Unconventional attack from the sea?

To counter terrorists, you need to think like one. That will be the case to thwart terrorists who want to match, if not exceed, the devastating September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

September 11 came from the sky in a somewhat unconventional way. Terrorists turned fully-fueled airplanes with passengers into cruise missiles, crashing them into the symbols of U.S. economic and military strength: the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In their desire to at least match the destructive effect of those attacks, terrorists will look for another “creative,” unconventional approach.

This time, it could come from the sea.

In recent months, the issue of port security reached fever pitch over the prospect that a government-owned company of the United Arab Emirates was to manage a number of U.S. ports.

Ports oversee the annual movement of some 6 million containers, of which the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Agency inspects perhaps 3-5 percent. Indeed, CBP has little counterterrorism intelligence to support its efforts.

In all, an estimated 7,500 foreign-flag vessels make some 51,000 U.S. port calls each year.

Yet, an attack from the sea may not necessarily come from a container offloaded from a ship.

Instead, merchant ships under terrorist control could be fashioned into floating nuclear bombs. It wouldn’t take many such vessels and terrorists with state-sponsor support are assessed to have such a capability.

These terrorist ships, however, would not have to enter into a U.S. port. They only would need to come near one, thereby bypassing the much-ballyhooed “National Maritime Security Strategy” of container security.

It also would make useless Customs’ Container Security Initiative program at selected foreign ports. That said, authorities still would need to expend the resources to insure against the use of containers to smuggle contraband or weapons of mass destruction.

Freighters loaded with a nuclear device could approach a significant port, such as New York City, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Houston or Seattle.

In addition, nuclear bomb-laden ships could sail up the Welland Canal with its multiple locks near Niagara or enter into the Delaware-Chesapeake Bay region. Both strategic locations provide access to major U.S. inland shipping and product distribution networks.

An Hiroshima-type bomb with an equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT could take out a city and most people in it. The heat from the blast will evaporate most structures near the explosion and create radiation that will affect the lives of many more people.

More than 75 percent of the nation’s population resides on or near U.S. coasts.

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