The world's shipping lanes are an area of intense focus in the Global War on Terror. Every day millions of tons of cargo are shipped through thousands of ports. Most cargo is harmless, however, some ships carry the weapons and human operators of terrorist organizations. To prevent the spread of weapons and terror suspects on the sea lanes, the cargo, passengers, and crew of these vessels must be subject to a level of scrutiny that is orders of magnitude greater than current efforts. The ability to rapidly extend a network and provide virtual expert services to Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS) boarding teams is crucial to protecting the United States and its allies from seaborne terror attacks and infiltration. This thesis uses scenario-based experimentation to examine the methods for implementing near-real-time collaborative work spaces in a virtual environment able to support VBSS operation anywhere in the world, limited only by network connectivity. The use of collaborative tools vastly increases the amount, type, and accuracy of information that can be processed. Radiation detection or classification and biometric fusion are among the hundreds of virtual collaborative sources that can be leveraged as force multipliers to bring network centric warfare to the maritime security domain.
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