Pirates

[Wooki]

While using fishing analogies, how about tag and release? Microchip them. Keep it up for a while then nab every single person with a microchip along with all the people who associate with them. Release those who arent pirates, but you'll probably get most of the pirates.

That is not as silly as it sounds.

Arming of merchantmen (other then the Israeli's who do it anyway) is definitely not an option. Especially in light of the overall incompetence that has been displayed in the last few years with regard to avoiding the pirates in the first place.

For those advocating a more violent type of action, if you ever lay eyes on a Somali pirate and smell his breath, the thought "There go I but for the grace of God" tends to cross your mind. Most are just pawns in the game and desperate ones at that. The other aspect of this that it seems there is a change in the wind in International Law with regard to what are a pirate's rights. It used to be a fairly simple summary decision. Is he boarding you, yes/no? If yes then he is a pirate and has no rights. That is changing, so the option of just throwing him over the side is gone.

I would advocate proper investigative police work and then systematically snatching the leaders while keeping up the maritme patrols. It is (after all ) why we invest in a Navy.

cheers

w

 

[1805]

That is not as silly as it sounds.

Arming of merchantmen (other then the Israeli's who do it anyway) is definitely not an option. Especially in light of the overall incompetence that has been displayed in the last few years with regard to avoiding the pirates in the first place.

For those advocating a more violent type of action, if you ever lay eyes on a Somali pirate and smell his breath, the thought "There go I but for the grace of God" tends to cross your mind. Most are just pawns in the game and desperate ones at that. The other aspect of this that it seems there is a change in the wind in International Law with regard to what are a pirate's rights. It used to be a fairly simple summary decision. Is he boarding you, yes/no? If yes then he is a pirate and has no rights. That is changing, so the option of just throwing him over the side is gone.

I would advocate proper investigative police work and then systematically snatching the leaders while keeping up the maritme patrols. It is (after all ) why we invest in a Navy.

cheers

w

I wouldn't have a problem with ships arming themselves. This was done a lot during WW2 and as you say Israel does it. I think I would prefer them hiring naval personnel but you can't stop them going for private security firms.

The issue is this is a business and the priates will continue until it is no longer profitable. The real concern for the west is where is the money going in this failed state what is it financing?

Prehaps an answer is to be found in the past. Introduce a convoy system with independent sailing being offered armed naval guards (at their cost). Remember convoys were originally used in the Napoleonic wars to address privateering in the Baltic. Agreed It wouldn't have helped the Chandlers, but then the RN probably should have opened fire on the mother ship.

 

[gf0012-aust]

Prehaps an answer is to be found in the past. Introduce a convoy system with independent sailing being offered armed naval guards (at their cost). Remember convoys were originally used in the Napoleonic wars to address privateering in the Baltic. Agreed It wouldn't have helped the Chandlers, but then the RN probably should have opened fire on the mother ship.

It's not that simple. Someone has to bear the cost of security, is it the shipping company? is it the flag? its it the contractor? is it the containers "populaters"?

this has been a problem for years and the industry still not has worked out how to deal with it. on;y the expensive freight carriers will absorb the insurance, the rest don't want to bear the burden of extra cost

in addition, its not always possible to carry weapons on merchants, insurance provisions can preclude it.

I know of 4 companies that do maritime security and they only deal with major organisations. the problem being that the insurer resents paying for security which impacts on all cargo but might be paid for by only 10% of the carriers customers etc... These companies only employ ex navy, border protection, anyone with VBB skills. although one of them does employ ex ghurkas. even when the weather is crap the ghurkas are grinning, nothing seems to phase them. there are a few mickey mouse privateers in business, but thats what happens as soon as someone sees an opportunity to make a quid.

I'd add that I do have some first hand experience via association wrt this, my daughter did maritime security for a number of years and decided to give it away after she had an RPG lobbed at her ship and they were sprayed with 7.62mm She finally decided that my advice to her re job selection was worth listening to .


Wooki also has direct experience so is worth listening to.

btw there are a number of measures available to ships captains, but the pirates will go for the lame and lonely. My daughters ships captain used to turn the ship around (all 45,000 tonnes) and try to ram them at speed. you'd be surprised at what wash can do on a 25+ knot pass

 

[Juramentado]

Prehaps an answer is to be found in the past. Introduce a convoy system with independent sailing being offered armed naval guards (at their cost). Remember convoys were originally used in the Napoleonic wars to address privateering in the Baltic. Agreed It wouldn't have helped the Chandlers, but then the RN probably should have opened fire on the mother ship.

Convoys would be more effective if the majority of shippers chose to participate. The various task forces in the region do offer convoys, either for specific flags or as general protection. But convoys take time to form, and the speed of advance often is determined by the slowest ship - not all of these merchies are in tip-top form. All of that means additional time spent, fuel-oil burned and higher shipping prices across the board. There's not enough armed vessels to support sustained convoy operations - and you're trading an opportunity cost for those platforms to be conducting other equally important tasks.

 

[John Sansom]

It's not that simple. Someone has to bear the cost of security, is it the shipping company? is it the flag? its it the contractor? is it the containers "populaters"?

this has been a problem for years and the industry still not has worked out how to deal with it. on;y the expensive freight carriers will absorb the insurance, the rest don't want to bear the burden of extra cost

in addition, its not always possible to carry weapons on merchants, insurance provisions can preclude it.

I know of 4 companies that do maritime security and they only deal with major organisations. the problem being that the insurer resents paying for security which impacts on all cargo but might be paid for by only 10% of the carriers customers etc... These companies only employ ex navy, border protection, anyone with VBB skills. although one of them does employ ex ghurkas. even when the weather is crap the ghurkas are grinning, nothing seems to phase them. there are a few mickey mouse privateers in business, but thats what happens as soon as someone sees an opportunity to make a quid.

I'd add that I do have some first hand experience via association wrt this, my daughter did maritime security for a number of years and decided to give it away after she had an RPG lobbed at her ship and they were sprayed with 7.62mm She finally decided that my advice to her re job selection was worth listening to .


Wooki also has direct experience so is worth listening to.

btw there are a number of measures available to ships captains, but the pirates will go for the lame and lonely. My daughters ships captain used to turn the ship around (all 45,000 tonnes) and try to ram them at speed. you'd be surprised at what wash can do on a 25+ knot pass

Well, gf0012, it's kinda like commercial flying. The absolute end user bears the costs of security....and that usually turns out to be you, me, and the guy across the street.

In a more overall sense, merchantmen are time-based operators no matter what their cargo. Their commitment is to be at a certain place at a certain time and, as an old sergeant of mine used to say, to be so right smartly. That tends to make convoy costs somewhat scary. During WWII when the threat to Atlantic shipping was omni-present, the convoy was, indeed, workable and the costs were decidedly horrendous.

Thanks for the heads-up on Wooky....and the neat little item on your daughter's experiences. How did her skipper log the "ramming" attempts? Whatever....good on 'im.:haha

 

[Feanor]

A convoy system is already in place, with various naval ships convoying groups of civilian vessels. The problem is that you can't get every single ship, and not everyone wants to sit and wait for a convoy to form.

 

[gf0012-aust]

A convoy system is already in place, with various naval ships convoying groups of civilian vessels. The problem is that you can't get every single ship, and not everyone wants to sit and wait for a convoy to form.

there are over 50 warships currently on duty in the ME area of interest, they barely touch the likely contact space, and every time the pirates extend their reach they exponentially increase the surveillance area.

a lack of coherent ROE's an uniformity of ROE's that are not host based just exacerbates the problems.

 

[swerve]

A convoy system is already in place, with various naval ships convoying groups of civilian vessels. The problem is that you can't get every single ship, and not everyone wants to sit and wait for a convoy to form.

And the convoy system only operates in a limited area, which the pirates do not confine their activities to. They constantly change their methods & areas of operations, to circumvent protective measures.

 

[Feanor]

This is a problem of the convoy system itself, rather then of the existing format.

 

[swerve]

No, not in this case. Convoys only run through the Gulf of Aden. Ships on other routes, e.g. heading south towards the Cape of Good Hope, do not have the option of joining a convoy, & many of the pirate attacks are on those routes. That is a problem of the current format, not the convoy system.

 

[Feanor]

So what do you propose to do to fix it? Other then deploying more ships because that's not contingent on the format.

 

[1805]

Probably being over simplistic, but could they group ships by speed into fast/slow convoys, and say have a 2-3 leave Cape Town a week, with a Naval Officer on the Convoy to coordinate. Warships could join nearer the risk area. You can't force ships to join if they don't want to but I think insurance companies would be keen on them doing so.

If ships sail independently they can make their own arrangement or even be offer a RM detachment (for a fee)?

 

[John Sansom]

Probably being over simplistic, but could they group ships by speed into fast/slow convoys, and say have a 2-3 leave Cape Town a week, with a Naval Officer on the Convoy to coordinate. Warships could join nearer the risk area. You can't force ships to join if they don't want to but I think insurance companies would be keen on them doing so.

If ships sail independently they can make their own arrangement or even be offer a RM detachment (for a fee)?

WW II convoys were, indeed, classified by "slow" and "fast" indicators, so this kind of approach is a bit more than theoretically feasible. However, in this instance, adjustments to cargo delivery schedules would then become a major consideration as would en route cargo acquisition requests (for some vessels).

And, yes, it would be nice to know how Lloyds, for instance, is dealing with this problem. Have the "names" come up with a coherent policy....and does anybody know what it is?

 

[Kilo 2-3]

Probably being over simplistic, but could they group ships by speed into fast/slow convoys, and say have a 2-3 leave Cape Town a week, with a Naval Officer on the Convoy to coordinate. Warships could join nearer the risk area. You can't force ships to join if they don't want to but I think insurance companies would be keen on them doing so.

If ships sail independently they can make their own arrangement or even be offer a RM detachment (for a fee)?

Hmm...So would you advocate something like an optional USMC detachment for US-flagged ships in the region, Royal Marines for UK-flagged ones, etc.?

Such a solution might not be practical and I think the payment issue might lead to some politcal problems. (The fee could make the professional military involved in the security operations appear to be "mercenary.")

 

[gf0012-aust]

Such a solution might not be practical and I think the payment issue might lead to some politcal problems. (The fee could make the professional military involved in the security operations appear to be "mercenary.")

it is indeed impractical.

All ofthe involved policing nations have met prev and continue to meet to discuss on how efficiencies can be bought into the management of this problem.

There is insufficient and inadequate platform availability to cover off the enormous area of interest here. There is no point in having aerial surveillance that can see all but vector none to a contact.

as indicated before, we have over 50 vessels of various combat capability in this region and it barely touches the real estate that needs active policing

every time they strike further out, it exponentially increases the watch area, none of us have the individual or combined resources to deploy vessels into the AO in time.

this requires substantially more than just a military or security presence

 

[Wooki]

Hmm...So would you advocate something like an optional USMC detachment for US-flagged ships in the region, Royal Marines for UK-flagged ones, etc.?

Such a solution might not be practical and I think the payment issue might lead to some politcal problems. (The fee could make the professional military involved in the security operations appear to be "mercenary.")

I think perhaps that people are missing the point here. Piracy is very much like "bad behavior" outside an English night club. The solution is (or was) to put security cameras up. All this did was move the problem away from the security cameras. So too with patrols and piracy. The behavior literally evolves away from the patrols.

The other key point is training or lack of. The best asset a tanker has doing 8 knots, is not armed guards, or even an escorting destroyer. It is it's mast height and the crappy 10cm radar sitting on top. At a minimum it gives you an 18NM horizon that a pirate simply does not have. The problem is that the merchant game is all about money. So the Nav equipment is the cheapest that can be purchased, yet still satisfy regulations. Cheap Nav equipment and economic drivers also mean you are not going to get armed guards to be a common occurance.

Having said that insurance companies can drive regulation. So it would follow that an insurance company can lower the premium on a vessel that is equipped with a good, better, best radar and lower again if the crew are trained how to use it properly to identify and avoid pirates. That means creating 3 or even 5 passage plans in advance to compensate for varying situations and actually keeping a good look out as per the rule of the road.

Even at 8 knots you always have the upper hand as the pirate cannot see you and you can see him, simply because his horizon is 6NM even with a radar. But there is also another asset that the pirate doesn't have and that is called energy. Merchantmen are marathoners, pirates are sprinters.

If you follow this approach then you can target escort missions to spots where the merchantman cannot avoid the confrontation. This makes the military operations more efficient and more likely to bag a couple of pirates, who for the life of them can't figure out why they are not catching as much game as they used to. i.e. Plays on their frustration.

It follows that if you are in a ship that can do 27 knots with the same 3 to 1 horizon advantage then it is nearly impossible to intercept and even if you did make an interception you (the pirate) would burn more fuel than you could afford. Increasing speed in a Bangkok Taxi creates a "business decision event" for the pirate. The old hands know how many minutes they can chase at 60knots and the green horns are left floating for days wandering what happened.

Anyway, that is the approach I would suggest for Socotra and it's surrounds. The TSS coming up around Djibouti and Yemen, funnily enough is where you need patrols as it limits maneuver. The Horn of Africa and the Strait between Socotra and the mainland is not really an issue.

It really is all about energy and maintaining it. The nature of the terra firm and the tidal currents there allow you to spot the guy and lead him one way and then use maneuver to make him think about his hard fuel choice. In other words, know the tides in key bottlenecks and use those tides against the pirate. If he's a green horn he'll be in the strait where the current is just that .5 of a knot faster. Sucker him in to commiting and then go the other way. Even a 1 knot current against a speed boat equates to an exponential increase in fuel consumption. Do the math. At 60 knots he burns , say 10 gallons a minute. At 61 knots he burns say 12 gallons a minute and so on.

As to turning into a threat desribed by Gf. There are 101 ways to skin a cat, but my preference was to always turn away and make him do the work. A pirate on your stern suffers a huge time penalty (from his perspective) and therefore fuel burn if you make a 5 degree alteration of course. It adds something like 5 minutes to his boarding attempt. As the range decreases you zigg and zagg, drawing him out , making him work and funnily enough, in any sort of seastate sometimes you draw away from him and then "do a Bismark" when he is at the limit of his horizon to shake him off.

This really isn't rocket science. Just watch Animal Planet and a Cheetah trying to chase down a Wilderbeast or a Gazelle. The Cheetah has a bigger kill zone radius then the lion because of it's speed, but pirates don't have the eyesight of the Lion or the Cheetah.

My 2c

and you can apologize to the cook for breaking his plates in the morning.


cheers

w

 

[idiana]

i think the pirates teach so much : small and dynamical motor-boats eqqiped with missles are much better than giant destroyers that can be easily destroyed by that fire work

 

[Juramentado]

Well, the Russians got on the scoreboard. I wonder if they have a helmet-cam video like the Dutch?

The Associated Press: Russian special forces storm oil tanker, free ship

 

[A.Mookerjee]

I believe, that commercial routes on the high seas should be protected. In nautical areas, around coastlines, where there are strong coast guards, incidences of piracy are not heard of. I believe, that navies are first required to protect the commercial sea-going interests of their nations, and the idea of an attack on a rival navy, or nation, by ballistic missiles, is a secondary concern of the navy. The immediate concern is to protect the merchant ships on the high seas. The major navies of the world, have evolved, their operation doctrines, because the pirates hold no direct threat to the navies themselves, consisting of people who are not regular sailors. These pirates do not venture out far into the seas, and operate around straits, and similar geographical areas. The pirates have not taken the lives of sailors of merchant ships, recently, to my knowledge, and most sailors have been rescued by the respective navies, or set free by the pirates themselves. But the trauma of apprehension on the high seas, on account of pirates, is a well known trauma, because the pirates follow no laws, and may act in any manner, with their prisoners. Perhaps, navies who can do so, should have an understanding, whereby the seas, where there are known to be pirates, are patrolled by some vessels of a major navy, for the benefit of the majority. There should be a treaty by the major naval powers on this regard, and this will also have the effect of bringing the naval powers together.

 

[swerve]

i think the pirates teach so much : small and dynamical motor-boats eqqiped with missles are much better than giant destroyers that can be easily destroyed by that fire work

They're teaching absolutely nothing about warfare.

Look at the rules of engagement. Any pirate who tried to attack one of the warships out there would be likely to die without doing any damage to it at all.

Look up what happened when missile boats fought destroyers & frigates in 1990-91. Casualties on the destroyers & frigates - none. Every missile boat engaged was sunk or disabled - by the helicopters carried by the frigates & destroyers.

Missiles that can be mounted on the small boats used by the pirates can't do much damage to ships. Missiles big enough to sink a destroyer need much bigger boats.