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Defense Against Ship as a Weapon

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. / As an example of ships used as weapons (SAW), an oil tanker is hijacked and commandeered by terrorists to collide with a high-value maritime or shore target. If sunk or destroyed in a shipping lane as a result of a counter measure, the SAW’s collateral damage would severely disrupt the traffic flow in the shipping lane. To prevent such a disruptive catastrophe, non-destructive measures must be implemented to cause the SAW to deviate from its destructive path toward the target. One such a measure involves a strategic application of forces induced by water plume barriers (WPB) to the SAW. The goal of this thesis is to examine the feasibility of realizing such a measure.
Toward this goal, a mission analysis, using the Singapore Strait as setting and petrochemical plants on Jurong Island as targets of a SAW attack, establishes the requirement on the deviation of the SAW path from its destructive course. The nominal WPB-induced force that satisfies the deviation requirement is estimated using ship hydrostatics. Solving the equations of motion governing the response of the SAW to a strategic application of a WPB-induced force yields the SAW’s motion, which is used to define a range of the WPB-induced forces and their application locations and durations that satisfy the SAW’s path deviation requirement.
Parametric studies were conducted for a range of physically realizable WPB-induced forces and application times. The results demonstrate that, in principle, the objectives of this work are achievable. These results will be validated upon the completion of an on-going research by National University of Singapore. The range of the WPB-generated forces and their application durations serve as requirements to the generation of water plume barriers.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:nps.edu/oai:calhoun.nps.edu:10945/14850
Date01 November 2012
CreatorsKoh, Wee Yung
ContributorsPapoulias, Fotis A., Huynh, Thomas V., Cheong, Khoo Boo, Dec-11, Cheong, Khoo Boo, Mechanical Engineering
PublisherMonterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Source SetsNaval Postgraduate School
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsThis publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. As such, it is in the public domain, and under the provisions of Title 17, United States Code, Section 105, it may not be copyrighted.

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