The following series is from a publication by Scott V. Truver entitled MINES AND UNDERWATER IEDS IN U.S. PORTS AND WATERWAYS.

MINES AND UNDERWATER IEDS IN U.S. PORTS
AND WATERWAYS
Context, Threats, Challenges, and Solutions
Scott C. Truver
Abroad spectrum of nontraditional and asymmetric threats challenges U.S.
maritime homeland security.1 The smuggling of drugs, arms, and people;
vesselborne improvised explosive devices, like that used by terrorists against the
guided-missile destroyer USS Cole in October 2002; proliferation of chemical,
biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-explosive weapons of mass destruction
and disruption; piracy and organized crime; overexploitation of marine resources
and the destruction of marine habitats; environmental attacks and trade
disruption; political and religious extremism; mass migration flows; global
health threats (e.g., the spread of infectious diseases like SARS and avian flu)—
all these and more pose far-reaching dangers for American security interests at
home and abroad. Under the cloak of legal activity, groups that would do us
harm can enter the U.S. homeland anywhere along more than ninety-five thousand
miles of coastlines and through some 360 ports from Maine to Guam.
“The challenge is enduring,” Admiral Thad W. Allen, Commandant, U.S.
Coast Guard,wrote in his foreword to the Coast Guard’s 2007 maritime security
strategy.2 “The threats of the ColdWar are gone, and we again find ourselves operating
in an environment where piracy, illegal migration,
drug smuggling, terrorism, arms proliferation
and environmental crimes are carried out by anonymous,
loosely affiliated perpetrators.”
Naval mines and underwater improvised explosive
devices (UWIEDs, or minelike “booby traps”) are among
these threats to U.S. maritime interests.3 A true
“sleeper threat,”mines and UWIEDs canwith great effect
attack the good order of American ports and
Dr. Truver is executive adviser, national security
programs, Gryphon Technologies LC. He was the principal
author of the U.S. Navy’s 1992 Mine Warfare
Plan and supported the development of subsequent
plans. He has written extensively on mines and mine
countermeasures, coauthoring the second edition of the
U.S. Naval Institute’s Weapons That Wait: Mine
Warfare in the U.S. Navy. Dr. Truver is a member of
the editorial board of this journal.
Naval War College Review, Winter 2008, Vol. 61, No. 1
waterways. They are the quintessential asymmetric naval weapons, used for
more than two centuries by weak naval powers against the strong, regardless of
whether they were “unworthy of a chivalrous nation,” as Rear Admiral David G.
Farragut, of “Damn the torpedoes!” fame, declared.4 If left unaddressed, they
could constitute an Achilles’ heel for U.S. homeland security.
Until very recently, naval mines and UWIEDs, if included in domestic maritime
threat assessments at all, have usually been relegated to the status of a
“lesser included” problem.5 If we can deal, it is argued, with what planners believe
are the more likely maritime threats, especially vesselborne devices, we can
certainly handle mines and underwater IEDs. But the history of naval and terrorist
mining since 1945 challenges this assumption, and the stakes are high if it
turns out to be wrong. Indeed, the assessments and planning that have focused
on the M/UWIED threat underscore critical weaknesses in how federal, regional,
state, and local actors charged with ensuring America’s maritime security,
as well as private entities whose assets are at risk,must respond to weapons
that can easily be deployed in U.S. ports and waterways.
THE NATURE OF THE M/UWIED THREAT
In the American experience, the first use of UWIEDs came in September 1776,
when the patriot (or, in English eyes, terrorist) David Bushnell attempted to fix a
limpet mine on Lord Howe’s flagship HMS Eagle in the Hudson River.6
Bushnell’s attack was frustrated by bad luck and the “passive protection” of the
ship’s iron fittings. Fifteen months later, Bushnell used floating kegs of gunpowder
fitted with contact-firing mechanisms against the British fleet above
Philadelphia; four British sailors died trying to retrieve the kegs from the Delaware
River—an early example of explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) against an
unknown threat—but the fleet was unscathed.7
More than two centuries on, terrorists can use or threaten to use mines and
UWIEDs for a variety of political, economic, or military ends, often with psychological
effects foremost in mind. While small devices might have no more
than nuisance value, as a way to exacerbate anxieties (Boston’s reaction to “guerrilla
marketing” in early 2007 comes to mind), larger mines can be placed surreptitiously
in channels and harbors to achieve spectacular effects—against, for
example, the Staten Island Ferry, crammed with 2,500 commuters during an
evening rush hour, or a cruise ship with four thousand vacationers and crew on
board leavingMiami or Seattle.8 The tragedy of hundreds of bodies floating in a
port would intensify the psychological message about the true security of America’s
home waters.
Mines can directly attack the nation’s waterborne trade.More than 90 percent
of American exports and imports by volume transitsU.S. ports, and the efficient
TRUVER 107
and safe movement of our foreign, coastal, and inland-waters trades is critical
for America’s globalized, just-in-time, and just-enough economy. The economic
consequences of just a few mines in our ports could be catastrophic, as the
two-weekWest Coast labor slowdown in the fall of 2002 implies—a $1.95 billion
impact per day. According to a University of California at Berkeley analysis, the
direct and indirect economic impacts of a twenty-day longshoremen’s work action
would cost the U.S. economymore than $50 billion (in 2002 dollars).9 Even
if no ships were sunk or damaged and no channels were blocked, explosions in a
few key ports on East,Gulf, andWest coasts and in the Saint Lawrence Seaway—
clearly not an impossible feat, as September 11th tragically proved—would have
a chilling effect on commercial shipping in terms of increased insurance costs
and vessel lay days. The economic tremors would reverberate throughout the
nation and to trading partners overseas.
There could be serious military impacts, as well.Mines in critical waterways
could slow the movement of military cargoes in crisis and conflict. During
WorldWar II, the port of Charleston, South Carolina, was closed for sixteen days
by mines from German submarines. In all, U-boats managed to lay 327 mines
fromHalifax,Nova Scotia, to theMississippi Delta, closing several ports for a total
of forty days and sinking or damaging eleven ships. Today,while mines might
not be “showstoppers,” they would certainly be “speed bumps”; just a few weapons
in the approaches to the port of Savannah, Georgia; theHouston Ship Channel;
and one or two other waterways could hamper the military sealift that
undergirds war plans.10
Mines and underwater IEDs are easy to acquire or build, and they are cheap,
ranging from a few tens of dollars to thirty thousand dollars for the most advanced,
multiple-influence weapons.11 But their low cost belies their potential
for harm. They can be deployed by submarines, surface warships, small craft,
commercial vessels, dhows, fishing vessels, pleasure boats, fixed-wing aircraft,
and helicopters. They are designed for operations from the surf zone (less than
ten-foot water depth) to deep water (greater than two hundred feet). Their payloads
can range froma few pounds to several tons of high explosive, and they can
have a variety of firing mechanisms: remote control and command; contact; and
magnetic, acoustic, seismic, pressure, or combinations of some or all such “influence”
signatures of ships.
Mines can be buoyant and suspended in the water column, close tethered to
the bottom, resting on the bottom, or even buried under sediments to confound
minehunting and sweeping. Some mines are mobile, capable of being launched
from submarines thousands of yards from intended minefields, while others
have torpedo or rocket-propelled warheads that dramatically expand potential
damage zones against submarine and surface targets. Limpet mines are designed
108 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW
to be placed directly on targets by combat swimmers or, perhaps even today, unmanned
undersea vehicles (UUVs). Old mines can be refitted with modern,
highly sophisticated components, and any mine can be equipped with countercountermeasure
features to frustrate EOD, sweeping, and hunting. They can be
fabricated fromfiberglass and plastic, making themextremely difficult to detect,
identify, or counter—once in the water.
More than that, mines are a broad-spectrum, global threat. According to
Navy data,more than a quarter-million naval mines of more than three hundred
types are in the inventories of more than fifty navies, not counting American
weapons.More than thirty countries produce, and more than twenty countries
export, mines. Even highly sophisticated weapons are available on the black
market, usually on a cash-and-carry basis. Worse, these Navy figures are for
mines proper; they do not include UWIEDs, which can be fabricated easily and
cheaply, as an Iraqi “bicycle”-type, floating, anti-small-boat mine encountered
during Operation DESERT SHIELD proved. As then–Chief of Naval Operations
(CNO) Admiral C. A. H. Trost, USN, remarked in July 1989, at the height of the
Persian Gulf “Tanker War” mine strikes:
Very little sophistication is required to manufacture and deploy mines. Any nation
with either money to buy mines on the open market, or the capability to forge metal
and make explosives, can become an active participant in mine warfare. Minefields
can be seeded by anything that flies or floats. And again, crude but effective mines are
cheap, easy to stockpile, and easily concealed in holds of ships and fishing boats.12
THE POST–WORLD WAR II MINE EXPERIENCE