Surface Forces: August 19, 2003

Archives

Singapore has become a major base for the U.S. Navy. The small island republic has a well educated population (of only 3.3 million) and excellent infrastructure and is a popular port of call. But Singapore is a non-Moslem nation in the middle of a heavily Moslem area. To further protect the areas of the harbor where American warships often tie up, Singapore is taking five decommissioned LSTs and anchoring them in a line to block any potential seaborne attackers. Singapore has arrested about 30 suspected Islamic radicals in their territory in the past few years and interrogations revealed that one of the terrorist attacks planned was using small boats full of explosives against U.S. warships. Each LST is about 330 feet long, meaning the five ships will create a barrier some 500 meters long. The LSTs are only towed out for security duty when there are ships in port that might be targets.

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contributions. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   Contribute   Close