Optimal employment of port radar and picket ships to detect attacker speedboats a defender-attacker optimization model to enhance maritime domain awareness

Abstract

The U.S. Coast Guard has deployed several hundred port patrol vessels to protect U.S. Navy ships and other high-value assets in ports world-wide. Each vessel has an armed crew of four, is relatively fast, and features a simple surface search radar, radios, and a machine gun. These vessels coordinate surveillance patrols in groups of two or four, perhaps working with shorebased radar. We seek to advantageously position these vessels, and perhaps shore-based radar too, to minimize the probability that an intelligent adversary in one or more speed-boats will evade detection while mounting an attack. Attackers can use elevated obstructions to our radar detection in their attack paths, and ports feature many such restrictions to navigation and observation. We make a key, but realistic assumption that complicates planning: we assume the attackers will see or be told of our defensive positions and capabilities in advance of mounting their attack. We demonstrate our defender-attacker optimization with a fictitious port, and with Los Angeles-Long Beach, Hong Kong, U.S. Navy 5-th Fleet in Bahrain, and the Al Basra oil terminal. In cases we analyze, we can almost certainly detect any attack, even though the attacker, observing our pre-positions, plans clever, evasive attack tracks.