To make the seas safer, 11 countries participated in a technology-driven exercise coordinated from Key West to test joint response to terrorism, drug smuggling and piracy.
KEY WEST -- C. Clark Miami Herald
In 2002, a French oil tanker was blown up by terrorists in the waters off Yemen, killing a crew member and sending 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
Sanaa, October 6: A boat packed with explosives rammed and badly holed a French supertanker off Yemen on Sunday, a week before the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on the US warship Cole, the French embassy said.
Twelve of the 25 crew had been "recovered" and hospitalised with injuries, but the others remained unaccounted for. Sixteen of the crew were Bulgarian.
"The oil tanker was rammed by a small boat stuffed with explosives," as it came by an off-shore terminal in the Arabian Sea, vice consul Marcel Goncalves said.
"It seems to be an attack in the same style as the US Cole," he said of the destroyer blown up by suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Aden harbour almost exactly two years ago on October, 12, 2000.
The only reason a similar incident hasn't happened in U.S. coastal waters is ''luck,'' U.S. Navy Reserve Capt. Andy Bjork says.
Bjork was in Key West recently to lead an 11-country maritime exercise whose mission is to make the world's seas and ports safer through international cooperation.
''We need to be proactive to prevent a 9/11 on our seas,'' Bjork said.
A big step toward that: Compiling a global picture of the location of all commercial vessels at any instant, which is already being done with the world's aircraft.
''Whatever could happen on an airline could happen in commercial shipping,'' Bjork said. ``A biological weapon tucked away on a container ship or the disruption of the shipping lanes or a strategic port could be devastating.''
But getting that big picture is much more difficult for ships. Radar can track aircraft for hundreds of miles, but radar can only follow ships for 20 to 30 miles because of waves and the Earth's curvature.
Bjork said a lot of progress was made during the 12-day annual exercise called TransOceanic XXII, which rotates among the participating countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, Uruguay, Venezuela and the United States.
Last week, officials from the participating countries ended a weeklong analysis of the exercise in Norfolk, Va., by voting Mexico as its 11th full-time member. Mexico was an observer this year.
FIRST STEP
''This is the first of many steps we are taking to put in place a maritime awareness program,'' Mexico Navy Capt. Jorge Ballado said in an e-mail. ``We are excited to join.''
During the Key West-coordinated exercise, more than 200 military personnel tested their joint response to scenarios of terrorist attacks, drug smuggling and piracy.
''It's not like we had SEAL teams in a couple of small boats run up a beach with M16s,'' Bjork said. The exercise's weapons: computers, communication systems and cooperation.
''This is the most exciting part,'' Bjork said as he pointed to a laptop with a screen that displayed a map of the east coast of the Americas and a slew of symbols representing real-time positions of commercial and military vessels.
''We've never had such a complete picture of the maritime domain before,'' Bjork said. ``It may seem simple, but it's a huge, huge effort.''
Bjork said it took the terrorist attacks on 9/11 for the United States to understand the need for tougher airport and airspace security.
It took another couple of years for countries to see the same need for tougher port and ocean security nationally and internationally.
''Building proactive solutions for future threats is always tough to communicate,'' Bjork said.
The exercise was coordinated at the Joint Interagency Task Force at Key West's Truman Annex. ''Everything we are doing is absolutely unclassified. Sharing information is critical,'' Bjork said. ``Before, data wasn't shared. Either people didn't think it was important or for proprietary reasons.''
Jose Sepulveda, a captain in the Chilean navy, said: ``The cooperation is on the increase. And the only barrier so far is time enough to get together and share experiences, establish points of contacts and maintain a permanent flow of information.''
The emphasis is on tracking the tens of thousands of commercial ships: container freighters, liquid gas tankers, fishing vessels and cruise ships. Bjork said it would be nearly impossible, with current technology, to track all recreational vessels.
U.S. Navy Reserve Cmdr. Joaquin Martinez, a Miami native and director of operations for the TransOceanic exercise, said much of the data on commercial ships' locations is garnered from public information.
''Lloyd's List has an incredible database, where everything insured is tracked,'' Martinez said. ``Evergreen Shipping Line has a very active system.''
COMMON SYSTEM
Bjork said no country's navy can keep track of the world's ships alone. But each country can provide its piece of the puzzle, now being put together using a common computer system.
''We have a number of limited resources that we can apply to the bad guys,'' Martinez said. ``But now we might be able to narrow down the picture and say we know 20 percent where the bad guys could be. We don't have to waste our resources on the 80 percent of vessels we know are fine.''
The communication among countries was improved this year with the use of TrIM, a computer-based instant-message system that translates in English, Portuguese or Spanish.
''It doesn't handle slang very well,'' Martinez said. ``But otherwise it's a very effective communication tool. In the past we had a very structured, formal messaging system that required a lot of manual managing of paper stuff. This allows more real-time communications, like what you would expect in a business environment, walking down the street with a Blackberry.''
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