An Exploratory analysis of waterfront force protection measures using simulation

Abstract

Since the USS Cole incident in October 2000, and particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, Force protection has become a fundamental issue. Of particular concern to the Navy is waterfront Force Protection: the protection of in-port High Value Units from attacks from the sea. The unpredictability of when or how a terrorist attack might be executed makes simulation an excellent tool for analyzing the waterfront force protection issue quantitatively. This thesis develops and implements a simulation model of Patrol Boats at the Naval Submarine Base in Bangor, Washington using Java and Simkit, both of which are platform independent, and therefore universally usable. The simulation is run pitting eight different notional Patrol Boat configurations (varying the number of patrol boats used, their intercepting and patrolling speeds, and their patrolling patterns) against eight notional terrorist attacks. The results of the simulation runs are analyzed, and general conclusions are drawn. The results indicate that the number of patrol boats used in an area and the speed they use to intercept threats are the most important factors of the four analyzed. Patrolling speed and patrolling patterns are found to be insignificant.