Pirates

[Ananda]

gf0012-aust, I see piracy as an organised crime and if we do not have the correct intelligence on their networks and the ability to threaten their support networks and sanctuary on land, these pirates/criminals will be tempted to escalate the level of violence, as a deterrence to further enforcement actions by the navies deployed.

Therefore, I agree that part of the solution does lie on land but it is not the quick fix john rambo type of solution.

Some what is said in the above post supports your point on the right to bear defensible arms. Business as usual for these pirates cannot be allowed to go on infinitely.

Piracy is an organized crime that derive with the lack or absent law and order and good gorvernance in the area. So I agree on this and I have to differ with some oppinions in this forum or several others in the internet that put piracy as same liege with terorism...(unless now all crimes also being calculated as terorism).

I agree at this moment all international community must join hand with patrroling the area especially the us, european, and asia pacific countries that have means to do that. I also wants to add that one of our SIGMA corvetes that due to patroll libanon waters as part of UN contigency for at least a month will be put also in the somali's water.

However as I put it in my previous comment..how long the international community can afford this ??
Without a stable government in the horn of africa, the pirates can stay away or lay low for a month...and launch again if they saw the patrolling force is lessesing.

The ball is in their (pirates) hand to chosse to act, while the international community can only react and wait.
Also we do not need to go burn all the shipd in the somali coast (for instance)..but just looking where the money is..
As I remember hearing from several media, the money backers of this pirates activities...are not stationes in Somali (even though most of them are somali's)...but in the relative calmed neighbour's ports (like Mombassa or even in Tanzania)...
Cut the money flow, than the pirates will be down..

 

[OPSSG]

Could something similar to the Air Marshal concept be effective in such situations ? basicaly i feel the objective is the same i.e. to prevent the hijack of a vessel

- comments any one

p.s - i dont know if this has been discussed previously, if so...

@dragonfire, good to see you around. Please read SpudmanWP's post #264 onwards (on his idea to station 4 men armed response teams) and Swerve's replies on the problems with his idea.

Keep in mind that air marshals deal with internal passenger threats. The pirate threat is external to the merchant ship and they can use multiple boats to swarm a merchant ship, so any armed response team needs to be sufficiently robust, or it will just escalate the level of violence. If armed security fire bullets, the pirates have the option of firing multiple RPGs. There was a recent case of 3 unarmed British private security workers (from Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions) guarding a chemical tanker who jumped overboard after Somali pirates successfully attacked the vessel. Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions had teams on ten ships off Somalia – each costing £14,000 for three days.

In this case, the 3 were using a non-lethal audio device (or LRAD), which blasts "directional, high quality verbal challenges" over long distances. The hijacked vessel fired water cannon at the pirates and zigzagged the vessel. It was reported that the security team beat off three or four attacks but the pirates then began firing RPGs at the non-lethal audio device operator. There is some online discussion on why this solution did not work, including speculation that they did not have enough of these non-lethal audio devices to watch the stern of the vessel and that the model used was not powerful enough.

In short, the current solutions available are not cheap and not easy to implement properly, as the pirates are now fairly capable and have been in business for some time.

Cut the money flow, than the pirates will be down...

@Ananda, agreed. The problem is how to trace the money or the network. Much better intelligence is necessary (gathered at an affordable cost), if we are to make any dent to the growing problem of piracy.

 

[John Sansom]

Non-lethal defence devices tend not to work when the attacker understands that the consequence of his action is, at worst, some discomfort. A carefully crafted merchant marine defence policy is urgently required, one which does not prohibit a skipper and well-trained crew members from having access to an arms locker.

Yes, I appreciate that this presents problems with respect to unanticipated outcomes, etc., etc. However, if we decide we can't take definitive defensive steps because things might get too complicated, why not just send the pirates a money order for a couple of million bucks every week or so?

Now, if I can be really picky for a moment.... When I served briefly on tankers, the crew in general was referred to as merchant mariners NOT merchant marines. Why does the media--CBC, CNN, and others--insist on referring to merchant mariners as merchant marines?

 

[SpudmanWP]

You still haven't satisfactorily addressed the numbers, or the other issues mentioned here. But for this lot -
Small boats do not have to approach large ships. They can just loiter in the large ships path. You start shooting up every small boat dead in the water in your path, you will (quite rightly) be charged with murder. Could be an innocent fisherman. Could have broken down.

"attaches to the flat deck via magnetic clamps" - you're sure that there are going to be enough suitable accessible flat bits of deck with unobstructed views?

ROEs should be no engaging until weapons are brandished. For any suspect boat in your path, the team waits for the pirates to make the first move. The key is, that the team has the ability to inflict a lot of damage to the pirate vessel in a short period of time.

If the team is a military one, then they have access to weapons such as Javelin that are fire-and-forget and can take out any small vessel from a great distance.

In situations where they are being swarmed, they could call on a naval UAV carrying DAGR type missiles. There is also a drop-in minigun kit that will turn a V-22 into a mini-gunship.

A few messages ago in the tread, someone found a price for a 3-day security team at 14k pounds. So, someone has determined that there is a need and a way to do it logisically.

The US Navy's LCS program is a great answer to this problem. My favorite is the GD LCS program (http://www.gdlcs.com/). It's huge flightdeck lends itself to greater UAV operations and will do 40 knots.

 

[zoolander]

i think we should just use private security contractors. they are multinational corporations using multinationals working for multinational corporations operating in international waters. Just have them like slaughter the pirates. No one gave a dam in iraq, i doubt they will in the open seas. no political implications either.

 

[zoolander]

3 Nice shots but was it hard to do?

I praise the Seal Team and the US Navy for taking out those idiots out there taking people hostage but was it a hard shot to do? From the news reports I read, it stated the life boat was being towed on like a 75 feet rope. So like a shot from 80 feet or less than 30 yards, is not far at all. don't they still do like pistol shooting at that range? from the documentaries, these snipers routinely practice at like 1000 yards and out.

 

[SpudmanWP]

Three, simultaneous, shots at a bobbing target 75 feet away.... hard enough

 

[swerve]

ROEs should be no engaging until weapons are brandished. For any suspect boat in your path, the team waits for the pirates to make the first move. The key is, that the team has the ability to inflict a lot of damage to the pirate vessel in a short period of time.

If the team is a military one, then they have access to weapons such as Javelin that are fire-and-forget and can take out any small vessel from a great distance.

In situations where they are being swarmed, they could call on a naval UAV carrying DAGR type missiles. There is also a drop-in minigun kit that will turn a V-22 into a mini-gunship.

A few messages ago in the tread, someone found a price for a 3-day security team at 14k pounds. So, someone has determined that there is a need and a way to do it logisically.

The US Navy's LCS program is a great answer to this problem. My favorite is the GD LCS program (http://www.gdlcs.com/). It's huge flightdeck lends itself to greater UAV operations and will do 40 knots.

Of course it's possible to provide security guards - but there are not, currently, the logistical facilities to provide more than a few teams. You're proposing something orders of magnitude larger & more complicated, requiring a very large investment. Those 3-day teams have only non-lethal equipment, BTW, & not the sophisticated & expensive sensors you propose. Got a price for all that kit? A price for Javelin missiles? £14000 for three days is going to seem very cheap, compared to your blokes.

In "situations where they are being swarmed", any ships crew can call for help. They don't need an armed security team to do that.

If you look at the pirates behaviour you'll see that apart from some rather poor ship recognition skills (e.g. attacking a Bundesmarine supply ship nfloorl: ), the pirates have generally been pretty clever, & adapted well to changing circumstances. If you shoot up anyone who brandishes weapons, expect no brandishing.

As for V-22 gunships & the like - have you not noticed that the availability of gunships is not a problem? The ships already there have helicopters with plenty of armament to deal with pirates - if they can be positively identified.

 

[SpudmanWP]

If a company can currently do it for 14k , then expanding the program will only make it cheaper due to economies of scale.

The Javelins are for the military, my initial proposal was civilian teams.

Re: those 14k unarmed teams, being unarmed was part of the problem. The pirates have come to know that there has been no downside to attacking. If the are rebuffed, then they can just try again. They need to know that when they attack ships, it can cost their own lives.

The security teams need to be armed, with serious firepower, in order to delay the attack in case they cannot deal with it themselves. They need to rebuff the pirates long enough in order to give the military assets enough time to arrive.

There are plenty of COTS radar and FLIR equipment on the market for a reasonable price.

 

[Sea Toby]

As long as the pirates are asking for money, that is one thing. There will be a different response from the world when the pirates start killing hostages.

And our inept UN hasn't even passed a resolution to ban paying the pirates off to release hostages yet either. In my mind taking of hostages is a crime, but I also think paying them to release hostages should be banned as well.

As long as the money flows, there will be pirates. Its a lucrative business.

 

[StingrayOZ]

I think the idea of the security team was to hopefully the pirates would be discouraged when they encountered a ship with some sort of professional security detail on it.

Given that pirates have been attacking Naval vessels and trying to play ransom/blackmail games against some of the hardest players (directly engaging nuclear power navies) and have been extremely brasen I don't think symbolic show of force is going to repel them.

What needs to be established is a no go corridor that is strictly enforced and regularly patrolled from the air and from the surface that only specific commerical vessels can enter. I would say small arms may not be a bad idea, but more effective non-leathal measure could be widely adopted. If they are shooting RPG when you have a megaphone then dropping the non lethal audio for small arms isn't going to make a whole lot of difference. (You would need both on the ship only using one when the other is ineffective).

Serious policing needs to happen not just a show of strength. Stings and stakeouts, informants, undercover, etc.

As for Javelins. Hmm I would hesitate bringing anything other than small arms and non leathals into the conflict. I would imagine capturing a ship and releaving it of its Javelins would be a highly profitable task. You also have the odd idea of missiles being launched by civilians in an adhoc manner.

I think the USN did a great job on the recent incident. Sniping off a ship on targets on a boat being towed in your wake is a pretty tricky thing to do.

 

[zoolander]

Next time they get close to any naval vessel, we should just use CIWS on their ass.

 

[moahunter]

i think we should just use private security contractors. they are multinational corporations using multinationals working for multinational corporations operating in international waters. Just have them like slaughter the pirates. No one gave a dam in iraq, i doubt they will in the open seas. no political implications either.

How though? There are dozens of pirates boats and hundreds of merchant ships. Even if by
some fluke a ship with contractors is attacked, that's just one of many pirates gone. I think an exclusion zone may be the answer.

 

[zoolander]

they are many solutions, we should try to implement as many as possible

Arm the crew

some buffer zone

commercial ships can obviously be armed with security contractors or military personal

commercial ships can travel in large groups

Naval Escorts

Special netting that makes climbing up the side practically impossible

start sending pirates to former soviet prison lol like we do with the rest of the crazies - on a more serious note, actually severely punish all pirates so they will actually think twice.

 

[SpudmanWP]

I think the idea of the security team was to hopefully the pirates would be discouraged when they encountered a ship with some sort of professional security detail on it.

Given that pirates have been attacking Naval vessels and trying to play ransom/blackmail games against some of the hardest players (directly engaging nuclear power navies) and have been extremely brasen I don't think symbolic show of force is going to repel them.

What naval vessels have they attacked?

What needs to be established is a no go corridor that is strictly enforced and regularly patrolled from the air and from the surface that only specific commerical vessels can enter.

Fishing vessels, the favorite mothership of the pirates, do not transit normal shipping lanes and cannot be controlled like this.

I would say small arms may not be a bad idea, but more effective non-leathal measure could be widely adopted.

As long as the pirates have no down side to attacking (ie assuming room temperature, becoming fish food, going Tango Uniform, etc), they will continue and will escalate the number and ferocity of attacks.

If they are shooting RPG when you have a megaphone then dropping the non lethal audio for small arms isn't going to make a whole lot of difference. (You would need both on the ship only using one when the other is ineffective).

There is a big difference, they are dead.

Serious policing needs to happen not just a show of strength. Stings and stakeouts, informants, undercover, etc.

As for Javelins. Hmm I would hesitate bringing anything other than small arms and non leathals into the conflict. I would imagine capturing a ship and releaving it of its Javelins would be a highly profitable task. You also have the odd idea of missiles being launched by civilians in an adhoc manner.

The Javelins are ONLY for the teams that are military based, not the civilian ones.

I think the USN did a great job on the recent incident. Sniping off a ship on targets on a boat being towed in your wake is a pretty tricky thing to do.

I concur... Great job

 

[swerve]

What naval vessels have they attacked?

FGS Spessart. Probably mistook her for a civilian tanker.

 

[SpudmanWP]

FGS Spessart. Probably mistook her for a civilian tanker.

My comment was directed towards StingrayOZ's claim about the pirates:

directly engaging nuclear power navies

I do not think that Germany has any nuke boats.

Also, "directly" implies that they knew who they were attacking.

 

[kato]

I do not think that Germany has any nuke boats.

The only German nuke ship was refitted to conventional propulsion 1979 to 1982.

 

[StingrayOZ]

What naval vessels have they attacked?

Somali pirates attack US Navy
Independent, The (London) , Sep 25, 2008
MOGADISHU The US Navy has reported that Somali pirates tried to attack one of its oil tankers. A security team on board the vessel opened fire on two small boats after they ignored warnings and pursued the ship, said a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet. The tanker, John Lenthall, which carries a range of fuels for US armed forces, was near Somalia's territorial waters when it came under attack. "This incident is clear proof that all mariners must remain vigilant," said Captain Steve Kelley, the US commander responsible for military sealift ships in the region.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20080925/ai_n28110677/

http://ports.co.za/navalnews/article_2006_03_20_3048.html

In an audacious incident off the Somali coast at the weekend, Somali pirates in three small boats opened fire on two US Navy warships after being challenged and told to prepare for boarding. The two US Navy ships, the guided missile cruiser USS Cape St George (CG 71) and the destroyer USS Gonzalez (DDG 66) returned the fire using small arms and set one suspected pirate vessel on fire and captured two others some 25 miles off the coast of Somalia on Saturday, 18 March.

Im assuming that these ships are deliberately being used as undercover stings. Take a few fleet oilers, place a rather professional security team on board and flush out pirates. Im guessing its still working because the pirates don't care.

Even once caught by the USN they still persisted in trying to work deals out holding hostages. Did they really think the USN was going to pay? As for opening fire on a USN cruiser and destroyer, thats insane! At what point did they think they could out gun or repel two first class USN ships (they aren't cargo ships)?! I suppose they felt cornered, still better off to dump the weapons, or sink there own boat than open fire.

Can we start putting mini typhoon mounts on civilian ships and then randomly fit them on ships going through the region?

 

[zoolander]

I don't understand why we are being so merciful, if my ship was attacked, I would immediately order my men to use the Phalanx to shred the attacking pirates to pieces in a hail of tungsten and steel.

I know the Phalanx is good for incoming missiles, can it be used on small boats like those used by pirates?