Stopping the pirates

Putting weapons on commercial shipping vessels is illegal according to certain treaties I believe. But I'd be all for having hidden machine gun turrets pop out of the deck if under attack and just open up on the pirates. :D
Hey, it didn't stopped the British from putting guns on their merchant ships to deture German U-boats back in World War I :p.
 
The thing with commerce raiders of any sort is, they're small and the ocean is large. Hunt and destroy tactics mostly involve stumbling on the right target, and Q-ships involve luck and the hope that they'll attack YOUR commercial vessel and not your friends'

Of course in this case it's made worse by the simple fact that just because it looks like a pirate boat doesn't mean it's a pirate boat, so the best known mean of destroying commerce raiders, airpower, runs afoul of political complications. Airpower is great when you can shoot on sight. (The other great Anti-Commerce-Raiders weapon, smashing their homeports, run into the same sort of complications, except worse)

I suppose if things keep getting worse and reach a point where something must be done, convoy tactics of some form may be looked into, although those are enormously resource-intensive.

Alternatively I suppose some sort of "You step in this part of the ocean without properly identifying yourself, we sink you" policy coupled with the use of airpower (I'm envisioning something perhaps more in the nature of one or two of those USMC amphibious assault ship coupled with two or three lightweight carriers from the Rest of the World) could be considered.

In either case, I don't think thesituation right now is bad enough to make either of those answer politically workable or cost-effective.
 
Mercs are probably the most effective way but they're expensive and pirate "threats" are kind of overrated. They don't really capture or attack very many ships, just the ones you read about in the news every once and a while. If they did disrupt shipping as much as we are made to believe then we would be bombing Somalia right now.

There were eight documented attacks this month alone.

There are navy ships patrolling the area, but obviously they haven't been very effective. Either the powers aren't taking the threat seriously for whatever reason (Somalia's been at war for almost two decades most Western powers don't really care anymore), or the pirates are simply too powerful (as is the case with the French).
 
Short of hiring mercenaries, it seems like it would be pretty cheap just to mount machine guns bow and stern, and train the crew to use them once a year. Keep em covered up so the salt doesn't get in, and boats start getting too close, open em up.
 
Mercs are probably the most effective way but they're expensive and pirate "threats" are kind of overrated. They don't really capture or attack very many ships, just the ones you read about in the news every once and a while. If they did disrupt shipping as much as we are made to believe then we would be bombing Somalia right now.

Presently the most cost effective thing to do is to ignore the threat, make sure your pirate insurance is in order and simply hope one of your ships isn't unlucky enough to be targeted.

http://sourcesandmethods.blogspot.com/2008/11/live-pirate-map-no-not-that-kind-icc.html
 
I'm guessing the pirates board at night, from small skiffs that probably are almost undetectable among the waves by your average commercial surface-search radar - but even in the daytime merchant ships don't tend to keep an eyeball lookout, and certainly less so behind the ship rather than ahead of it. And these ships pull into ports in countries where pellet guns are regulated - grenades, full-auto rifles and shorty shotguns are going to be no-nos, aside from what Patroklos pointed out about you not wanting "irregular" crews to have opportunities to play pirate themselves. And the pirates really only need to take a couple hostages among the crew in order to force the entire crew to surrender (under the rules everyone seems to be playing by currently).

While Q-ships are a great idea, and I think that individual merchant ships should be able to defend themselves from this (better lookouts, boarding defense preps), but ultimately quelling the problem since it has gotten so out of hand will take strategic measures. I think there needs to be a bit of escalation. These pirate skiffs have "mother ships" (they'd need to, to reach out beyond 50nm or so) - identify the mother ships, and put a torpedo into them. I mean, come on - station a few subs in the area, pirates won't be detecting burst radio transmissions or subs proceeding at flank to intercept them. Have the Saudis underwrite an AWACS patrol. The insurance companies can offer bounties on pirate skiffs, there's a few different possibilities here.
 
There were eight documented attacks this month alone.

However, there are 16,000 merchant ships that transit the Gulf of Aden every year. You do the cost benefit analysis of putting mercs on every one.

There are navy ships patrolling the area, but obviously they haven't been very effective. Either the powers aren't taking the threat seriously for whatever reason (Somalia's been at war for almost two decades most Western powers don't really care anymore), or the pirates are simply too powerful (as is the case with the French).

Every ship that has used the security corridor maintaind by CTF 150 (ie most of them) has transited the area unscathed. It is the vessels that refuse to use them or think they are out of the range of the pirates that get attacked, and even then only an EXTREME minority.
 
India is a regular contributor of vessels to CTF 150. I believe Canada holds the flag there at the moment.
 
Short of hiring mercenaries, it seems like it would be pretty cheap just to mount machine guns bow and stern, and train the crew to use them once a year. Keep em covered up so the salt doesn't get in, and boats start getting too close, open em up.

Except that training them cost money and crews are not permanent and are always coming and going ship to ship, company to company from countries all over the world. Most likely the pirates sneak aboard the ship with out anyone noticing so what good would those guns do? Not to mention that every single port and country has different laws on weapons in their territory.
 
Time to bring back the Q-ships. It's the only way to counter these pirates.


Time for Global Hawks for Hire: UAV on demand---anywhere, anytime.

4_global_hawk.jpg
 
you cant just put armed guards and machine gun mounts on commercial ships there are treaties you know
 
Indians have sunk a mothership which is a good start.

Brits handed the survivors of the scuffle last week over to the Kenyan anthorities, who retain the death penalty for armed robbery. Prob not allowed to hang their heads from the frount of the ship any more, but still a start.

After the Saudi's get their tanker back they can bomb the crap out of Puntland. I mean really, these guys have managed to pissoff just about everyone.
 
Mercs are probably the most effective way but they're expensive and pirate "threats" are kind of overrated. They don't really capture or attack very many ships, just the ones you read about in the news every once and a while. If they did disrupt shipping as much as we are made to believe then we would be bombing Somalia right now.

Presently the most cost effective thing to do is to ignore the threat, make sure your pirate insurance is in order and simply hope one of your ships isn't unlucky enough to be targeted.

I think that when it comes to thinking of excuses for doing nothing
about growing threats, I preferred the, do nothing after 9/11 because
the suicide hijackers were dead and can not repeat it, type of argument.
 
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