Murphy Martin. Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money. Piracy & Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World
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237
maritime terrorism
As early as August 1984 Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. Later in the
month the Egyptian authorities accused Libya and Iran and later, on the
basis of the evidence available, fixed the blame entirely on Libya. It was
later proved that Libyan naval personnel had sown the mines from a ship
named the Ghat (or Ghada) which had transited the Suez Canal, sailed
down the Red Sea and then returned, taking rather more time than usual
to make the voyage.
188
e most sophisticated modern naval mines are expensive devices.
189
Many of them are considered to be beyond the financial reach and opera-
tional capability of any terrorist group that lacks anything less than substan-
tial state sponsorship or support. Nonetheless, as Scott Truver points out,
more than 30 countries produce mines and 20 export them. Increasingly
“even highly sophisticated weapons are available on the black market, usu-
ally on a cash-and-carry basis”.
190
Examples include the Italian-made Marta
that costs around $15,000, one of which nearly sank the uSS Princeton,
and the Argentine M-80 multiple influence weapon, both of which are
sophisticated, affordable and available. Moreover, underwater Improvised
Explosive Devices (uWIED) are easy and cheap to make.
191
In April 2004
a crude device, consisting of explosive packed into plastic tubes wrapped
in trash bags to give them buoyancy (and so small that an observer who
might have seen it being thrown into the water could well have thought
it was a bag of rubbish being thrown away), was discovered floating in
Lake pontchartrain in Louisiana. e intended target might have been the
presidential candidate John Kerry, who planned to make a campaign trip
on the lake.
192
however, it is the older naval mine that remains, in many ways, the
perfect maritime terrorist weapon. It satisfies the terrorist requirement for
the maximum return on investment. ese mines can be made even more
dangerous than they appear if they have been upgraded internally with
188 For a full review of this episode see Scott C. Truver, ‘Mines of August: An
international whodunit’, uS Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 111, no. 5, May
1985, pp. 95-117. Also Truver, ‘Mines and underwater IEDs in uS ports and
waterways’, p. 111 and Menefee, TMV, p. 44.
189 For a brief summary of their capabilities see Truver, ‘Mines and underwater
IEDs in uS ports and waterways’, pp. 108-9.
190 Ibid.
191 Ibid.
192 Ibid., p. 111; Grace V. Jean, ‘Improvised explosive devices: Could they threaten
uS ports?’ National Defense, Jan. 2008.
238
small boats, weak states, dirty money
more sophisticated technologies which can present particular problems to
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) divers and technicians.
193
ere are four methods of detonation: contact, pressure, acoustic and
magnetic (combinations of which can be built into a single device). pos-
sibly the most famous peacetime mining incident occurred in the Corfu
Channel in 1946, when two Royal Navy ships struck moored Albanian
mines, with the loss of 45 British lives.
194
More recently, the uS frigate the
Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian moored contact mine in 1988.
195
e
device was designed in Russia when Nicholas II was Tsar and last modern-
ised in 1939. It cost the Iranians about $1,500 and inflicted around $96
million in damage. e presence of mines of the same design, but this time
manufactured by Iraq, were enough to “stall the world’s greatest Navy in its
tracks in February 1991” and dissuade it from undertaking an amphibious
assault on the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait.
196
A further advantage is that while naval mines can be cheap to manu-
facture and plant, they are expensive and time-consuming to remove. It is
estimated currently that it would take a mine counter-measures (MCM)
team about ten days to deploy by air from the united States and become
fully operational, and between 30 and 60 days for a seaborne force to do
the same. Mines can be planted quickly and surreptitiously in large num-
bers. Experience has shown that they are extremely effective area denial
weapons. Before an MCM team can arrive terrorists can use mines to try
and force ships—or a particular ship—into killing zones where they can be
attacked more publicly by small boats or stand-off weapons. partly because
of these delays, the uS Navy in particular is looking to incorporate a mine-
clearing capability on a wider range of ships and eliminate the necessity for
a specialised force.
197
Mines can also impose substantial economic costs. In 1984, for exam-
ple, just 39 mines laid in three Nicaraguan ports had a significant effect on
193 Scott C. Truver, Correspondence with author, April 2006.
194 International Court of Justice, ‘Corfu Channel case (Merits)’, Judgement of 9
April 1949.
195 Truver, ‘Mines and underwater IEDs in uS ports and waterways’, p. 119.
196 omas R. Bernitt and Sam J. Tangredi, ‘Mine warfare and globalization: Low-
tech warfare in a high-tech world’ in Sam J. Tangredi (ed.), Globalization and
Maritime Power, Washington DC: National Defence up, 2002, p. 396; Truver,
‘Mines and underwater IEDs in uS ports and waterways’, p. 119.
197 See, for example, Melissa Nelson, ‘Robots clear waterways of deadly mines’, AP,
27 July 2007.
239
maritime terrorism
the Nicaraguan economy. It is conceivable that mines could be deployed
surreptitiously from ships visiting American and European ports, a tech-
nique the Ghat demonstrated to considerable effect, with the intention of
inflicting economic damage or to limit naval movements, expeditionary
deployments and ferry operations even though
198
the large oil and cargo
ships now in service would not necessarily sink. In 1987, for example, a
tanker, the Bridgeton, struck a mine during the Iran-Iraq “Tanker War”;
199
four of its 31 compartments flooded but it did not founder and, because
of its bulk, was used to sweep mines for a convoy of other ships, including
uS Navy surface combatants, as it moved northwards. Insurgents, how-
ever, would not need to sink ships. e presence of mines—or even the
suspicion that they were there
200
—would force ports to close until they
had been cleared.
201
According to Rear Admiral omas Atkin, the com-
mander of the uS Coast Guard’s Deployable Operations Group (DOG), a
single World War II-style mine could shut down the oil port of houston,
Texas.
202
In order to deter terrorists from using mines, an MCM force ca-
pable of deploying nationally or regionally and equipped with up-to-date
surveys would need to be kept on stand-by.
203
Experience gained when the
port of umm Qasr in Iraq was cleared in 2003, an operation which took
an international force nine days to clear 900 square miles (2,331 sq km),
showed that prior knowledge of the river bottom is vital if such a course
198 Stables, ‘Mines, small boats may pose threat to uS ports’.
199 David B. Crist, ‘Joint special operations in support of Earnest Will’, Joint Forces
Quarterly, Autumn/Winter 2001-2, pp. 15-22; Navias and hooton, Tanker
Wars, pp. 143-4; Nadia El-Sayed El-Shazly, e Gulf Tanker War: Iran and Iraq’s
Maritime Swordplay, London: Macmillan, 1998, pp. 293-4.
200 e mine crisis of Jan. 1980 on the Sacramento River in California demon-
strated that the threat of mines could be sufficient to close down a waterway. A
self-styled ‘patriotic scuba diver’ telephoned a warning that the river had been
mined to protest against the sale of wheat to Russia. All river traffic was stopped
for four days until the uS Navy was able to declare that no mines had been laid
and the river was safe for navigation. Truver, ‘Mines and underwater IEDs in
uS ports and waterways’, pp. 110-11.
201 Ibid., pp. 107-8.
202 Jean, ‘Improvised explosive devices: Could they threaten uS ports?’
203 On the difficulties that are likely to be encountered in establishing and deploy-
ing such as force see Michael C. Sparks, ‘A critical vulnerability, a valid threat:
uS ports and terrorist mining’, Norfolk, VA: Joint Forces Staff College Masters
esis, 2005, pp. 29-30; Truver, ‘Mines and underwater IEDs in uS ports and
waterways’, pp. 117-23 and Jean, ‘Improvised explosive devices: Could they
threaten uS ports?’
240
small boats, weak states, dirty money
of action is to be accomplished without having to investigate every item of
suspicious debris.
204
ere are, however, three weaknesses with naval mines based on older
designs: if planted on the bottom they sink gradually into the mud or silt,
sometimes to a depth which can degrade their effectiveness, unlike some
modern mines that are designed to be buried in silt and remain operational;
they can drift out of position, meaning they do not maintain a persistent
threat; and they tend to be indiscriminate although, as the Samuel B. Rob-
erts incident illustrated, some sort of discrimination is possible if sea traffic
is moving slowly enough for mines to be laid between the passage of one
ship and the next. ese weaknesses mean that naval minefields generally
need to be re-laid regularly, although none of these disadvantages is as great
a problem for terrorists as for regular navies. One successful attack on a
major target, or simply re-laying on an irregular basis, could achieve the
terrorists’ aim of inducing fear and insecurity.
Terrorists are unlikely to lay mines in deep water because at depths
greater than 300 feet (90 metres) moored mines are largely impracticable
and bottom mines largely ineffective. e position would change, however,
if terrorists could obtain rising mines: mines that sit on the bottom but
release an explosive charge to the surface when activated by sound or pres-
sure changes. If terrorists are restricted to moored or bottom mines they are
therefore likely to be seeded in shallower water in the vicinity of ports, har-
bours and chokepoints of which the southern end of the Malacca Straits,
the Singapore Straits and the phillip Channel are amongst the most vul-
nerable.
205
ey could also be simply cast upon the waters and allowed to
drift, a tactic employed by both the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong
who used mines disguised as garbage and baskets.
206
It is interesting to note
the FBI warning about bombs or mines disguised as ordinary flotsam such
as old car tyres, a tactic that is also hauntingly reminiscent of the special
weapons and booby traps used by both sides in the Second World War but
associated especially with Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE).
207
204 Sparks, ‘A critical vulnerability, a valid threat: uS ports and terrorist mining’,
pp. 29-57; Truver, ‘Mines and underwater IEDs in uS ports and waterways’, p.
121.
205 peter Lewis Young, ‘Mining the Straits of Southeast Asia’, Jane’s IR, Feb. 1996,
pp. 91-2.
206 Even though floating mines are outlawed by the 1907 hague Convention.
207 ‘FBI warns that terrorists may use floating bombs’, Washington Post, 29 June
2004.
241
maritime terrorism
In the autumn of 2006 a mine disguised as flotsam was found drifting in
the northern Gulf off Iraq.
208
e final option for use only in very shallow
water—between a depth of about 50 feet (15 metres) and the surf zone—is
the remotely controlled mine, the line-of-sight equivalent of the roadside
IED. It involves an explosive charge, which is attached to a command wire
that stretches back over the beach or riverbank to a hidden operator who
triggers it when a suitable target craft is in range. A remotely-controlled
IED was used on the Shatt al-Arab waterway in 2006 to kill members of a
British patrol.
209
Despite their advantages, mines do not appear to have attracted wide-
spread interest from terrorist groups. Only the LTTE have utilised them,
including a remote control design that they deployed first off the Jaffna pe-
ninsula around Kilali in the early 1990s. ey have subsequently developed
an impressive variety of fairly simple mines, almost all improvised from a
range of materials including, in one variant, a domestic rice cooker, in or-
der to pursue what could be better described as an irregular war at sea.
210
Undersea warfare: swimmers and “human torpedoes”. If, in most instances,
mines represent the passive form of undersea warfare, the active form can
be mounted either by submarines or by swimmers (also referred to as divers
or frogmen). e use of swimmers by terrorists came to public attention
early in 2003, again perhaps as a result of the interrogation of al-Nashiri or
Omar al-Faruq, and resurfaced in 2005 following reports from the philip-
pines.
211
But terrorist groups had used swimmers long before this. In 1976,
for example, the Cuban anti-Castro group Omega-7 used a swimmer to
attach a limpet mine to a Soviet cargo ship docked at port Elizabeth, New
Jersey.
212
however, as with mine warfare, it was the LTTE Sea Tigers and
208 private information, Sept. 2006.
209 Michael Evans, ‘Four servicemen killed in Basra river patrol blast’, e Times,
13 Nov. 2006.
210 Murphy, ‘Maritime threat: Tactics and technologies of the Sea Tigers’, pp. 9-10;
Gunaratna, ‘Sea Tiger success threatens the spread of copycat tactics’, p. 14
and peter Chalk, ‘Training the Tigers: e strategy of separatist success in Sri
Lanka’, Jane’s IR, Jan. 2007, p. 25.
211 On the possibility that the information was obtained through interrogation see
Mintz, ‘15 freighters believed to be linked to Al Qaeda’. Omar al-Faruq was
variously named as al-Qaeda’s chief of operations or chief organiser and liaison
in Southeast Asia: ‘Officials identify al-Qaida plotters’, Michigan Daily, 17 Sept.
2002 and Dan Murphy, ‘Southeast Asia easy source of Al Qaeda recruits’, Chris-
tian Science Monitor, 9 Oct. 2002.
212 MIpT
Incident profile: Anti-Castro Cubans attacked maritime target, 16 Sept.
242
small boats, weak states, dirty money
the anti-Israeli groups that assembled the most comprehensive capacity, the
latter benefiting from considerable state support (see below). Menefee sug-
gests, for example, that in 1970 swimmers were used to plant underwater
mines during an attack on the Israeli port of Eilat (or Elath).
213
e LTTE swimmers were equipped at first with regular, open-circuit
diving equipment, but a number were killed in 1986 because kit of this
type releases air bubbles which rise to the surface, betraying the swimmer’s
position. As a result the Sea Tigers bought “re-breather” kits enabling
swimmers to use recirculated air, which were reported to have been used
successfully in an operation to reconnoitre the hull of a berthed SLN ves-
sel in 1993.
214
In 2006 Sea Tiger swimmers were arrested when they came
ashore on the western side of Sri Lanka, close to Colombo. e Sri Lankan
government claimed they had been attempting to attach limpet mines to
Sri Lankan Navy (SLN) vessels.
215
Like Al Qaeda, the Sea Tigers have also
shown an interest in acquiring Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs).
216
Where they have proved more successful is in the development of a semi-
submersible “human torpedo” or “suicide scooter”. Guided to the target by
a single operative equipped with diving gear who might stay with the craft
all the way to the target or drop away prior to detonation, it is designed to
deliver an explosive charge of between 25 and 50 kilograms (55 to 110 lbs).
ey are believed to have been used in several attacks, at least two of which
were known to be successful.
217
In 2003, the CIA Director George Tenet told the uS Senate Select Com-
mittee on Intelligence that Al Qaeda was “developing or refining new means
of attack, including…underwater methods to attack maritime targets”, at
1976. Anti-Castro Cuban swimmers could also have planted the explosives that
damaged the Caribbean Venture in Miami in 1968:
MIpT Incident profile: An-
ti-Castro Cubans attacked maritime target, 8 Aug. 1968. ey may have made a
similar attack on a Cuban fishing boat moored in Lima:
MIpT Incident profile:
Anti-Castro Cubans attacked maritime target, 22 July 1977. Other reports mention
‘bombs’ or ‘bombings’ without specifying their locations.
213 Menefee, TMV, p. 32.
214 According to Rohan Gunaratna, the Sea Tigers purchased more ‘re-breather’
kits in 2001. Gunaratna, ‘e asymmetric threat from maritime terrorism’, p.
25.
215 peter Apps, ‘Sri Lanka, Tigers claim victory in naval clash’, Reuters AlertNet, 17
June 2006.
216 On Al Qaeda’s interest see Mintz, ‘15 freighters believed to be linked to Al
Qaeda’.
217 Murphy, ‘Maritime threat: Tactics and technologies of the Sea Tigers’, p. 9.
243
maritime terrorism
the same time as the Los Angeles Times published a detailed report of suspi-
cious activity at a diving school in Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
218
e
mosque in Eindhoven had acquired something of a reputation for Islamic
extremism and it was reported that a number of students at the school were
Islamic extremists. ere was also some indication of a link between the
diving students and the Al Qaeda cell in Morocco that had planned attacks
on ships passing through the Straits of Gibraltar. Most of the suspicion,
however, settled on a Tunisian-born instructor, Wahid Gomri. he had
arrived in the Netherlands about 1993 and claimed political asylum. De-
spite this, he was able to afford expensive lessons and equipment including,
midway through 2001, a bulk order for suits and equipment worth $7,000
that was paid for by a money transfer from India. he also displayed im-
pressive dedication and completed his diving instructor’s course in record
time. From the late 1990s through to 2001 somewhere between 50 and
150 Islamic men attended his courses, many of them travelling from the
Middle East for that express purpose. Gomri was never charged with any
offence and protested his innocence throughout, including one very public
protestation on television, which is not a known Al Qaeda tactic. Dutch
police, however, believed his pupils were an Al Qaeda recruitment cell and
12 of them were charged. Because Dutch anti-terrorism laws at the time
were weak they were arraigned under offences that ranged from assisting
an enemy in wartime to the possession of illegal drugs. All of them were
acquitted when the case came to court apart from two who were convicted
of possessing fraudulent documents. Although Gomri left the country and
moved to the uK the case remains open.
219
Later, in August 2003, the uS Department of homeland Security is-
sued a bulletin entitled “Swimmer Attack Indicators and protective Meas-
ures” which advised anyone connected to the maritime industry to look
out for suspicious activity. Although the DhS made it clear that it had
no information relating to a specific threat, it made a number of specific
recommendations regarding suspicious behaviour and possible preventive
measures and said that the warning was consistent with known al-Qaeda
objectives.
220
A diving manual, for example, was among the possessions
218 ‘DCI’s worldwide threat briefing–e threat in 2003’, as prepared for delivery
to the uS Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 11 Feb. 2003; Sebastian
Rotella, ‘Fears persist of al-Qaeda link to dive centre’, LA Times, 15 Feb. 2003.
219 Mark hosenball, ‘Look out below–e terror threat from the sea’, Newsweek,
28 March 2005.
220 Charles R. Smith, ‘Al Qaeda plans scuba diver, one man submarine attack’, Cyber
244
small boats, weak states, dirty money
recovered from the Afghan home of Al Qaeda’s military commander, Mo-
hammed Atef (who was killed in 2001). Other documents also recovered
in Afghanistan indicated that Al Qaeda was interested in diving, diving
medicine and swimmer technology.
221
e possibility that terrorists in Southeast Asia might have a scuba ca-
pability was first suspected when it was revealed that Ruland ullah, one of
the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) members who had kidnapped tourists from
the Malaysian resort of Sipadan in 2000, worked there as a diving instruc-
tor prior to the attack and admitted subsequently that he had trained other
ASG members in scuba techniques.
222
his testimony runs parallel with that
of a scuba diving instructor who was kidnapped from a holiday resort in
Sabah in 2000, also by the ASG: he claimed, upon his release in 2003, that
the group had known he was an instructor and had wanted his expertise
in order to mount an underwater attack.
223
ese accounts may not be as
contradictory as they first appear because the ASG was at that time divided
between a number of poorly coordinated gangs. In 2005 there was a fur-
ther report indicating the ASG’s continuing interest in sub-surface attacks,
this time in cooperation with the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah (JI)
group. A group that included an operative named Gamal Baharan, who
was already suspected of involvement in a bus bombing early in 2005,
was sent for scuba training in palawan province in preparation for a JI-
planned attack either somewhere outside the philippines or alternatively
against oil and gas pipelines off the coast of Mindanao.
224
Other incidents
in the region include a report from Indonesia that the Al Qaeda operative
Diver News Network, 26 Aug. 2003; also Greg hardesty, ‘uS seaports warned to
beware of terrorist divers’, Cyber Diver News Network, 31 Aug. 2003. For access
to the DhS advisory bulletin to which these reports refer go to: http://www.
esisac.com/publicdocs/Other_Advisories/Swimmer%20Attack%20Indicators
%20and%20protective%20Measures%20IB1.doc
221 Gunaratna, ‘e threat to the maritime domain: how real is the terrorist
threat?’ p. 87.
222 Rommel C. Banlaoi, ‘e Abu Sayyaf group: reat of maritime piracy and
terrorism’ in Lehr, Violence at Sea, p. 128. According to Anthony Davis, ullah
escaped in June 2002 during a firefight between the ASG and philippine Ma-
rines. Anthony Davis, ‘Resilient Abu Sayyaf resists military pressure’, Jane’s IR,
1 Sept. 2003.
223 ‘peril on the sea’; ‘Sipidan instructor to testify against Abu Sayyaf–linked rebels’,
Cyber Diver News Network, 24 Sept. 2004.
224 Jim Gomez
, ‘Terrorists push scuba training, guerrilla says’, e San Diego Un-
ion-Tribune, 18 March 2005. On the possibility that oil and gas pipelines were
the targets see Michael Greenberg, et al., Maritime Terrorism, p. 13.
245
maritime terrorism
Omar al-Faruq had told interrogators in 2002 that he had planned attacks
on uS warships while on a port visit.
225
In 2003 the owner of a diving
school in Malaysia reported that a group of ethnic Malays had asked for
diving instruction but had appeared to lack any interest in leaning how to
resurface.
226
Just how reliable these reports are, particularly the Malaysian
report, Baharan’s statement and some others from the philippines, is how-
ever open to some doubt.
227
ese attempts might sound amateurish but underwater threats need to
be treated with respect. Skilled and highly-trained swimmers, those that
have completed special forces training, are highly capable as wartime ex-
perience has demonstrated. Although no evidence has emerged to indicate
that any terrorist group has swimmers who have attained this level of pro-
ficiency, it has been reported that palestinian swimmers were trained by
Yugoslavia (see below) and LTTE swimmers by Norwegian mercenaries
over a number of months on an island in the Andaman Sea.
228
hizbollah is
also said to have a swimmer unit, the capability of which is unknown.
Swimmers who are selected for suicide missions appear to receive only the
most rudimentary scuba training. Compared with almost any other diver—
naval, commercial or recreational—they would be regarded as novices on
this basis. While a suicide swimmer is likely to be unconcerned about the
problem of the “bends”, there are other problems that could critically affect
his mission and which can be overcome only through skilled training, regu-
lar practice and familiarity with high quality equipment. e most serious
is oxygen toxicity, or hyperoxia, brought on by breathing compressed air.
Without proper monitoring, attacks can occur without warning and result
in death if, as usually happens, the swimmer is unable to retain the mouth-
piece of the regulator. e second is depth restriction: the very maximum
a novice swimmer can descend to safely is 130 feet (40 metres). ere is,
furthermore, a linear relationship between depth and duration; the deeper
the dive the shorter the swimmer can remained submerged. Admittedly,
225 Mintz, ‘15 freighters believed to be linked to Al Qaeda’ ; Vijay Sakhuja, ‘Ter-
rorist’s underwater strategy’, Institute of peace and Conflict Studies, Article no.
1679, 22 March 2005.
226 ‘peril on the sea’; Mansoor Ijaz, ‘e maritime threat from al-Qaeda’, Financial
Times, 19 Oct. 2003.
227 Chalk, ‘Maritime terrorism in the contemporary era’, p. 37.
228 Davis, ‘Tiger International’; Bharadwaj, ‘Maritime aspects of Sri Lankan con-
flict’, p. 246.
246
small boats, weak states, dirty money
however, zeal can overcome a great deal and if a swimmer has no intention
of returning it might be possible to exceed these limits.
Swimmers are also slow: even the fittest diver using the most sophisticat-
ed fins cannot exceed two and a half miles per hour (4kph), while tides and
currents could slow this to zero or even push them backwards. Moreover,
speed under water cannot be increased by superior fitness alone; it requires
the proper application of technique, something that is not acquired easily.
Speed will also decrease with distance. e 5,000 metres is regarded as
the swimming equivalent of the Marathon. On the rare occasions it is at-
tempted it is swum unencumbered by “skin” swimmers in a pool. Attack or
suicide swimmers would be carrying loads. ey would also certainly need
to wear suits, a wet suit in the tropics and a dry suit everywhere else. Both
types would have a serious “drag” effect. With these factors in mind, the
maximum practical distance between a target and a launch point is unlikely
to be more than two kilometres (1.25 miles).
229
however, even extreme physical fitness would only be useful if the
swimmer could find the target: disorientation is a common problem. To
navigate from a start point to a target depends on the ability to master vec-
tor geometry, compass variation, tidal flow and currents. Novice divers are,
for the most part, incapable of navigating successfully without experienced
support. Outside the tropics, sea water is usually cold and dark even at
short distances from the shore. e environment in ports is not only dark
but turbulent and extremely noisy, which adds significantly to the disori-
entation problem. e owner of the Eindhoven diving school where Gomri
trained tried, with colleagues, to simulate a clandestine approach to a ship
in Rotterdam harbour. he reported that the dark waters and the deafening
noise made it difficult for even experienced divers to find what they were
looking for. In his view, a comparative amateur strapped with heavy explo-
sives, probably battling stress and fear, would quickly get into trouble.
230
Many of these problems could be overcome with mechanical assistance.
e range and load-carrying capacity of swimmers could be increased by
the use of Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs). e simplest are a type of
tug or sledge that pulls the swimmer along. ey do not, however, solve
the problems of navigation or disorientation. e most sophisticated ver-
229 however, it is worth noting that in May 1992 pLF swimmers reportedly swum
about 2.7 nautical miles (5 km) from a departure point in Jordan to Eilat pull-
ing water-proof containers or rafts. e reports do not indicate how long they
took. Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 16. (See below)
230 Rotella, ‘Fears persist of al-Qaeda link to dive centre’.