The watershed events of 9/11 led to the stark realization of gaps in maritime domain awareness (MDA) policy and capacity that are inextricably tied to the physical and economic security of the nation. As the government has struggled to close those gaps over the past decade, the threats and challenges have continued to evolve.
Ancient military strategist Sun Tzu once wrote: “What is called ‘foreknowledge’ cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations.”1 Notwithstanding his seemingly hopeless conclusion, warriors and statesmen pursue “foreknowledge” in the interest of national safety and security. The recent maritime history of the United States highlights this point.
The Titanic catastrophe of April 1912 spurred government action to locate and track icebergs for the protection of high-speed passenger steamships. Later in the 20th century, extraordinary efforts were made to detect and track Soviet submarines. The Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) was a sophisticated Cold War MDA initiative, albeit narrowly focused.2
In the 1970s, broad international recognition of Exclusive Economic Zones out to 200 nautical miles offshore defined an enormous water space for coastal states. In the years since the passage of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act in 1976, the United States has tried to increase compliance with laws and regulations designed to protect renewable resources by monitoring closed fishing areas with air and surface patrolling. Technological advancements enabled the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to field the Vessel Monitoring System, but its effectiveness has been limited because carriage of transponders by fishing vessels relies on each master’s compliance.
Since the 1970s, enormous effort has also gone into combating maritime drug-smuggling. As the illicit drug trade has become more lucrative and sophisticated, government responses have moved from simple patrolling to intelligence-driven deployment of interdiction assets and the use of force from aircraft to stop drug-smuggling go-fast boats. The effort to stem maritime smuggling has also driven the development of multiagency task forces and focused diplomatic efforts to conclude bilateral enforcement agreements unique to the circumstances of numerous Caribbean partner nations.
The Post-9/11 Response and Evolving Threats
The introduction to A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower from October 2007 states the following: “Proliferation of weapons technology and information has increased the capacity of nation-states and transnational actors to challenge maritime access, evade accountability for attacks, and manipulate public perception. Asymmetric use of technology will pose a range of threats to the United States and its partners.”3
The attacks of 9/11 brought about a realization that the nation faces a threat far more pernicious than icebergs, illicit fishermen, or drug smugglers—terrorists exploiting the internationally recognized concept of freedom of the seas. As a result, the need for MDA—already the subject of interagency discussion—acquired new urgency.
Immediately after the attacks and even before the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 (MTSA), the U.S. Coast Guard increased the requirement for commercial-vessel advance notice of arrival from 24 to 96 hours. The MTSA requirement that commercial vessels greater than 300 gross tons install Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) was one of the first significant government responses to a growing sense of maritime insecurity. Coincident with this development was the pursuit of layered security initiatives that required active maritime diplomacy.
The U.S.-led initiative to append an International Ship and Port Security (ISPS) Code to the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention reflected recognition that the security and economic viability of all port and coastal states were inescapably linked. From the U.S. perspective, the goal was early knowledge of vessels, cargo, and crews transiting to the United States.
As relatively aggressive and creative as the post-9/11 security efforts have been, significant debate about funding levels and adequate authorities persist, and the tactics of transnational criminals continue to evolve. Further, emerging environmental realities pose additional challenges, and post-9/11 security policies have created their own unintended side-effects. The following four areas of concern illustrate the diverse emerging MDA challenges.
High-Speed Migrant Smuggling
Maritime migrant smuggling has been on the rise over the past five years.4 During the same period, it has become increasingly clear to enforcers that they face ruthless international criminals with little regard for the lives of the smuggled.5 Increasingly, the smugglers use high-speed craft rather than more rustic, often homemade, so-called “chug chugs” symbolic of Cuban smuggling activity in the past.6
The graph above shows the percentage of Cubans interdicted from October 2006 through September 2008 who had been smuggled (as distinct from stowing away on a commercial vessel or traveling on their own boat or raft). The implication of this trend, given the relatively short distances traveled in the narrow Straits of Florida, is that the time to detect and intercept migrant smugglers has been reduced significantly.7 When one considers that those being smuggled by these means might in some cases be felons, violent criminals, or potentially even terrorists, the MDA challenge is clear.
Self-Propelled Semi-Submersible Drug Smuggling
Self-propelled semi-submersible vessels present another critical MDA challenge. The maritime counter-drug effort has long been a game of cat-and-mouse as drug-smuggler tactics have changed in response to enforcement operations and vice versa. Early on, smugglers succeeded with limited efforts to conceal large volumes of bulk marijuana. When cocaine profits grew in the late 1980s, smugglers used sophisticated concealment techniques to secret high-value cargoes in bilges, fuel tanks, and external attachments to the hull. By the latter of half of the 1990s, in response to ion scanning and invasive search techniques, traffickers turned to high-speed “eduardaño” go-fast vessels. These craft had difficult-to-detect low profiles, were on the water for relatively short times, and even if detected, could outrun surface assets in most conditions.
As early as the mid-1990s, maritime enforcement agencies were aware of some primitive submersible craft and of smuggler efforts to acquire the capacity to build submarines. The creativity of smugglers has continued in the post-9/11 era, and the interdiction over the past decade of numerous and increasingly sophisticated semi-submersible and more recently fully submersible craft points to a real and growing challenge in MDA.8 Estimates indicate that these craft can smuggle between 4 and 12 tons of cocaine, so it is a reasonable extrapolation to suggest that they could be used to smuggle weapons of mass destruction, transnational criminals, and other illicit materials.9 Though slow, they leave little wake and are therefore more difficult to detect from the air.
Changes in the Arctic Environment
Much attention has been given in recent months to the implications of a melting polar ice cap. Regardless of the cause of this geophysical phenomenon, the annual extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has declined dramatically over the past three decades. Predictions based on summer 2011 data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center suggest that the Arctic will be largely ice-free during summer months within 30 years.10
Environmental change in the Arctic has captivated politicians and pundits in Europe, Russia, Canada, and the United States over the past several years. More water in the Arctic translates into a host of MDA challenges. The Coast Guard is concerned about the need to provide a presence in U.S. Arctic waters to manage safety for maritime eco-tourists, increased flows of commercial traffic, and the potential for accidents and environmental damage and exploitation of renewable resources that will come with that traffic.
As an example, 400 German tourists arrived unexpectedly in Barrow, Alaska, one day in the summer of 2007, having made the Northwest Passage in a cruise ship. Local, state, tribal, and federal officials had no idea they were coming and would have been ill-prepared had the ship experienced any sort of emergency.11 In testimony at a field hearing in Anchorage on 12 August, Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr., the Commandant of the Coast Guard, spoke to the challenges at hand as the Arctic Ocean emerges as a more navigable and therefore exploitable maritime domain:
Going forward, as Arctic oil exploration starts, and advances towards production—we need to decide what Arctic pollution-response capability we want our Coast Guard and nation to have. While oil companies can assert that they have sufficient assets on scene to respond to a worst-case discharge scenario, prudence dictates that we also acquire an appropriate level of Arctic pollution-response capability. Presently we have none. 12
In such a challenging environment, awareness will be the important “first thing” behind any effective response.
The ‘Balloon Effects’ of Other Post-9/11 Policies
Unlike the MDA imperatives being driven by external forces, the result of environmental changes, or the actions of international lawbreakers, the final example is an MDA challenge arguably of our own making. The aggressive U.S. post-9/11 terrestrial border-control efforts have pushed a larger portion of undocumented migrant traffic offshore. The San Diego, California, and Brownsville, Texas, border areas are seeing markedly more cases of maritime transits.
A 2008 Associated Press article noted that “U.S. authorities in San Diego have found about 20 boats apparently used for immigrant smuggling” and reported that “U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hired 39 [new] agents to patrol U.S. waters last year, nearly all of them in San Diego and Brownsville, Texas.”13 While Brownsville has long faced the challenge of illegal “lancha” fishing off its coast, neither of these border areas has previously had to dedicate Coast Guard, CBP, and other federal, state, and local resources to these migrant routes; real-time surveillance is required to effectively counter threats across the relatively short distances involved.
During an 11 March 2009 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Marine Transportation of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the Director of the Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West, Florida, detailed surge operations in San Diego and Brownsville to deal with short-distance smuggling activities from Mexico.14 Border security depends on awareness and response capacity along the terrestrial border and in the maritime domain.
MDA: Defining It and Pursuing It
The National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness defines MDA as “the effective understanding of anything associated with the global maritime domain that could impact the United States’ security, safety, economy, or environment . . . [and describes it as] a key component of an active, layered maritime defense in depth.”15 The ambitious nature of the MDA goal is elaborated in the Navy’s articulation of the concept (below left).16
Discussing these ambitions in terms of the geographic layering of initiatives highlights both the comprehensiveness of the thinking behind the various strategies as well as the gaps that will persist if issues of authority, policy, and capacity are not resolved. Far from America’s shores, the Container Security Initiative provides the Department of Homeland Security policies to understand potential container threats before they ever leave the port of origin.
Concurrently, the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism engages the private sector to enhance capacity. The Proliferation Security Initiative is a multilateral and interagency effort to ensure prompt action in the face of the suspected illegal movement of weapons of mass destruction. A variety of pre-9/11 shipping-safety initiatives provide port and coastal states with a large amount of information about the safety records of large commercial ships; this information is shared globally with reasonable efficiency between regional port state control bodies.
Joint and interagency counterdrug efforts that predate 9/11 have developed new collaborations that develop intelligence for and direct resources to border security operations across a wider span. Since 9/11, the work of federal entities such as the Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West has been augmented closer to shore by federal/state/local collaborations in a number of America’s major ports today.17
At joint harbor operations centers (i.e., in Seattle, San Diego, and Charleston, South Carolina), watch standers from a variety of maritime-security and enforcement entities coordinate information-sharing and operational responses. In San Diego, the effort was expanded in 2008 beyond tactical coordination to joint strategy and planning efforts under an additional construct known as the Maritime Unified Command.18
Moving seaward from the efforts described here, improvements in domain awareness will depend in part on the efficacy of both the National Automatic Identification System (NAIS) and the international Long Range Identification and Tracking system, which have the potential to make the movement of large vessels at sea as transparent to coastal and port states as airliners are to the Federal Aviation Administration today.19
The grand question that persists is whether the United States is close to achieving the necessary mix of processes and products to do the collection, analysis, and dissemination needed to facilitate decisions. The examples below highlight several of the remaining challenges.
Lack of Adequate Authorities
Passage of the Drug Trafficking Vessel Interdiction Act of 2008 remedied an authority gap that prevented maritime law enforcement agencies from prosecuting the operators of a semi-submersible suspected of drug trafficking. With the new authority, if sufficient evidence of a smuggling operation (typically video footage) is presented, efforts to prosecute can proceed. This new authority is a positive development, but the fact that smugglers have now moved to the use of fully submersible vessels (submarines), means the persistent challenge of detection is highlighted again, and leaves the looming question in terms of authorities literally lying below the surface.
At present, only vessels of 300 gross tons or greater are required to use an AIS transponder along the U.S. coastline. True maritime domain awareness would include more knowledge about a wider range of vessels. This was the direction that Admiral Thad Allen, then-Coast Guard Commandant, was headed when he raised the possibility of a device requirement for smaller vessels in 2006—an idea that was met with a great deal of resistance from private boat owners.20
More recently, the Small Vessel Security Implementation Plan Report to the Public of January 2011, when elaborating on Goal 2 of the Small Vessel Security Strategy, states that an action that could be taken to accomplish the goal (enhanced security through a layered state-of-the-art approach) would be to “Publish new regulations mandating automatic identification system (AIS) carriage on commercial vessels 65 feet and longer; tugs of 26 feet and longer with over 600 horsepower; and certain passenger-carrying vessels.”21 This step would add new challenges in terms of data analysis, but would certainly increase what is known in the near maritime domain.
Airborne Surveillance Capacity
As mentioned previously, regimes established to identify, evaluate, and prosecute vessels of interest can only be brought to bear if such vessels are detected. Detection requires dedicated surveillance by land-based, airborne, and national asset sensors. While intelligence certainly plays a key role in focusing available resources, a shortage of platforms remains to respond to all available intelligence queuing as well as to randomly patrol for vessel movements not captured or correctly assessed by the intelligence community. In developing the requirements for its major asset recapitalization through the Deepwater Program, the Coast Guard established in 1998 a baseline for needed maritime patrol aircraft (manned or unmanned) hours to meet anticipated missions. As illustrated in the graph here, that baseline was revised significantly upward to more than 60,000 hours in 2004 as the result of a post-9/11 Mission Needs Statement. (The statement also identified other asset classes but only maritime patrol aircraft data are presented here because their mission profile predominantly aligned with MDA.)
NAIS Implementation, Coverage, and Funding
The NAIS is a vessel-tracking program designed to be implemented in three increments. The first increment, “accomplished in 2008, used existing infrastructures to provide AIS shore-based receive capabilities within 58 major ports and 16 critical coastal areas.”22 In 2008, it was reported that NAIS would be completed by 2014, that it was funded at roughly $8 million in the Coast Guard’s Fiscal Year 2008 and 2009 budgets, and that an estimated $88 million would be required to completely establish the system.23 The NAIS program was not funded in FY 10 or 11.
The U.S. Coast Guard 2011 Posture Statement with 2012 Budget in Brief indicates a proposed $5 million in the FY 12 budget for the program.24 The additional funding is required to complete the second and third increments of the project. Specifically, in Increment 2, “to leverage the Coast Guard’s Rescue 21 command-and-control infrastructure to provide shore-based AIS receive coverage out to 50 nautical miles (nm) and transmit capability out to 24 nm along the entire U.S. coastline,” and in Increment 3, to “expand AIS receive coverage from 50 nm to 2000 nm along the entire U.S. coastline via a combination of satellite and VHF services on offshore platforms and data buoys.”25 Funding levels for this program seem to indicate that other priorities have eclipsed the effort to complete Increments 2 and 3.
Agency Coordination and Political Challenges
Progress in interagency coordination is reflected in the architecture of the National Maritime Awareness Coordination Office and the National Maritime Intelligence Center. These efforts appear to be more effectively consolidated than they were three years ago and are consistent with stated objectives of comprehensive whole-of-government approaches to improving maritime domain awareness.
While these structures exist, the current situation is driven by two related factors—the chronological distance from the events of 9/11 and other issues that compete for the attention of policymakers in a very challenging economic environment. Those charged with achieving maritime domain awareness when there have not been any maritime terrorism events in U.S. waters, must work daily to overcome both of these challenges.
Recommendations
Although the imperative for and the progress and effectiveness of MDA efforts may be questioned by the media, think tanks, and political pundits, there can be no doubt that threats and vulnerabilities continue to evolve along our nation’s maritime border. Any realistic chance of achieving and maintaining MDA requires the steadfast pursuit of a strong and diverse array of capabilities and legislative authorities, efficiently executed across the interagency and in the international arenas. Domestic leaders must redouble efforts to sustain adequate focus on the threats that can only be countered through effective MDA.
The Coast Guard and its partner agencies should revalidate maritime patrol aircraft baseline assumptions and ensure those requirements are clearly communicated to policymakers. Agencies such as the Coast Guard require a significant increase in maritime patrol assets to respond to intelligence-queued events, as well as to conduct random patrols over established and emerging trafficking routes. This requirement needs to be well understood as a component of effective maritime domain awareness.
The administration and Congress should also work closely with the Coast Guard to evaluate the adequacy of the rate of implementation of NAIS and the expansion of the carriage requirement. In addition, the Coast Guard and its partners in the National Maritime Domain Awareness Coordination Office should continue to work toward the goals of the Small Vessel Security Strategy of 2007.
1. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, translated and with an Introduction by Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 145.
2. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, “Vents Program: Acoustic Monitoring”; www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/sosus.html.
3. A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, October 2007, Introduction.
4. See: www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/cg531/AMIO/FlowStats/currentstats.asp.
5. Toronto Star, 18 June 2008; www.thestar.com/news/world/article/445306.
6. Los Angeles Times, 21 May 2008; http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/21/nation/na-smuggle21.
7. Robert Watts, “Caribbean Maritime Migration: Challenges for the New Millenium,” Journal of Homeland Security Affairs, Supplement 2 (2008); www.hsaj.org/?special:fullarticle=supplement.2.6.
8. Amy McCullough, “Legislation Targets Drug Smuggling Subs,” Navy Times, 30 July 2008. Christopher Lagan, “Drug Subs 2.0,” Coast Guard Compass: Official Blog of the U.S. Coast Guard, 13 July 2010; http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2010/07/drug-subs-2-0/.“Drug Smuggling Submarine Seized in Colombia,” Huffington Post, 15 February 2011; www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/15/drug-submarine-seized-colombia_n_823445.html. “DEA Intel Aids In Seizure of Fully-Operational Narco Submarine In Ecuador” Drug Enforcement Agency Press Release, 3 July 2010; www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/pressrel/pr070310.html.
9. ADM James Stavridis, “Semi Submersibles: An Emerging Threat in the Americas,” Air and Space Power Journal, Second Trimester 2008; www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/apjinternational/apj-s/2008/2tri08/stavridiseng.htm.
10. John Vidal, “Arctic May Be Ice Free Within 30 Years,” The Guardian, 11 July 2011; www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/11/arctic-ice-free.
11. Alaska Daily News, 9 August 2008; www.adn.com/opinion/story/489139.html.
12. ADM Robert J. Papp Jr, “Keeping the Coast Guard Always Ready in Alaska” Field Hearing with Senator and Chairman Begich, Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation, Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, Anchorage, AK, 12 August, 2011; www.uscg.mil/seniorleadership/DOCS/2011-08-12;%20Field%20Hearing%20Oral%20Statement.pdf
13. Elliot Spagat, “Border Measures Pushing Migrants to Sea,” Associated Press, 13 March 2008.
14. Comments of RADM Joseph Nimmich, Director, Joint Interagency Task Force-South at hearing before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 11 March 2009; www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg48204/html/CHRG-111hhrg48204.htm.
15. National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness for the National Strategy for Maritime Security, Executive Summary, ii; www.virginia.edu/colp/pdf/NSMS-National-Plan-to-Achieve-Maritime-Domain-Awareness.pdf
16. Navy Maritime Domain Awareness Concept 2007; www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/Navy_Maritime_Domain_Awareness_Concept_FINAL_2007.pdf
17. Vincent Atkins, “Department of Homeland Security Air and Marine Operations and Investments” Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security, 19 April 2010; www.dhs.gov/ynews/testimony/testimony_1271690315007.shtm.
18. Susan Page Hocevar, “Inter-Organizational Innovations for Port Security,” 30 September 2010, Paper prepared for the Office of Naval Research; http://edocs.nps.edu/npspubs/scholarly/TR/2010/NPS-GSBPP-10-022.pdf
19. Kevin Keast, “Long-Range Identification and Tracking: Observing Maritime Activity Over The Horizon,” The Coast Guard Proceedings of the Maritime Safety and Security Council, Summer 2010, pp. 41-42; http://homeport.uscg.mil/cgi-bin/st/portal/uscg_docs/MyCG/Editorial/20101215/Proceedings%20Summer%2010.pdf?id=b45ef9fcffc37536fb403de99c8d03f1aae11248.
20. Breanne Wagner, “Coast Guard Procurement Programs Struggling, but Staying Afloat,” National Defense, January 2008; www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2008/January/CoastGuard.htm.
21. Department of Homeland Security, Small Vessel Security Implementation Plan Report to the Public, January 2011; www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/dhs-uscg-small-vessel-security-strategy-report-to-public-012011.pdf.
22. NAIS Fact Sheet; www.uscg.mil/acquisition/programs/pdf/nais.pdf.
23. Wagner, “Coast Guard Procurement Programs Struggling, but Staying Afloat.”
24. U.S. Coast Guard 2011 Posture Statement with 2012 Budget in Brief, February 2012, p. 48; www.uscg.mil/posturestatement/docs/USCG_2011_USCG_Posture_Statement.pdf.
25. NAIS Fact Sheet.
Commander Vorbach was Department of Homeland Security Chair at the School for National Security Executive Education, National Defense University in 2007–08. He is principal of Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Virginia.