Customer Reviews

Maritime Security

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This book focuses not only on integrating the highly complex issues associated with maritime security, but also on the sensitive problem of incorporating imagination to acquire foresight into future threats. As Mr. Hawkes points out, quality intelligence remains a matter of high priority. "...protective measures ...must be capable in all instances of performing two absolutely imperative tasks. They must provide timely and accurate warning of an impending threat, and they must be capable of removing or neutralizing that threat by repelling, capturing, or killing those persons whose actions or intentions constitute it." P 9.

As an excellent example of the methodology for maritime intelligence and special operations, Maritime Security presents a clear, consequential, and linear picture of how properly planned performance can avert disaster. "In-depth security establishes multiple security perimeters or lines of defense through which an attacker, saboteur, hijacker, or other criminal must penetrate... All of the awareness, planning, and preparedness a manager or master may bring to bear is of no value whatsoever if, when the chips are down, people fail to act. Timely reaction cannot exist, by definition, in the absence of action. In order for a crew to act it must be commanded by a master willing to be decisive, and it must have trained to the point where action is almost instinctive." P 11-13.

This book deserves the highest praise for elaborating on principles and insisting on quality control, and is written with a love of the industry in general and the special people involved in particular. Hawkes is obviously one of the small class of maritime intelligence operators who have actually been there. "Two of the toughest security policy decisions faced by any maritime organization involve the employment of security forces and the arming of those forces...If...the threat is not known, but is should reasonably be known, it is negligence (the law does not accept the head-in-the-sand excuse). Once the security threat is recognized or should have been recognized, the maritime operator has a duty under the law to provide reasonable security...Contingency planning and crisis management policies go hand in hand. The key to both is foreseeability...One effective contingency planning tool that can be utilized at various organizational levels is the practice of gaming." P 232-233.

Managers, and commanders cannot ignore the kind of rigorous analysis this book offers without diminishing their efforts and responsibility to provide adequate security.