Maritime Defense and Security Research program final report, 2004-2011 (original) (raw)

The Center for Secure and Resilient Maritime Commerce

Homeland Security Centers of Excellence

The DHS National Center of Excellence in Maritime Security's (CSR) Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) work develops and applies emerging technologies in support of layered surveillance. The layers include satellite-based wide area views, HF Radar systems providing over-the horizon situational awareness, and near-shore and harbor sensing utilizing underwater acoustic technologies. Integration of these systems accomplishes vessel detection, classification, identification, and tracking. Applications for end-users including U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have demonstrated the delivery of actionable information in operationally relevant settings. The Center won the DHS S&T impact award two years in a row for its role in providing vital data during the US Airways plane landing on the Hudson River and during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Furthermore, research in port resiliency has yielded a port disruption planning tool, the Port Mapper, that assisted ...

Maritime Security Editorial Note

hen considering the term “maritime security”, a traditional approach immediately refers to the naval strategy aspects with regard the protection of national maritime borders and sensitive maritime trade choke-points. Over the past few years, however, due to a gradual emergence of various issues related to or occurring in the maritime domain, the international security studies field has experienced a birth of a new sub-division, focused on the maritime domain, its global importance, and a variety of off-shore based threats that generate an increasing impact factor on the on-shore environment. Researchers from different backgrounds have engaged into adjoined projects with an aim to merge methodologies available in the traditional security studies, contemporary critical security studies, law of the sea studies, maritime law studies and other related fields. This ambitious endeavour has just begun, and aims to form an international, multi-disciplinary forum (political sciences, law, economy, sociology and others) where researchers and practitioners will be given an opportunity to accumulate knowledge and experience, and gather with an aim to define the outreach of this new emerging sub-field – the international maritime security studies.

Five Maritime Security Developments That Will Resonate For A Generation

Harvard National Security Journal Online, 2015

In the past decade, collaborative efforts around the world have led to five key, and intersecting, developments that have changed the way governments respond to maritime security challenges: expanded laws; interagency, or whole-of-government coordination within a country; cooperation among nations; maritime situational awareness (MSA); and the establishment of multinational training centers. Collectively, these new approaches form a single unifying thread for action and support a networked response to countering violence and illicit activity at sea. The developments examined in this Article provide key insights to collaboratively confront, with less traditional diplomatic actors, transnational criminal organizations and other security challenges in the future.

A Brief Analysis Of Threats And Vulnerabilities In The Maritime Domain

Managing Critical Infrastructure Risks

The attacks of September 11 have exposed the vulnerability of the American homeland against terrorism. Terrorists have already expressed their intentions to continue their aggression towards United States. Their goal is to incur maximum economic damage, inflict mass casualty, spread unprecedented fear among citizens and thus destabilize the nation to further their agenda. Many critical sites lay across US maritime borders, all of which could be potential targets to accomplish these goals. All these sites are simple elements of a complex body where the vulnerability of the whole system is a function of the vulnerability of the weakest element against an adaptive adversary. Ports, nuclear facilities, LNG facilities, urban areas, bridges, chemical plants and other critical infrastructure are all elements of this complex system. In this paper, we review the current status of security in the American maritime realm and discuss the programs and initiatives that seek to minimize terrorism risk. Our goal is to direct attention to various possible avenues that could be used to illegally introduce weapons, explosives and other contraband as well as to penetrate terrorists into the American homeland. 6 The suicide bombers were reportedly members of Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade. 7 One such incident reportedly took place in 2000, when 14 Iranian stowaways hijacked an Italian ship.

Building Maritime Security Situational Awareness

Maritime domain security relies on the ability to build a comprehensive awareness of maritime activity. Although it is still in the developmental stages situational awareness is the prerequisite of maritime domain security. Today technological developments such as space-based systems, over-the-horizon radar, and nearshore and harbour acoustics can be incorporated into a layered approach to increase security. To identify and address weaknesses in the system, industry and academia have been discussing ways in which technology, based on advanced modelling and simulation tools can be used to identify threats and determine potential impacts. Numerous governmental, military and business organizations already possess valuable inputs into shared situational awareness. However, no one source captures all of the maritime information needed or currently available. The information exchange between government agencies and with private industry, in particular, sharing common databases, is the real power behind maritime domain awareness centres.

Maritime security: current challenges

2013

The security of the maritime domain has become a topical area of concern, with threats thereto manifesting in multiple ways, ranging from military activities at sea to marine litter discharges and noise pollution. As an issue of common interest of the international community, maritime security has ignited some commendable initiatives both internationally and regionally, aimed at setting up new legal and institutional frameworks of cooperation. However, current regimes have proved to be ill-suited to address the globalized maritime challenges of today. By and large, a sustained common vision on how to better serve the common interest is currently lacking, owing in part to an intricate North-South divide over both rights and obligations regarding ocean governance. It is thus still necessary to merge the priorities of the various stakeholders into a comprehensive maritime security architecture. This policy brief purports to illustrate this state of affairs through a brief analysis of m...

Maritime Security – Perspectives for a Comprehensive Approach

Challenges to "Maritime Security" have many faces -piracy and armed robbery, maritime terrorism, illicit trafficking by sea, i.e. narcotics trafficking, small arms and light weapons trafficking, human trafficking, global climate change, cargo theft etc. These challenges keep evolving and may be hybrid in nature: an interconnected and unpredictable mix of traditional and irregular warfare, terrorism, and/or organized crime.

Maritime security in the age of infrastructure

“Maritime Security, New Technology and Ethics: Evolving Challenges and Opportunities’”, AscoMare Yearbook on the Law of the Sea, Volume 3,, 2024

What does the expansion of infrastructure at sea imply for maritime security? In an age in which our dependency of maritime infrastructures - energy platforms, data cables, pipelines - is on the rise, the seas become heavily industrialized and urbanized. This requires new maritime security thinking. This article provides a primer for rethinking maritime security as a form of critical maritime infrastructure protection.

Maritime security: potential terrorist attacks and protection priorities

2007

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