Countering Terror Piracy from the Air

Piracy can no longer be dismissed as just the stuff of movies. Its growing impact on the world economy and the likelihood that terrorists will use piracy to achieve their objectives demand a forceful response. The Aerial Common Sensor (ACS), being developed by the Army and now also the Navy, could be part of the answer with its capability to find, fix, track, and target pirates wherever they hide and, in so doing, strike a crucial blow in the war on terror.

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Tony Tan, speaking at the Conference on Maritime Security after the 11 September 2001 terrorists' attacks on the United States, said, "Piracy is entering a new phase; recent attacks have been conducted with almost military precision. The perpetrators are well-trained, have well laid out plans, and have sophisticated weapons." Dr. Tan went on to warn that, as nations improve defenses of their air and ground assets, "the threat of terrorism is likely to shift to maritime targets, particularly commercial shipping. . . . We know now that Al-Qaeda and regional terrorist groups had made plans to strike maritime targets across the region." What would terrorists gain by taking up piracy? The Deputy Prime Minister explained, ". . . Any disruption to the safety and security of navigation in these waters . . . would have severe implications for trading nations all , around the world."¹

International Maritime Bureau (IMB) figures show that in the decade after 1993, incidents of piracy increased threefold, with an accompanying upswing in violence. In 2003, reported incidents rose from the previous year's 370 to 445. Attacks in just the first half of last year resulted in 16 deaths, 15 injuries, 20 missing crewmembers, and 193 hostages being taken. In the Strait of Malacca (through which passes more than a quarter of the world's trade and half of its oil),² pirates now use captured tugboats to approach unsuspecting ships, while automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades are replacing knives. Demonstrating that terror-piracy is a threat not only in Asia, on 6 October 2002 a bomb-laden boat rammed the French supertanker Limburg in the Gulf of Aden, spilling 90,000 barrels of oil and killing one crewmember.³

Seafaring nations are responding. International conferences and companies offering ship-tracking and defense systems seek to diminish the threat, while navies are conducting joint patrols to keep sea lanes clear. Singapore and Indonesia began stepping up cooperation in response to piracy in 1999.⁴ Even long-time antagonists India and China discussed joint anti-piracy exercises in the Malacca Strait patterned on those conducted by the United States and Indonesia.⁵

While joint patrols and tracking devices may help combat terror-piracy, airborne technology offers greater potential in defeating the terror-piracy threat. The Navy has joined the Army's Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) program to replace the EP-3E signals intelligence aircraft. The ACS aircraft will be smaller and carry a crew of only four to six, but a bulge under the forward fuselage will give it capabilities the EP-3E never had. Among these are groundmoving target indication, synthetic aperture radar, and hyper-spectral sensing.⁶

If the bulge sounds familiar, it is because it is similar to that found on the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft. JSTARS recently made a name for itself in Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom by "providing coalition ground commanders with a real-time picture of moving targets on the battlefield and shortening the time it takes to engage and destroy enemy forces."⁷

JSTARS's ground-looking synthetic aperture radar has a 120° field of view covering 19,305 square miles. Operators on board the Boeing 707-300 aircraft can detect moving vehicles to range of 150 miles, and in certain situations, JSTARS can detect helicopters, rotating antennas, and low, slow-moving fixed wing aircraft. Even if the ACS functions on a smaller scale, this long-range vision will pay big dividends to commanders on the ground or at sea.

As with JSTARS, ACS's long-range view will be complemented by a powerful communications suite to keep it in contact with ground commanders, strike aircraft, and other intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms. This proved very effective during Iraqi Freedom when JSTARS crewmembers discovered Iraqi armor moving in a sandstorm. They passed the information to friendly ground units, which destroyed the Iraqi force.

Commander, Joint Forces Command, Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., in 2 October 2003 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, reported that JSTARS "vastly improved our forces' knowledge of enemy dispositions before and during operations." Knowledge of enemy dispositions could be the turning point in the battle against pirates. The ACS could locate pirates hiding in countless inlets along hundreds of miles of coastline, possibly in all types of weather. Combining surface-looking and signals intelligence capabilities could enable intelligence analysts to correlate radar emissions and radio traffic with suspicious activities viewed by the radar. A variable-speed ground-moving target indication history playback function would facilitate identification of marshalling areas, refueling locations, and bases.

The Aerial Common Sensor, under development by Lockheed Martin for the Navy and the Army, will give a JSTARS-like capability to commanders on the ground or at sea.