Our assessment was that any oil still getting out by sea in the Arabian Gulf was moving in dhows, and we focused our attention on them. It is a measure of the MIF's success that we could concentrate on such small fries. Nevertheless, it was important that this traffic be stopped. These dhows, are not the traditional sailing craft of the region, but wooden-hulled motorized vessels up to 160 feet in length that can carry up to 500 tons of cargo. They are fast; some can sustain 12 knots. That means boarding teams have to work quickly to be sure of catching the entire group.
My command team plotted by hand the positions of the dhows as they emerged from the Khor Abd Allah (otherwise known as the KAA), the estuary that opens out from the principal Iraqi oil ports. Despite all the electronic systems that technology and much hard work have made available for the maritime environment, manual plotting still provided the most reliable service for this operation—with the territorial waters of Iraq, Iran, and Kuwait to consider. The battle space was measured in just a few miles and the time available was minutes rather than hours. We could not afford mistakes.
The team was a mixture of my original staff and a new group recently arrived from Australia. My operations officer was an original—he did not manage much sleep over four months but his sense of humor survived wonderfully well. As I stepped across to the chart table, he was looking at the dispositions and talking through the plan for the night with the watch staff and his successor.
The USS John S. McCain's (DDG-56) boats already were in the water and positioned to intercept the dhows when the time was right. Her boarding party was made up of a U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement detachment. Having visited her only a few days before, I was aware of how well integrated the team was with the ship's company. The John S. McCain's captain was a great enthusiast for the MIF's forward presence, and it was a pleasure watching the deep-draft destroyer maneuvering to make her watch on the KAA as close and effective as possible.
"Canberra wants to put her boats in the water," reported a young U.S. Navy sailor who had been monitoring Navy Red. (After much persuasion, we had the U.S. personnel pronouncing Canberra with the accent on the first syllable, not the second. The USS Decatur (DDG-73) gave the Australians almost as much trouble when she was in the Gulf.) My operations officer looked at me over the chart table and we silently agreed that getting HMAS Canberra's [one of our Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided-missile frigates] teams out was a good move. There were too many dhows in the group to be sure of catching them all if we had only the teams from one ship up front. The Canberra's proposal was approved and her boats allocated a "pouncer" position, which kept them from getting mixed up with the John S. McCain's boats. We used the helicopter to help ensure that the boardings were coordinated and that none of the dhows were missed.
HMS Portland, patrolling to the east, was watching and ready to act as a backstop. Her very efficient Royal Marines had a couple of well-executed noncompliant boardings under their belts and were keen to do more. Their latest effort had taken down one of the more notorious smuggling tankers, achieving complete surprise on a crew that thought it had made a successful escape from the KAA. The Delo, as she was known then (smuggler ships change names almost weekly), sat in the "Comiskey" anchorage (the supervised anchorage for both legal and apprehended merchant vessels) awaiting her fate.
I missed my normal flagship, the amphibious vessel HMAS Manoora, which had left for Australia in the previous 24 hours. The former USS Fairfax County (LST-1193), the Manoora's range of capabilities made her an ideal platform for MIF work. She has extensive command-and-control spaces, suitable for a major amphibious operation, as well as excellent strategic communications. Her shallow draft allowed her to operate nearly continuously close to the approaches of the KAA. The Manoora can operate multiple helicopters and boarding parties, and her deck space, extensive bunkage, and 70-ton crane made her an excellent base for SEALs. I developed a considerable regard for U.S. Navy special warfare teams, as well as for the Polish "GROM" (or "Thunderbolt") special forces team that worked with the SEALs from ashore. The SEALs had been out on patrol the previous night and turned back several dhows.
The Manoora also had the first installation in an allied ship of the U.S. Navy's secret internet protocol router network (SIPRNet). Installed in a U.S. manned compartment, it allowed me the necessary degree of connectivity with my U.S. Navy superiors and with the U.S. ships under my command. I could not have operated as MIF commander without it, so reliant have command-and-control processes become on SIPRNet e-mail and chat (particularly the latter). It is connectivity of this sort that makes alliance and coalition operations really work. The permanent U.S. presence on board the Manoora also had other effects. Vegemite remained Australian only, but I noticed an increasing incidence of beef jerky around the ship.
Over the next few hours, the John S. McCain's boats, the Coast Guard law enforcement detachment, and the Canberra's teams successively boarded and turned back the dhows. Most had a couple of hundred tons of oil; the ones that did not had dates. (Ironically, dates can be a more valuable cargo than oil—Iraqi dates are a delicacy and much in demand.) Some of the dhows took a lot of persuading and had to be shepherded back into the KAA. We knew they would try to get out another night, but the longer we prevented them moving the less successful their smuggling efforts would be.
I got to bed about 0245, knowing the surveillance of the KAA would continue and another day's work would begin at dawn. The night watch checked the plans for the day and ensured the right briefing information moved up the chain to Commander, Task Force 50, and Commander, Fifth Fleet. We became adjusted to "PowerPoint Warfare," and I now understand the full implications of the "1,000 hours of PowerPoint" shoulder patch worn by the executive officer of the Cushing.
The day emphasized the other work we did besides intercepting would-be smugglers. As the sanctions were revised to allow controlled trade with Iraq, the amount of legal shipping grew enormously. All of it had to be checked—hold by hold and container by container, coming in and going out. The latter was relatively straightforward (or should have been) because nothing but approved oil is allowed as export. But empty cargo spaces sometimes disguised concealed oil stowages. The "986" boardings, named after the relevant U.N. Security Council resolution, found increasing amounts of oil over the previous year as the watch on the KAA tightened and oil prices increased. We nicknamed these "boutique" smugglers, since relatively small amounts of oil are involved. Still, at US$150 a ton, even a few hundred barrels could mean a nice cash sweetener for an owner and crew.
The MIF had conducted 900 boardings by the midpoint of this year, compared with 1,200 in all of 2001. This can be grueling work, particularly in the 110 deg temperatures of midsummer. Climbing on and checking hundreds of containers stacked three high calls for stamina and constant concentration on safety. The Cushing met the problem by creating a third boarding team to help spread the burden. Four or five ships came through Comiskey every day, and usually at least one was a container vessel.
One MIF unit was designated as "Comiskey guardship." This ship had primary responsibility for the 986 boardings, as well as for monitoring the condition of the smuggler vessels that had been apprehended and were awaiting disposition. In 2001 there were sometimes up to 20 vessels in this situation, but the average by summer 2002 was only 3 or 4—evidence the smuggling flow was diminishing.
Normally, the Comiskey guardship is a U.S. Navy unit, but HMAS Newcastle fulfilled the role as her last major activity before she headed home to Australia. The Newcastle's crew had a dozen noncompliant boardings to their credit, but they knew this work was just as important. After first light, the boats were in the water to begin boarding the merchant ships waiting patiently in the anchorage. It was a long day for the Newcastle's teams, and if any additional merchant vessels had been directed to Comiskey for examination, we would have had to send a patrolling unit to assist—probably the Cushing, Maintaining the watch on the KAA was my highest priority, but the MIF did all it could to speed the legal merchant ships on their way.
My staff rapidly became expert on merchant shipping and oil tanker construction. The smugglers have all sorts of ways of hiding oil and understating their load even after they have been apprehended. It became a game of cat and mouse as we tried to ensure every ton of oil was located. Much time was spent liaising with the expert U.S. Navy and Coast Guard personnel based in Bahrain to compare notes and calculations. Much depended on the alertness and professionalism of the boarding parties in conducting their searches.
I had been in the job for most of the previous four months and it was almost time to go home—my successor was in theater and readying himself for the job. It was a wonderful privilege to command the maritime interception operations. My predecessor and I believe we were the first foreign officers to exercise command from a U.S. Navy ship in a real-world operational environment since the Korean War. Even if we are mistaken, it still was an honor.
The Cushing was the fourth U.S. Navy ship from which I commanded the operations. It was an enjoyable experience seeing something of the U.S. Navy from much deeper inside than most foreigners are allowed. Each ship was impressive in different ways: the Elliot (DD-967) probably had the best helicopter detachment I ever have seen in more than 20 years of operating in helicopter-equipped destroyers and frigates; the "go-Better" cruiser Hue City (CG-66) ruled Comiskey with a rod of iron during her time on station; and the Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class destroyer Hopper (DDG-70) was "Amazing Grace." The Cushing made us just as welcome. I have warm memories of other ships as well, such as the Lake Champlain (CG-57), which probably broke records in her length of service as Comiskey guardship but never lost the edge, and The Sullivans (DDG-68), which arrived on station after a 30-knot passage and for whom nothing ever was too much trouble.
One of the benefits of operating for extended periods in a relatively small area is that the ships were able to operate extensive personnel exchange programs. The hospitality was overwhelming and international baseball caps, badges, and crests now are displayed proudly in every wardroom and mess deck. I think everyone gained something from working so closely with sailors from other navies. We were deeply impressed by the morale and élan of the crews of the U.S. Navy ships and their ability to "keep on keeping on" at their assigned tasks. I know they were equally impressed by the "can do" attitude of the Australian units. We have much to learn from each other, and formal looks at other navies, particularly at their internal structures and manning, need to be part of any service's future thinking. No one navy has all the answers.
Six decades of alliance and close interaction with the U.S. Navy has born fruit in the way we can operate together so easily today. This year is the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. Throughout the Pacific campaign, and in Korea, Vietnam, and the Arabian Gulf, the Royal Australian Navy and the U.S. Navy have operated together alongside other allied navies. And we will continue to do so. As Sir Francis Drake wrote more than 400 years ago, "There must be a beginning of any great matter, but it is the continuing on of the same until it be thoroughly finished which yieldeth the true glory."
Commodore Goldrick commanded the Royal Australian Navy task group deployed to the Arabian Gulf in the first half of 2002 and the MIF from March to June. He currently is Director of Military Strategy at Australian Defence Headquarters, and is a frequent contributor to Proceedings.