Maritime Security: Potential Terrorist Attacks and Protection Priorities

A key challenge for U.S. policy makers is prioritizing the nation's maritime security activities among a virtually unlimited number of potential attack scenarios.While individual scenarios have distinct features, they may be characterized along five common dimensions: perpetrators, objectives, locations, targets, and tactics.In many cases, such scenarios have been identified as part of security preparedness exercises, security assessments, security grant administration, and policy debate.There are far more potential attack scenarios than likely ones, and far more than could be meaningfully addressed with limited counter-terrorism resources.There are a number of logical approaches to prioritizing maritime security activities.One approach is to emphasize diversity, devoting available counterterrorism resources to a broadly representative sample of credible scenarios.Another approach is to focus counter-terrorism resources on only the scenarios of greatest concern based on overall risk, potential consequence, likelihood, or related metrics.U.S. maritime security agencies appear to have followed policies consistent with one or the other of these approaches in federally-supported port security exercises and grant programs.Legislators often appear to focus attention on a small number of potentially catastrophic scenarios.Clear perspectives on the nature and likelihood of specific types of maritime terrorist attacks are essential for prioritizing the nation's maritime anti-terrorism activities.In practice, however, there has been considerable public debate about the likelihood of scenarios frequently given high priority by federal policy makers, such as nuclear or "dirty" bombs smuggled in shipping containers, liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker attacks, and attacks on passenger ferries.Differing priorities set by port officials, grant officials, and legislators lead to differing allocations of port security resources and levels of protection against specific types of attacks.How they ultimately relate to one another under a national maritime security strategy remains to be seen.Maritime terrorist threats to the United States are varied, and so are the nation's efforts to combat them.As oversight of the federal role in maritime security continues, Congress may raise questions concerning the relationship among the nation's various maritime security activities, and the implications of differing protection priorities among them.Improved gathering and sharing of maritime terrorism intelligence may enhance consistency of policy and increase efficient deployment of maritime security resources.In addition, Congress may assess how the various elements of U.S. maritime security fit together in the nation's overall strategy to protect the public from terrorist attacks. 1 U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Dept. of Defense (DOD).The National Strategy for Maritime Security.September 2005.p. 2.2 "Ships as Terrorist Targets."American Shipper.November, 2002.p. 59; The Limburg, under French registry, was attacked on October 6, 2002 in the Gulf of Aden while carrying approximately 400,000 barrels of crude oil from Iran to Malaysia.3 For more information see CRS Report RL33383, Terminal Operators and Their Role in U.S. Port and Maritime Security, by John Frittelli and Jennifer E. Lake. 4 Information in this report is based solely on publicly available information.In this report, attacks on the United States are broadly defined to include attacks on U.S. maritime assets (globally), military allies, and commercial partners if motivated by their relationship with (continued...)