Mines in Ports: A Serious Threat

The 9/11 attacks were coordinated; why not the simultaneous mining of several vital harbors?

Only a few mines would be needed in U.S. ports to bring shipping to an immediate standstill. It is difficult to venture even a guess at how many billions of dollars would be lost.

Nearly every time underway U.S. naval vessels have been seriously damaged during the past 30 years, the attacks have come from sea mines. The simple weapons that have operationally disabled our high-tech platforms remain widely available on global arms markets. Between 1988 and 1991, the Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58), Princeton (CG-59), and Tripoli (LPH-IO) were hit in the Arabian Gulf. Repair bills exceeded $121 million; the handful of mines that caused the damage may have cost all of $13,000.

Our adversaries recognize an affordable equalizer when they see one. Among notable manufacturers and exporters of mines are Russia, whose weapons have been widely copied; China; Britain; even the United States. NATO member Italy sold Iraq the mine that crippled the Princeton. North Korea has supplied both Iraq and Iran with knockoffs of Soviet mines. The 2006-07 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships notes that Iran has stocks of up to 3,000 mines, reported to include the Chinese EM52 Rising Mine.1

Surprisingly, even as unlikely a country as Chile has sold mines to Iraq. Chile's Cardoen Industries supplied Iraq with a clone of the British Stonefish mine, a weapon that the English had developed purely as an export weapon. There is, obviously, quite a bit of cross-pollination in this market.

Mines are frequently discussed in articles describing the multifaceted capabilities of the beleaguered littoral combat ship. In his 2004 Proceedings article "LCS Will Transform Mine Warfare," former commanding officer of Mine Warfare Command Admiral Paul Ryan says the global neighborhood into which this diminutive "street fighter" is expected to move contains more than 350,000 mines of all types.2 In August 2002, National Defense magazine reported that as of 1996, 48 navies were capable of laying mines, 31 nations manufactured them, and more than 20 exported them.3 These dated figures continue to be cited regularly in papers and articles introducing readers to the Navy's new forward-based strategies and innovative vessels.

Our Vulnerable East Coast Harbors

America's major East Coast ports-Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, and Savannah-were all founded on river estuaries in time when sailing ships were of comparatively shallow draft. In today's world, this means ports must be constantly dredged to maintain clear channels for large merchant vessels that often draw in excess of 35 feet. Of necessity, then, these navigable channels are relatively narrow and are chokepoints.

Militarily, mines have three missions: defensive, offensive, and psychological. As a resident of New York City, four of whose five boroughs are located on islands, I'm deeply concerned with the latter two missions. My city's fine outer harbor and its integral network of connecting waterways are ideal targets for mine warfare.

To the north, the Kill Van Kull waterway is 4.5 miles long and 500 yards wide, lying between northern Staten Island and New Jersey. This constricted, serpentine channel is navigated by at least 90 percent of the deep draft ships departing the huge container facilities at Port Newark and Port Elizabeth, the oil refineries of New Jersey, and Howland Hook container port on Staten Island.

The Upper Harbor and Hudson River are the gateway to the Port of Albany, a critical transfer hub. To the east, the East River passes between Brooklyn/Queens and Manhattan from the Upper Bay, eventually reaching the Long Island Sound and Atlantic Ocean.

Should any adversary be successful in mining, for example, the Kill Van Kull, the consequences could cripple our economy. A vessel-even a dredge-sunk in the channel would be a worst-case scenario, but the alternatives are not comfortably better. East Coast maritime traffic would stop until such time as the Navy could reliably declare the port cleared of mines. And how long would that take?

Imagine a Staten Island Ferry striking a mine during rush hour on a cold December morning. That would mean some 3,000 people in the water in the winter; loss of life could be double that of the Titanic.

Prognosis Poor

Harbor defense is a Coast Guard mission, and the service has done a magnificent job-to the extent that its assets allow. But the tools and expertise to address a mining scenario are not in the Coast Guard inventory. The minesweeping mission is a Navy operation, traditionally carried out in support of overseas campaigns. No recent foreign foe has conducted a mining effort within an American harbor, yet.

U.S. Navy minesweeping assets are diverse: helicopter sweepers and hunters, various remote vehicles and conventional surface vessels. While airborne and remote vehicle minesweeping platforms are more readily déployable in advance of rapidly developing overseas Fleet operations, surface vessels still maintain a vital role, as they did in the Persian Gulf.

But their size is limited because they must show influence mines a minimal signature (not disturb the mines). Even though small and somewhat slow, these vessels are technically very sophisticated. They would be well suited to local operations on U.S. shores.

Of the Navy's 14 Avenger (MCM-1)-class mine countermeasures ships, 8 are at Naval Station Ingleside, Texas, approximately 2,300 miles distant. In the event of an incident, those assets are 13 days away steaming at 12 knots.

Originally the Navy had 12 Osprey-class mine hunter coastal ships in its inventory. According to the Navy League's magazine Sea Power (2007 almanac), 8 of those have been or are slated to be transferred to foreign governments in short order, by either sale or grant (2 each to Egypt, Taiwan, Lithuania, and Turkey). The remaining 4 are decommissioned but still in U.S. custody. Even if they were reactivated, they are somewhat smaller and slower than the Avengers and would take longer to arrive (from Texas).4

The Navy has assured New York that in the event of a mining incident, helicopters and minesweepers could be airlifted to the city in matter of days, if not hours. This blithe confidence probably reflects the belief that a mining scenario on the East Coast, although possible, is not probable.5

This is a dangerous assumption. Should the worst happen, what would the Navy do as follow-on action? Citizens would be enraged; Congress would demand enhanced, and continual, port protection. Any acceptable solution would have to involve surface vessels.

Compounding this situation, Naval Station Ingleside is on the current Base Realignment and Closure list. Its vessels are slated to be transferred to San Diego. There, for all practical purposes, they will be completely out of the picture as far as potential services to the East Coast.

And what if the improbable not only happened, but happened in multiple ports simultaneously? What if this occurred when some of the U.S. airborne minesweeping assets were forward-deployed?

In a pinch, the first surface minesweeper to reach East Coast ports might arrive from Canada or Europe. A variation of the 1,000-ship navy would thus become reality.

The very capable Canadian Kingston-class minesweepers could fit the bill very well, unless they were responding to their own emergencies in Halifax or the Saint Lawrence Seaway. In that case the 1,000-ship navy would also work, with the United States coming to their aid.

But with what? In the event of a coordinated attack, minesweeping helicopters would be dealing with the panicked calls from port authorities up and down the East Coast. Their availability would be stretched. As for the littoral combat ships, the first four are scheduled to be assigned to the West Coast when-and if-they come on line.

Instead of waiting to address all this in a reactive manner, clearly we should be lining up our minesweeping assets now.

An Alternative Plan

I ask that the Navy consider assigning one or two MCMs or MHCs to the East Coast in a Navy Reserve status: there would be multiple benefits for all concerned. The most obvious is in the event of a worse-case scenario, vessels would be rapidly available to react. Additionally, MCMs or MHCs would be very visible statements of the Navy's commitment to our harbors: a sort of seagoing cop on the beat.

Manned by a nucleus crew that preferred being assigned to the Northeast, and by Reservists (who currently have no local training platforms), these ships could train Ready Reservists and be capable of activating on short notice. Navy crews could not help but become intimately acquainted with local waterways. As local residents defending home turf, they would approach their missions with even more passion.

Second, with reserve minesweepers on hand in CONUS, in the event that an enemy should choose to strike us at home, there would be less of a necessity to withdraw forward-deployed forces to respond to the emergency. The Navy would thus become an even more valuable and visible partner in the homeland defense team.

Toward that end, they could perform peacetime bottom surveys of our harbors. Norman Friedman describes these in the Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems, 2006, fifth ed. (p. 775). To protect harbors against mining, bottoms are surveyed along internal shipping routes (known as Q routes) in peacetime. The results of these recommended periodical surveys are stored electronically for future comparison, especially in times of heightened alert or hostility.

This would be a prudent course. Scott C. Truver, Director of General Dynamics' Center for Security Strategies and Operations, places a high priority on obtaining reliable data and currency to support MCM operations. At all times, he monitors areas that could potentially be mined. Among the conditions he would like to see in place are "detailed sonar bottom maps and surveys, at high precision and accuracy, to determine clutter and known NOMBO (nonmine/mine-like bottom object) contacts for change detection and possible conditioning before a crisis erupts." Truver notes that, unfortunately, it has been years since the Navy has conducted routine bottom surveys and mapping of Q routes.6

Bottom surveys via side-scan sonar are common tools of modern civilian marine transportation companies. Could these civilian operators be trained to augment as follow-on to Q sweeps? In times of heightened alert, such civilian experts could become emergency first responders.

Home-ported at a central location, MCMs or MHCs could be mutually supportive deterrents, training in the waterways of multiple ports, in view of all, and sending a clear message to terrorists. This would create an appreciably hardened target wherever they operated.

One of the primary tenets of port security is to deny the enemy a soft target. An MCM based at Newport, Rhode Island, for example, would be an important player not only in the Port of New York, but it could just as easily offer services to the submarine base at New London or the Port of Boston.

Mine warfare employs explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) personnel. The police departments of large northeastern cities have talented bomb squads and scuba units that could be cross-trained by the Navy to supplement Navy EOD.

Bring In the Coasties

If the Navy concludes that harbor defense does not fall within its mission, perhaps this is the appropriate time to consider transferring the remaining Osprey-class MHCs to the Coast Guard rather than to a Third World power. Train the Coasties in minesweeping, and these vessels will provide double service.

The recent Coast Guard Deepwater problems that resulted in a number of cutters being placed out of service left the service's force level a number of vessels short. The short-legged Ospreys could fit in both the local cutter and minesweeping roles, thereby bolstering the Coast Guard's force.

Despite the Ospreys' tendency to break down (due to Navy tinkering on their Isotta-Fraschini engines, many believe), they are still a bird in hand. If the Coast Guard agrees to develop mines weeping pods, as in the littoral combat ships and larger, new-construction vessels, the Ospreys can continue working in the meantime.

The advantages of assigning mine warfare vessels are limited only by our creativity. The downside of not having them could be economic chaos and physical danger. It is a matter of preference: would we rather react to a threat or a catastrophe?

Reality Check

Before 9/11, most believed that an airliner attack was unrealistic. But on that fateful day, United Flight 175 passed directly over my Staten Island home on its way to impact the south tower of the World Trade Center. The reality of that day was an airliner operated by a jihadist unqualified to land it, flying within 1,000 feet of my home and my 12-year-old daughter. Unrealistic numbers of my neighbors died that day, and others continue to suffer and die of various respiratory ailments caused from the dust and debris of that day.

When I enlisted in the Navy in 1963, I took an oath. Technically it expired when I retired in 1995. Spiritually it never will. "Never again" means more to me than I can explain here.