14. starptautiskā konference 2012 - Latvijas Jūras akadēmija

Proceedings of 14th International conference „Maritime Transport and Infrastructure - 2012”In modern warfare the general aim of the modern professionally trained Navy is to destroyenemy’s vessels engaging trivial naval resources in naval battle or destroy enemy’s vessels before theyleave the harbour. The great battles of ironclad vessels of the World War I and II are the history. Themodern navy battle is carried out by use of long distance weapons with no high risk for homelandships and sailors. One of long distance weapons and war conduct methods is a use of specially trainedsaboteurs able to cause high damage for enemy’s vessels and personnel engaging trivial forces andresources. The effectiveness of underwater military saboteurs called frogman was proved by Italianand German navies in the Second World War. A very important aspect should be noticed that terroristsfor the achievement of their objectives could use wide availability of equipment and combat divertactics due to the fact that training is cheap and easy acquired [3].As a significant example of the effective use of underwater saboteurs in modern militaryoperations is a case of Israel Navy operation “Escort” hold on 7 September 1963. Well-trained IsraeliteNavy divers destroyed standing Egypt Navy missile boats in harbour. They were able to cause seriousdanger for Israelite Army troops who were ready to land on Egypt coast [3]. This operationdemonstrates effectiveness of well-organised pinnacle attack that influenced the run of the wholemilitary operation.Along the combat force protection needs, protection and unauthorised visitors limits to navalbases and warships must be considered. Noticing so-called human factor, unauthorised entrance ofcurious divers, swimmers and water craft drivers into the naval harbour aquvatorium, first of all, maycause dangers for their lives. Second, the NATO member military base is stated as the restricted area.Despite the fact that Latvian citizens trust to National Armed Forces and their high level ofreadiness [4], provocations still are considered and should not be excluded in perspective. The Latviansociety keeps double viewpoints regarding participation of the Latvian National Armed Forces ininternational missions, i.e., Afghanistan. A few unsuccessful search and rescue operations causeddissatisfaction and claim to the Latvian Navy. One of these accidents happened on 3 December 2009the day of the shipwreck of fishing vessel Beverina. Due to bad weather condition and unclearBeverina actions, Latvian Navy warship A-53 Virsaitis was unable to help the fishing vessel. Thus,Beverina sank near the Port of Liepāja, in Latvia. This tragedy shocked all Liepaja and Latvia andunknown persons under cover of night using boat got to the Virsaitis, which was moored in the Port ofLiepaja and painted, on its hull – THE DEATH OF BEVERINA, YOUR FAULT [5]. This incidentactualised this security problem in the Latvian Navy.2. Protection methodsAnalysing the underwater security assets and technologies, they must be divided into twoparts. The first part is harbour and port security assets and equipment for whole port and big wateraquvatorium protection. The second side of the problem is protection of alone standing ships, forexample, alone standing ship in unprotected port. A lot of countries and companies have tried to finddifferent possible and effective solutions for harbour, port and vessel security. To give the insight intorealized solutions of this question, a few methods used in USA and the Russian Federation will bedescribedOrganizing protection against fast speedboats loaded with explosives is as equally importantas organizing the protection against underwater diversions or sabotage threats. One of the methodsused by almost all world navies for fighting small fast boats with bad intentions is use of night watchon the ship armed with automatic weapons. The example of USA Navies bad experience with USSCole that was attacked by terrorist speedboats in the Port of Aden in 2000 proves that this method isnot always efficient enough. Due to the bad weather conditions, difficult visibility and other factors,sometimes it is impossible to detect the attack in time or destroy attacking speedboat before it hasreached the ship.The method used by US Navy to bound standing warships from attacking speedboats or otherwater going crafts and make potential attacking boat stop and become good target in the sufficient andsafe distance is using floating security barriers by Wave Dispersion Technologies, Inc. It is veryimportant to mention that this kind of barriers could be used not just for combat and power protection97