Word: vessels
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Emergency precautions were of no use. There were lifeboats aboard the rig, but there was no time to use them. An emergency-support vessel, the Tharos, was permanently anchored nearby to help out in just such a catastrophe. It aimed its fire hoses at the Piper Alpha but was forced to turn away as the explosions continued. Twenty-eight ships, including a seven-unit NATO naval force led by the U.S. destroyer Hayler, quickly assembled to take part in a rescue mission, as did Royal Air Force reconnaissance planes and helicopters...
Enter technology, in the form of the Aegis system. It is designed to enable a single vessel to protect an entire Navy battle group from all sorts of attack. The Vincennes is one of eleven U.S. cruisers equipped with the system, and the first to be deployed in the Persian Gulf. Phased-array radars constantly sweep the skies over a vast swatch of ocean. They can track more than 100 aircraft, surface ships, submarines, missiles and torpedoes simultaneously. All show up as white symbols on one of four blue screens; each symbol is in a particular shape, identifying the object...
...military interception capabilities are more effective at sea than in the air. One reason: a smuggling vessel can be tracked for a day or more, providing ample time for the Navy to reach, stop and inspect it. But some border-hopping Cessnas can fly to their unloading airstrips and slip out of the U.S. again in half an hour. Even if Air Force radar planes such as the AWACS or E-2C surveillance craft spot the intruders, there is not much time to alert lawmen on the ground, get them to the strip and make arrests before the drug traffickers...
Sometimes it's the little things that count. How little? In San Diego last week U.S. Customs agents seized Atlantis II, an $80 million research vessel once used to explore the wrack of the Titanic, after a routine search turned up traces of pot in the shaving kit of a crew member along with two marijuana pipes. The ship was returned, but only when its owner, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, agreed to send Customs officials a letter supporting the antidrug campaign and promising to tighten security. Zero tolerance strikes again...
...means seizing vehicles, boats and planes if just a speck of any controlled substance is found on board. By last week the Coast Guard and Customs had grabbed some 1,700 conveyances, including the $2.5 million yacht Ark Royal and the good ship Monkey Business, famed as the holiday vessel of Gary Hart and Donna Rice. Those two ships were also returned, but the fate of hundreds of less celebrated transports still hangs in the balance...