Military bolsters maritime security role

The U.S. military is shoring up its role in maritime security in response to ongoing concerns that terrorists might use cargo or passenger vessels to launch an attack against the country, officials said Thursday.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently issued an order clarifying and emphasizing the Navy's ability to conduct maritime intercept operations, said Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland security. Additionally, the Navy and the Coast Guard are negotiating a memorandum of agreement for closer coordination in maritime security.

"Our goal is to identify an enemy threat as far from our shores as possible and to employ military capabilities for the defeat of that threat," McHale said. "We don't want to discover a weapon of mass destruction after it has entered a port or come ashore. Our strategy is to locate that threat and defeat it as far away as possible."

McHale said the order clarifies the Navy's ability to engage, search, interdict and, if necessary, defeat vessels that might contain a terrorist threat, such as weapons of mass destruction or cruise missiles. The agreement between the Navy and Coast Guard "is simply a recognition that our nation is best defended through the close coordination and combined capabilities of both services," he added.

A spokesman for McHale's office said Friday the order is classified because it deals with military operations, and the memorandum of agreement has not been officially approved yet.

McHale said the steps do not reflect a belief that the Coast Guard, which is a uniformed military service, is limited.

"The Coast Guard has substantial capabilities with regard to board and search [operations] and those capabilities can become vitally important in attempting to locate and defeat a weapon of mass destruction on the high seas," McHale said. "In the execution of maritime intercept operations, I think it is very likely that those military missions will be completed with the active participation of both Navy and Coast Guard capabilities."

McHale testified Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the military's role in homeland defense. Air Force Gen. Ralph Eberhart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Northern Command, also testified.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the committee, said not enough is being done to monitor and track cargo and passenger vessels in and around North America, adding that about 6 million containers come into U.S. seaports each year, any one of which could contain a threat.

"I believe we have not paid enough attention to port security. There are a lot of interesting and worthwhile initiatives under way, but it strikes me as one of our greatest vulnerabilities," Collins said. "We need to have a better system for protecting our coastlines and our seaports."

Collins asked Eberhart if NORAD's mission should be expanded to include maritime operations.

Eberhart said he is a "big proponent of a maritime NORAD," adding that a U.S.-Canadian planning group is studying whether NORAD should have a maritime component. The group would report its findings in late summer or early fall, he said, and any decision will be factored into the next NORAD agreement in 2006.

Eberhart also said a study of the military's Unified Command Structure ordered by Rumsfeld will examine whether Northern Command and Southern Command should be combined. Such a move has been examined several times since the early 1990s.

Rumsfeld "has not decided that he is going to combine them," Eberhart cautioned. "But he wants a good, objective look at what the pros and cons would be of combining them."

Eberhart said he is not sure if combining the two commands is the right thing to do because he has not yet seen a detailed analysis. "I believe it's something that warrants a look and probably will warrant a look every year for many successive years," he said.