Posted on 09/12/2002 10:15:38 AM PDT by Brytani
Fox News just broke in with an alert. Special Op's are now searching a Liberian flagged ship 8 miles off the coast of NJ looking for nuclear material. More information to follow.
To say the least. Thanks for posting that.
Semi submersibles are wood (older ones) or fiberglass for low radar signature, and use small sailboat engines which exhaust their gases underwater to disperse the heat signature. They have only inches of freeboard above the waterline, and pumps hose cold seawater onto carpet remnents fixed over the very well insulated engine compartments to knock down any IR signature.
They go slow (@ 5 knots) for no wake signature (big "go-fast" wakes are easy to see from the air) and have a very long range, over 1000 miles if needed. They can pass within a mile of a cutter and not be seen, and are easy and cheap to build covertly, far easier to build and operate than true submersibles, and nearly as stealthy. With GPS connected to anautopilot, they can even be sent as unmanned drones. A semisubmersible carrying a WMD could be launched at sea, and sent right into a US harbor by GPS and autopilot, or a happy Jihadist could do the navigating.
I'm not saying that anything like a semi submersible is likely to be used in this case, I just want to bring folks up to speed on what's out there in the happy world of smuggling (dope, agents or WMDs).
2) Notify Riyadh, Damascus, Teheran, Baghdad and Islamabad that they will cease to exist within 48 hours of a nuclear detonation in or near the United States.
3) Oh yeah, by the way-if the people who loaded neutrons onto this ship are not at Camp XRay by Saturday afternoon, they will cease to exist anyway.
I think I'll be having a drink or three tonight.
It was probably from the cargo on pleasure boats passing by. The ones driven by the guys with the cotton helmets. LOL
The speculation was the washing machine was the stand-in for a nuke on a "dry run" to test the smuggling system.
The "Davy Crockett" was a recoilless rifle roundwith a nuclear warhead. Casing diameter was 11 inches at its widest point; length was 30 inches long. Yield was variable from 0.01 kilotons (about four-five times as big as the Alfred P. Murrah Building truck bomb) to 1 kiloton (400-500 times as large as the APMFB device).
Something like that would fit inside a file cabinet. I don't see how you could check everything closely enough to prevent a cagey opponent from smuggling in a small nuke--one could simply hide it inside an electrical transformer casing with layers of boron-impregnated foam rubber and lead to stop the signatures from leaking out.
I'm going to have to find Erwin Strauss' book, Basement Nukes: the Consequences of Cheap Weapons of Mass Destruction.
I think the bad guys are smart (tactically) and understand that there are many ways to surprise us.
Man-portable nukes delivered underwater to NYC (they are obsessed with NYC) or to DC would be very surprising, no? Especially if they were seeded by a mothership that was long gone by the time they went off.
I can't believe any Muslim male noncitizen is still in this country-just cannot effin' believe it.
The airlock opening and closing?
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/09/12/national1454EDT0688.DTL
(09-12) 11:54 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon sent a team Thursday to try to determine if there are radioactive materials on a ship detained off the coast of New Jersey.
The specialists were to follow up after one test showed traces of radioactivity were detected in the cargo of the M/V Palermo Senator -- and a second test turned out inconclusive, defense officials said.
The Liberian-flagged container ship was ordered back to sea, that is, to stay in a security zone six miles offshore while the inspection continues, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.
The ship was directed to a berth at the Port Newark/Elizabeth Marine Terminal after a Coast Guard team boarded the vessel Tuesday. Team members reported hearing suspicious sounds in several of the ship's cargo holds, but found no evidence of stowaways and said they could not determine the source.
Officials have declined to describe the cargo.
But trace radiation could come from a number of sources, such as clay, pipes that have been used for a long time underground in oil excavation and so on, defense officials said.
Good for him. Bibi and Blair are the only ones who get it. On another note, this is probably not related but it's NJ and you never know what will be uncovered at a later date. Again, look at the timing.
FBI agents search homes of two brothers, warehouse in Bergen County
The Associated Press - 9/12/02 2:54 AM
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- FBI agents searched the homes of two brothers and also went to a warehouse in Bergen County where one of them operates a business, but officials would not say what spurred the investigation.
Dozens of agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force spent several hours Tuesday at CRC, a circuit-board manufacturing company in Maywood, The Record of Bergen County reported in Thursday's editions. They also searched the Ho-Ho-Kus home of its owner, Pradip "Paul" Kabaria, and the Paramus home of his brother, Ashok.
Pradip Kabaria would not comment, saying he wanted to speak first with his attorney, and Ashok Kabaria was not immediately available for comment. Witnesses said the agents photographed each property and removed several boxes filled with various items.
Joseph Valiquette, a spokesman for the FBI's New York office, would only say that the investigation was ongoing and that no arrests had been made. Special Agent Sandra Carroll, an FBI spokeswoman in Newark, confirmed that members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force had executed a search warrant at the Ho-Ho-Kus home, but declined further comment.
Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said his department and other local law enforcement agencies were not told about the investigation until minutes before the searches began at all three properties. He said his offer to help in the investigation was declined.
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