Question regarding the UK and coastal security.

[Smellincoffee]

Recently while watching "The Worst Jobs in History" on YouTube, I learned that riders in England were used to watch the coastline for small craft attempting to offload cargo in discrete areas, thus avoiding tariffs and the like.

I then wondered how British officials maintain coastal security today: what's to prevent small craft from piloting into a little cove and offloading small amounts of contraband (like guns or people attempting to infiltrate/escape)? Is the Royal Navy or the Maritime and Coastguard Agency so thorough that no craft coming from outside British territorial waters can reach the coast without being investigated?

For that matter, how do other nations deal with the problem of keeping coastlines secure from craft which are small enough to reach the coast directly but not so big as to be conspicuous?

 

[holy king]

we deal with that pretty well, i think there's never been an instance of it happening.

 

[Cutlass]

The US doesn't do it. It tries, up to an extent. But fails spectacularly.

 

[really]

I think it is intelligence based rather than left to chance. Police will know about an expected shipment and then use RAF Nimrods to track the ship.

Rather than landing contraband on the English coast many criminal organisations use the much less populated and watched Irish coast or the Spanish or Portuguese coasts - Ireland's biggest cocaine seizure was a shipment that was destined for London.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0703/drugs.html
A shipment came from South America, some guys from London were at a remote bay with an inflatable boat to meet it.

The sea was very rough and the guys and cocaine fell in the water.
One of them swam to shore and raised the alarm. The rest were rescued and arrested.

That one was caught just by chance - the criminals didn't know what they were doing - I think they put the wrong fuel in the outboard engines.

Generally along the west coast of Europe it depends on sharing intelligence and air surveillance - I have seen RAF Nimrods at Shannon airport loads of times.

 

[Samez]

I think there is no need to cover all the coast as the "infiltrator" will have to come from somewhere.
If the boat is small enough to sneak in undetected it will probably not be able to sail the high seas. So there will be some routes where these crafts have to pass through which can be covered by coastguard patrols, radar and sonar detectors.
Also the local population / police will help to find any unusual activity when the infiltrators are ashore.

 

[Dragonlord]

Recently while watching "The Worst Jobs in History" on YouTube, I learned that riders in England were used to watch the coastline for small craft attempting to offload cargo in discrete areas, thus avoiding tariffs and the like.

I then wondered how British officials maintain coastal security today: what's to prevent small craft from piloting into a little cove and offloading small amounts of contraband (like guns or people attempting to infiltrate/escape)? Is the Royal Navy or the Maritime and Coastguard Agency so thorough that no craft coming from outside British territorial waters can reach the coast without being investigated?

For that matter, how do other nations deal with the problem of keeping coastlines secure from craft which are small enough to reach the coast directly but not so big as to be conspicuous?

AFAIK, developed nations have a coastal radar system with controllers (like flight controllers) giving ships sea lanes and the like. I'm sure they keep an eye out for unidentified radar blips and alert the Coast Guard to go take a look. OTOH, I very much doubt this can be done flawlessly for small craft ... especially if a would-be smuggler is smart enough to use inflatables, which would not readily show up on radar.

we deal with that pretty well, i think there's never been an instance of it happening.

Yeah, I'm sure Austria has a pretty seamless 'coastal defence'.

 

[warpus]

In Poland we have an extensive laser-based coastal defense network.

 

[really]

I think there is no need to cover all the coast as the "infiltrator" will have to come from somewhere.
If the boat is small enough to sneak in undetected it will probably not be able to sail the high seas. So there will be some routes where these crafts have to pass through which can be covered by coastguard patrols, radar and sonar detectors.
Also the local population / police will help to find any unusual activity when the infiltrators are ashore.

Eh no - Ireland has one of the longest coastlines in the EU and we don't have any coastal radar or sonar.

A common path would be - a yacht or adapted trawler carries contraband from the Caribbean. They meet a smaller boat which picks up the contraband and brings it to shore. The first boat then continues on it's way as if it was just a normal trip.

 

[GinandTonic]

AFAIK, developed nations have a coastal radar system with controllers (like flight controllers) giving ships sea lanes and the like. I'm sure they keep an eye out for unidentified radar blips and alert the Coast Guard to go take a look. OTOH, I very much doubt this can be done flawlessly for small craft ... especially if a would-be smuggler is smart enough to use inflatables, which would not readily show up on radar.

The shipping control is transponder based, but so is air-traffic control.

The land-based radar are supposed to be able to pick up a sea skimming missile so I guess they would be able to pick up all but the smallest ships, but I'm not at all sure how practical it would be to search a meaningful amount of them. There must be tens of thousands of small boats on the south coast alone. I guess a few random searches and the rest intellegence led.