Members of Congress should be more concerned about the threat of terrorists using mines and small boats to attack multiple U.S. ports and disrupt the economy, according to a U.S. Coast Guard expert.

Lawmakers should grant more funding to port surveillance to counter the threat, Guy Thomas, science and technology adviser for maritime domain awareness at the Coast Guard, said in an interview.

Instead, lawmakers are focusing port security spending on scanning shipping containers for a nuclear bomb, which most experts in the Coast Guard and intelligence community agree should be less of a priority than maritime domain awareness, he said.

In the president’s National Strategy for Maritime Security, maritime domain awareness is defined as “an effective understanding of anything in the maritime environment that can effect the safety, security, economy, or environment of the United States.” Funding for maritime domain awareness is a “pittance” compared to that for container security, says Thomas. He acknowledges that in “full disclosure,” he works at the Coast Guard’s maritime domain awareness office.

The government is scanning shipping containers for radiation in case terrorists plant a nuclear bomb. But terrorists would not want to lose control of the weapon and would not need to if they used a cheap small boat to carry the weapon, Thomas argues.

Lawmakers have preferred to fund container scanning technology because “it’s visible and your congressman gets points for doing something” that is more dramatic and TV-friendly than installing cameras, radars and sensors, according to Thomas.

A scenario that greatly troubles him is that terrorists might use multiple small boats — carrying chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and coordinated via inexpensive satellite radio — to attack several U.S. ports at one time. Or the terrorists might use the boats to disperse anthrax all over a city, he said.

Terrorists “could also drop mines in the harbor as they entered to really slow seaborne relief operations to the port,” Thomas said.

He was reluctant to talk about a multiple port attack scenario until recently, when he found others openly discussing it.

He is concerned about mines because there are “hundreds of thousands” of them potentially available to terrorists. The mines could be easily hidden underwater and “lie in wait” until a ship passes by and is hit, leading to closure of a port.

An attack by mine on a port would be harder for authorities to manage than an attack by an improvised explosive device or truck bomb near a port, as it would be harder to know if additional mines had been planted, Thomas said.

After witnessing several war games, Thomas believes the Navy lacks the mine dispersal capability to deal with more than one mine attack on a port. However, it might be able to handle two such attacks if they were located close together, he added.

The Coast Guard is deciding how best to conduct surveillance of ports under a program called Command 2100, which Thomas says needs more funding. The Coast Guard thought the program would receive funding last year and was “dumbfounded” when it did not. The agency will be emphasizing the program’s importance to Congress this year, according to Thomas.

Delays to the program have caused it to be named Command 2100 after it was clear the hoped-for deadline for implementation implied in its original name, Command 2010, would not be met.

Thomas favors using airships such as blimps, aerostats, or tethered lighter-than-air aircraft, and satellites to surveil ports.

Airships and aerostats can be used to monitor up to 100 miles from shore at a lower cost than manned aircraft.

Another way to increase maritime security is to hold smaller ships to the same requirements as larger ones — smaller ships should have to report identifying information once they are within at least 96 hours of U.S. shores, Thomas said.

Also, the current 96-hour requirement for large ships “might not be enough” if a ship deliberately misreports information. U.S. intelligence agencies should have more time to discover falsification, and satellites could receive the information at a greater length from shore than radars currently in use, he said.

The small boat reporting requirement would act as a deterrent to terrorists and another benefit would be interdicting drug smugglers.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, has said he wants to focus on increasing the security of small vessels.

The Coast Guard will hold a summit in June on improving security of small boats.

“We’ve done a great deal in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to secure our ports from potential threats posed by commercial ships, but we know very little about the 77 million U.S. boaters or the 13 million recreational vessels that ply U.S. waters,” Allen said in March.

“This leaves us extremely vulnerable to a U.S.S. Cole-style attack within one of our ports or waterways,” Allen said.

Allen was referring to the 2000 attack in the Middle East port of Aden, Yemen, in which two men in a small boat set off a bomb that crippled the U.S. Navy destroyer U.S.S. Cole and killed 17 of its sailors.

The National Strategy for Maritime Security summarizes a variety of tactics commonly mentioned as maritime security risks:

“Terrorists can also develop effective attack capabilities relatively quickly using . . . explosives-laden suicide boats and light aircraft; merchant and cruise ships as kinetic weapons to ram another vessel, warship, port facility, or offshore platform; commercial vessels as launch platforms for missile attacks; underwater swimmers to infiltrate ports; and unmanned underwater explosive delivery vehicles. Mines are also an effective weapon. . . .Terrorists can also take advantage of a vessel’s legitimate cargo, such as chemicals, petroleum, or liquefied natural gas, as the explosive component of an attack. Vessels can be used to transport powerful conventional explosives or WMD for detonation in a port or alongside an offshore facility.”

The United States has more than 360 ports.

Eleanor Stables can be reached at estables@cq.com.