The 7. 30 Boat

Sea mines are the original stealth weapon that just silently sit and wait. As of the late 1990s, thirty-one nations manufactured mines and twenty exported them. While our capabilities to address this threat has improved, the mission of mine warfare is one of the most underfunded in the defense agenda. The thing to remember is, barring intelligence informing us of the presence of mines, the only way you find out a mine is present is when it detonates. If a dedicated terrorist group could obtain one or two of these weapons, the result could be staggering. Aside from a horrendous cost in life, mining our harbors could cripple the national economy. In the 1980s, the West Coast lived through a maritime labor strike that closed the West Coast ports. The strike lasted ten days at a cost of $13 billion a day! That was a planned event. Imagine the ensuing chaos that would result from an unexpected mine detonation in one of our harbors. This book examines the frightening "what-if."