"Terry W. Colvin" wrote:
>
> > Also what is to keep Iraq from placing a nuclear warhead
> > on a ship and sailing it into New York City harbor?
>
> Here's a scarier scenario, from a old report to the USCG forecasting turn of
> the century law enforcement requirements.
>
> Most/many currents are constant and predictable, put someting in it, let it
> go, and you know woth fair accuracy where and when it'll be down the road.
>
> There are bouys called so-fars -- they only rise or sink sofar, and the
> depth can be set. These are old technology. Hook a device of mass
> destruction (nuclear or biologocal or chemical) to a sofar, put it in a
> current and let it go.
>
> When it goes off, whom do you blame, where do you retaliate, how do you
> adequately guard against it?
>
> I am only amazed that a terrorist group has not yet used this method!
>
The problem is that you don't know exactly WHERE your buoy is going. The
second problem is that spy satellites can pretty easily spot weapons
sized lumps of radioactive materials unless kept in a hefty lead
containment system. Then you've also got the sonar nets that girdle the
US. Anything that is metallic and is below the surface gets tracked when
it comes within a certain range.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:16 MDT