U.S. Nuclear Detection Official Doubts Threat by Sea

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States currently conducts radiation scans on 90 percent of sea cargo containers entering U.S. ports and that number is expected to hit 98 percent by the end of the year, but the U.S. official in charge of radiation detection yesterday said terrorists would be unlikely to deliver a nuclear weapon by a slow boat (see GSN, May 16).

“Everyone wants to know how we’re doing on scanning their containers.  I personally don’t think the threat is coming through this mechanism,” Domestic Nuclear Detection Office head Vayl Oxford said during a breakfast presentation held by the National Defense University Foundation yesterday.

“Giving up a nuclear device putting it in a container and letting it float around the world for a couple of weeks is probably folly.  But it’s a great metric. Everybody loves to count containers,” Oxford said.

Oxford’s division at the Homeland Security Department — just two years old — has been pushing for Congress to fund a more than $1 billion program to deploy next-generation radiation detectors at commercial ports, and department Secretary Michael Chertoff has touted the percent of containers scanned in any speech about the nuclear terror threat (see GSN, Oct. 3, 2006).

Progress has been remarkable in beefing up radiation scanning of the millions of containers entering the United States every year — only 20 to 40 percent were screened two years ago — but an improvised nuclear device entering the country that way is not Oxford’s foremost concern.

The focus, both within his division and in the media, has been “port centric,” he says, but the detection office is beginning to turn more attention to problems at what he calls “non-port of entry venues.”

Across the expansive northern U.S. border with Canada 91 percent of incoming trucks are currently scanned for radiation, but this is at major, well-trafficked ports of entry.  Geographically less than half, just 40 percent, is monitored (see GSN, May 8)

“The northern border is where we really have a problem because there are literally hundreds of small little locations, sometimes they’re manned sometimes they’re not,” Oxford said.

In an effort of move away from an exclusively port focused drive, the office plans to develop what Oxford called a “multi-layered approach.”

Across the northern border, “I think what you’ll see is the emergence of mobile systems that will allow us to search the location as necessary as opposed to a lot of fixed locations,” he said.

The border patrol officials that monitor the largely unattended northern and southern borders often patrol in small teams and currently have no capability to detect radioactive material similar to the systems deployed at high-traffic crossing points (see GSN, March 26).

“They cannot use the same kind of systems we use at land and sea ports,” Oxford said, noting that the smaller crossing points “offer vulnerabilities and opportunities for terrorists.”

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office has also begun to address issues associated with smaller maritime vessels and general aviation aircraft, more than 400 of which enter the United States from foreign countries on any given day.

“We need new solutions and we need new concepts,” he said.

Oxford said that by the end of the year all Coast Guard boarding teams will be equipped with some sort of radiation detection equipment.  His office is also currently engaged in examining key ports around the country looking for “choke points” that could enable officials to scan vessels before they enter the heart of the port.

Analysts are also doing calculations to determine the variance in infrastructure damage and casualties if a 10 kiloton weapon were to go off in the center of a port versus one mile or 10 miles away.

“One mile in the case of a 10 KT weapon means a lot,” he said.

In terms of a threat from general aviation aircraft, Oxford said his office is working with the Transportation Security Administration and Customs and Border Protection to prescreen planes before they enter U.S. airspace.  A more complete announcement on the plan is expected this summer.

Currently, planes land and then clear customs, a problem that must be addressed, Oxford said. 

One nightmare scenario envisioned by some government officials involves a last minute diversion over Manhattan by a plane carrying a nuclear device.  “You file a flight plan from somewhere in the Middle East or in Europe for Teeterboro, (N.J.) and then in the last 45 seconds divert directly over Manhattan and detonate,” he said.  “The ability to have a weapon aboard an airplane and never land, never clear customs is something that we have to come up with a new response to.”

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