Pentagon Innovation Office Wants Nonlethal Weapon to Stop Smuggling Boats

 

Following two drone strikes on suspected smuggling vessels and the elimination of 14 suspected smugglers off Venezuela, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has put out a solicitation for off-the-shelf "non-kinetic" options for stopping small smuggling craft closer to home - specifically without undue risk of fatalities. 

The solicitation calls for proposals for a "show-stopper" device that can stop small boats, like those used to smuggle drugs and immigrants across U.S. maritime borders. Most U.S.-bound border crossings happens shoreside on the southern border, with smaller maritime components off San Diego, Brownsville and Puerto Rico; citing a "growing security challenge" on the water, DIU is looking for nonlethal ways to stop the small craft that make maritime cross-border smuggling possible.

"These agile vessels, often operating in densely populated areas and under cover of darkness, require interdiction strategies that do not expose the suspect vessel’s operators, civilian bystanders, and law enforcement personnel conducting the interdiction to an undue level of risk," DIU said in a statement. 

The DIU's solicitation laid out an example of a typical interaction off Southern California. A U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat gives chase to a suspect vessel operating at high speed in U.S. territorial waters. As the Coast Guard closes in, the small craft swerves repeatedly to deter a boarding. Then, to escape capture, the suspect vessel’s operator tosses his phone into the water and turns back towards the maritime boundary with Mexico. At this point, USCG rules of engagement allow the use of force - but the Coast Guard boat crew assesses that the use of disabling fire would put others at risk, including the vessel's occupants. Without kinetic engagement, the smuggling boat gets away across the Mexican boundary line, and the USCG boat has to give up the chase. 

Had the USCG patrol boat been fitted with a "nonlethal" method of stopping the suspect vessel, it could have completed the interdiction, DIU suggested - without hurting the passengers aboard the smuggling craft. 

To fill this perceived gap, DIU wants to buy a ready-to-use solution for disabling one small watercraft (or its operator) through non-kinetic means, without significant collateral damage to people or property. As examples, DIU cited microwave weapons and electronic attack. The selected option must be capable of disabling one or more high-speed watercraft at a time, deployable on Coast Guard patrol boats as small as 25 feet, and usable up to sea state 3.  

The most prominent, technically mature system in this category is Epirus' Leonidas microwave air defense system, which has been adapted for maritime deployment as the Leonidas H20. In testing it has proven proficient at disabling outboard motors by taking out their electronics, at "record ranges."

"Anything with little computers in it and stuff, is susceptible to these persistent fields of energy," said Epirus CEO Andy Lowery, speaking to Defense News earlier this year. "It kind of uses the water as a mirror, and so [we] can use the water to our advantage, that is it hits certain spots in even further distances by using reflections off the water."

The company already has a mini "pod" variant that is light enough to mount on a drone, along with a vehicle-mounted version that has been trialed on the Stryker platform.