EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re working to get more details on the sniper shot on the pirates — what weapon, what range, what optics, what rounds and also some of the tactics…We’re narrowing in on the gouge but need to get it confirmed. Will post as soon as I get it and if anyone else out there has some info on it, please email me. I promise NO FINGERPRINTS.
Naval journalist Robert D. Kaplan had an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, “Anarchy on Land Means Piracy at Sea.” Kaplan states that the various ships the United States Navy now possesses are too big (heavy) and expensive to effectively carry out vital oceanic counterinsurgency efforts. While the safe rescue yesterday of the captain of M/V Maersk Alabama from Somali pirates holding him hostage in a lifeboat demolishes the central argument of Kaplan’s piece, his thesis does bear further scrutiny, and rebuttal.
Vital shipping lanes are being ravaged hundreds of miles from land by expendable mercenaries commanded by smart and ruthless pirate warlords. The swelling costs of containment patrols, defensive measures, and ransom payments impact the global economy. Dispatching the 9,400-ton Arleigh Burke destroyer USS Bainbridge plus two smaller escorts was cost-justified and militarily appropriate — in fact, was necessary.
Bainbridge is massive enough to carry two heavily armed Seahawk helos. Her deck cranes can launch speedboats with SEAL teams aboard, and in a pinch could deploy SEAL Delivery Vehicle underwater scooters. She can keep the sea in all weathers better than a smaller ship, and has longer on-station logistical staying power. She offers more adequate space for special mission communications and planning equipment and staff.
Bainbridge also sports powerful over the horizon surveillance systems and weaponry, able to track and engage many targets at once. She has sophisticated active sonar to search for hostile diesel subs, which become a real issue when the destroyer needs to dwell near one location for very long. She fields a broad spectrum of missiles plus state-of-the-art machine guns and cannon. She’s big enough and well manned enough to take repeated hits from rocket propelled grenades, and keep fighting.
The pirates had considerable further strength in this game beyond Kaplan’s “spectacle” of Maersk Alabama’s “tiny” lifeboat with its “handful” of men and a single captive. They’ve commandeered larger vessels they use as motherships, and are well supplied with RPGs. They were sending in several other captured foreign cargo vessels loaded with hostage crews, to use as human shields. These might have tried to surround, or fire upon, or even ram something less able to defend herself and her escorts than USS Bainbridge.
Kaplan himself refers to the danger that mercenary pirate methods could be adapted by suicidal terrorists. This argues in favor of larger on-scene vessels, not smaller ones, to provide the command connectivity, sensors, weaponry, endurance, and survivability required for the U.S. Navy to prevail in any such fight to the death.
– Joe Buff
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
Time to start convoying ships through the area like in WWII.
a PS to the post: “Better sea-keeping ability” includes being a more stable gun platform, whether for a 127mm main gun or a SEAL team’s sniper rifles.
Many in the media seem to advocate arming commercial vessels. (see:http://www.newsy.com/videos/solving_the_pirate_problem/)
There is debate about whether or not this would make the problem worse, but given that these pirates now have “motherships” and access to RPG’s this seems like the only possible alternative.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply drop a few marines on vessels, willing to provide the gear (minus military, simply talking food, sleep, ect)
We aren’t hunting submarines here, which is what the convoy method was made for. A few marines would be more than enough for a few fishermen.
Sweet, The Barbary Wars, part 3? Barak Obama Jefferson. Hopefully not “Black Hawk Down”.
First, wide are surveillance is great, but still are required visuals for these things. Second, quick action is important, and the USN is too small to patrol everywhere at once. Third, 1-4 billion dollar ships are complete overkill for any non-state entities, like drugs terrorists, pirates and contraband, most of whom are near shore, not the deep water. Trying to justify a USN destroyer, against these pirates is laughable.
The LCS was supposed to do the Coast Guard like operations like this, but those 55 ships are controversial, and nowhere ready. What we need, is a few hundred 50m, high speed, heavily armed, shallow draft ships, like some of really cool high speed, personal yachts. Not useful against the the China fantasy, but good for things we actually do. Really no downside to having a few hundred of these gunboats in our arsenal, since they should cost no more than 100-200mil apiece, with a crew of 30.
Here are a couple of possible options in the smaller and more affordable category.
http://www.naval-technology.com/features/feature1689/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_class_IPV
(Although, having a heli platform build above the boat positions would be an improvement)
Free the pirates in exchange for the captain?
Killing the pirates eliminates the problem of negotiating with terrorist. Or admitting that there was an impasse.
It seems improbable that this was the first time the hostage was held at gun point during the past several days. A gun pointing and threatening the hostage doesn’t explain why the shooters acted when they did to end the stand off.
The fourth pirate was spared being already on board the US Navy vessel. Earlier reports were that he’d left via the resupply boat and was involved in “ongoing negotiations”. Now it’s being reported he was being treated for an injury; and, “apparently surrendered”.
The lifeboat was captive, under tow.
A truce negotiation explains why a pirate would board the destroyer for medical treatment, why the lifeboat was in tow, and the why the 3 pirates exposed themselves and their hostage.
Free the pirates in exchange for the captain? The US cannot free the pirates and be seen as giving in to criminals. Killing the pirates avoids admitting that there was an impasse.
I heard a report that the Bainbridge was at least initially without a helo.
True?
Counter Piracy ideas:
Convoys?
Undercover armed agents on merchent ships.
Marine Scout snipers on US warships: DD FF CG types
Bomb pirate bases
have US subs recon pirate areas.
Use UAVs
Have carrier group nearby.
Expand Diego Garica base & Qatar.
Reneg treaties.
Revive the Q ship from WW1 & WW2 for striking pirates: reuse estd merchent ships for project
Create “lure” ships & yachts to lure pirates out & then Q ship gunfire to sink em.
Use Go Fast Outer Limits.com Speed boats with weapons for Pirate pursuit & Intercept
See Outer Limits.com boats Cigarette.
Hope someone can use this info
Yes its the Barbary Pirates of 1809 all over again.
But they were in No Africa.
Cost is a real concern. In any individual stand off, a destroyer can beat a lifeboat, but there are lots of them and not so many of us. The fundamental problems of asymmetric warfare are really no different with pirates than they were with terrorists on land.
U.S. military officials have repeatedly explained how difficult it is to patrol the Texas sized danger area because there are so many ships afloat and the status of a pirate boat as a threat is often impossible to discern until the last few minutes.
One must either convince the lion’s share of potential pirates that it is likely to be a losing proposition for them, or one must be able not just to win, but to win in a cost effective way in large numbers of contests.
For example, it might be cheaper to station a fire team or squadron of Marines on large merchant vessels passing through the danger zone, so that they can hold down the fort and prevent hostage situations from arising in the first place until a ship based helicopter can arrive to serve as the cavalry and provide relief. One can put small detachments of Marines with firepower sufficient to wipe out a pirate boat on a large number of commercial ships for a few days to a week each, at a quite modest cost. If you put an average of six Marines on each (eight for large ships, four for small ones), for a week each, with 50% down time for the Marines, you could secure something like 5,000 ships through the area per year with a contingent of 1,200 Marines — not much more than the crew of three U.S. warships and with far less military capital involved.
Until a hostage is taken or a ship controlled, a pirate’s boat can be dispatched much more quickly with drones, a warship or a helicopter.
The knowledge that a large percentage of large merchant ships would have Marine contingents upon them, even if not all of them do, and the likelihood of annihilation if a pirate encounters a ship that does, might be enough to wipe out the piracy industry entirely, in the area, if the measures were sustained for a few years.
Lets not forget the East India Company and Dutch equivalent… arming merchant ships is not a good idea in the long run
A good modern solution would be more armed UAVs in the area ..although it may take years to build up such a capability
Lets not forget the East India Company and Dutch equivalent… arming merchant ships is not a good idea in the long run
A good modern solution would be more armed UAVs in the area ..although it may take years to build up such a capability
I think a small ship with a handful of F-35B’s would make a powerful deterrent. The F-35B can be anywhere in a 500 mile radius within an hour… these high tech fighter aircraft would be complimented nicely by an LCS sized ship that was purposely built to hangar VTOL jets and rescue helos. Sortof like a micro aircraft carrier.
JeffM, you’re talking about aircraft that are not even battle-ready, assets that, when fielded, will ALL be used for completely different missions. Besides, UAV’s are cheaper, and can be fielded much faster.
Burkes vs pirates… really? Pirates have RPGs and AK-47s. Anything with decent sensors (IR/radar) and guided weapons (TOW/Hellfire/LGB) could pick off a pirate boat with no trouble at all. Sure a Burke can do the job, but so could a light helicopter, patrol boat, UAV…
Pirates aren’t terrorists, their motivation is profit only and up ’till now the risk of death has been (moderatly) low while the reward is potentially huge. It shouldn’t take too much in the way of US patrols/air strikes to change the incentives and convince the majority of pirates to make new career choices.
I’m with other comentors who suggest we need something low-cost/high-quantity for these jobs. UAVs like the predator/reaper are perfect. A small patrol boat/corvette (~100ft) with for/aft bushmaster autocannons and a netfires style “missile pack” in the middle might be a good match for this kind of police action – enough firepower to overwhelm anything the pirates have, and cheap enough to deploy in effective numbers.
Getting the merchants coordinated is actually pretty easy: draw a route through the area you plan to protect, and announce that this route will be regularly patrolled by US forces…
“Total: The U.S. and other navies combined have a goodly number of cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, and so on, if the tasking is to escort convoys. (Check out “Combat Fleets” from the USNI Press.) The point of any convoy is that the number of merchant ships protected is many times bigger than the number of escorting warships required. Also operationally the warships shuttle back and forth constantly guarding only those vessels actually in the danger zone at any one time. ”
God save me from the irony-impaired. Yes, shockingly enough, I’m aware we have a fair number of large ships like the Bainbridge (and I prefer Jane’s, thanks). My point is that if a hefty proportion of them are running convoys in the Indian Ocean, how will they handle the rest of America’s global responsibilities? I hear that there are “non-lethal naval battles” going on off China…
“And yes, the convoying system in WWII was highly effective both in protecting merchant shipping and in engaging U-boats to destroy them”
The convoying system in WWII was effective from mid-1943 onward. Before that, what were the casualty rates? And how many escorts were there in a typical convoy? (Let’s see: quick check reveals that PQ-16 from Britain to Russia had five destroyers, four corvettes, one minesweeper, four trawlers, and two support groups with one aircraft carrier, one battleship, three cruisers, and 13 (!) destroyers)
(By the way, for all your mention of the “hybridization” of warfare, and new forms of war, all of this sounds like bog-standard kinds of conflict.)
Hey Total: ‘Morning to you. Re your two points re my two points, here are further two points:
1. Yes, the U.S. Navy is overstretched as it is. This is why we need (at a minimum) CNO Roughhead’s stated goal under the prior administration, of having ambitious target numbers in America’s Longterm Shipbuilding Plan. Personally I think squeezing down the DDG-1000 program to help (at least indirectly) pay for the LCS program makes a lot of sense.
2. Convoying always reduced merchant ship losses against U-boats compared to sending those ships through hostile waters singly in an uncoordinated manner (in WWI as well as WWII). The use of convoys to attract U-boats in order for the escorts to efficiently localize, then engage and destroy the U-boats, was one major tactic used in the Battle of the Atlantic leading up to Black May.
“Yes, the U.S. Navy is overstretched as it is. This is why we need (at a minimum) CNO Roughhead’s stated goal under the prior administration, of having ambitious target numbers in America’s Longterm Shipbuilding Plan. Personally I think squeezing down the DDG-1000 program to help (at least indirectly) pay for the LCS program makes a lot of sense.”
Except Roughead wanted to build lots more expensive ships, which was simply not financially practicable, whatever the Navy says and the GOP howls about. Most of the WWII convoys were not escorted by battleships (ie today’s destroyers), but by cheap semi-disposable corvettes and jeep carriers. The Navy today is like the British Navy in 1900-1914; so obsessed with capital ships that (despite the LCS) they lose sight of the wars the U.S. might actually have to fight.
“Convoying always reduced merchant ship losses against U-boats compared to sending those ships through hostile waters singly in an uncoordinated manner (in WWI as well as WWII). The use of convoys to attract U-boats in order for the escorts to efficiently localize, then engage and destroy the U-boats, was one major tactic used in the Battle of the Atlantic leading up to Black Ma”
Thank you for the convoying 101 lesson, irrelevant as it was. My point again is to note how many ships it required to escort a convoy and how casualty rates even in escorted convoys remained high.
The use of convoys to attract U-boats in order for the escorts to efficiently localize, then engage and destroy the U-boats, was one major tactic used in the Battle of the Atlantic leading up to Black May.
We had to do something that didn’t allow the Germans to know we had broken their codes. The fact we broke their codes was much more important to finding the U-boats than were the convoys.
This is an industry problem, not a military one. It’s a question of cost-benefit. There are two parties here: the pirates and the shipping insurance industry. The cost-benefit needs to change for one or both parties.
Changing the cost-benefit for pirates is simple:
Right now the shipping insurance industry is earning fat premiums covering these ships. They have no incentive to improve the situation. It would be a simple thing for the insurance companies to require insured ships to carry non-lethal self-defense technology and/or a security detail through the Horn of Africa. If most of the ship going through the area are effectively self-defended, the pirates cost-benefit equation would change drastically.
Or, the cost-benefit for the insurers needs to change. All it would take is a catastrophic loss of a super-ship and cargo, resulting in a billion dollar insurance payout, and the insurance industry will whip it’s head around so fast they’d snap their precious necks.
Pull the navy out of the area, let the pirates run havoc, and watch how fast this problem ends as the insurance industry kicks into gear to defend its margins.
Never will happen of course. This whole thing is make-work for the world navies. A trillion dollars in naval assets bobbing around the oceans watching their armies fight wars on CNN. The rescue the other day will get Congress to fund a couple extra destroyers for the US Navy at the least.
/ end cynicism / =]
I read this blog every day, and I generally enjoy it. But can someone with a little naval knowledge please step up? “Let’s put snipers in the crow’s nest” blah blah blah.
There are basically three kinds of pirates – the fishing by day, theiving by night kind, the more well prepared kind with supplies, ghost ships (motherships) and lastly the military kind. Does anyone here understand what an RPG would to to a tanker? How about an LNG ship? OK, how about a heavy machine gun along the hull of a tanker? The money lost from the oil spill and cleanup will far outweigh the cost of ransom. And that’s what this is about.
You pay once, and then everyone jumps on board. All these guys saw how much they got for the cargo ship with military hardware on it – and they went ape shit.
I do agree with the convoy idea and the smaller faster, heavily armed boats patrolling inside the convoy.
What would happen if they just decided to start sinking these ships? Now what would happen to the cost of oil? (Gas) – etc. etc.
No – people just want to factor piracy in as a cost of doing business.
OK – ya’ll can get back to being Gung Ho – “let’s blow them all out of the water!” now.
Let’s accelerate the production of BOTH the LM and GD LCS designs till 10 each.
At that point we should decide which is the better design. That way we get the ships we need now and we will have a better long-term test phase to determine the winner of the LCS design.
I prefer the GD design myself due to the larger flight deck for UAV operations and larger below deck area for cargo and modules.
These pirates sure are dumb, if they keep pushing the world’s navies and the shipping insurance companies are going to push back harder. As long as they were a minor nuisance it was cheaper to pay them to go away but they seem to be getting more and more demanding. I wonder if there’s some sort of competition going on between the various pirate crews?
Total: Our back-and-forths are very stimulating. Seriously, thanks much for arguing alternate points of view so forcefully. If you have time please listen to the Boots on Ground #8 podcast and post comments to it, I am very interested in what you have to critique/counterbalance/demolish (or agree with/elaborate on) re what Chris L, Jake A, and I said.
Soon I’ll have to shift to other work projects beyond this blog thread, but I expect to be back on DT fairly soon. Will you be at NWC’s CSF this year, you sound like you have the expertise to fit right in! …jjb.
Mr Buff,
Question on a related topic concerning naval weapons. Sec Gates talked about starting development of a new SSBN. If you Google “new underwater launched missile system” you get a Navy proposal to explore a 120″ diameter missile tube. Seeing that the D5 is 87″ in diameter any explanations? A very large missile? Multiple missiles from a single launch canister?
Multiple missiles and sub-launched UAVs.
Throw in a silo-mounted cannon system for good measure.
bobbymike: So far as I know the new SSBN would carry SLBMs same as or very similar to Tridents. Possibly the 10′ diameter tube is an R&D effort, and/or might relate to a next-gen SSGN variant of the “SSBN-X” that sure would be highly versatile/capable if it had such big tubes for Tomahawks, UUV/SLUAVs, SEAL teams & gear, and so on.
AMMO,
They may not be fielded but they’re the best tool for the job. I like the idea of a few UAV’s also. This might be a good role for the seemingly useless global hawk UAV.
However, the trouble with the other suggestions of navy frigates and what not is that you can’t actually confirm the pirates with a missile, you’d need some sort of high speed scout aircraft, and the F-35B makes a perfect one. Harrier would be a fielded substitute, but not as fast.
“Total: Our back-and-forths are very stimulating. Seriously, thanks much for arguing alternate points of view so forcefully.”
Stop being nice. It makes me grumpy, ah, grumpier.
“Will you be at NWC’s CSF this year”
Not this year, I
There’s a much much lower tech solution to the pirates. Likely cheaper too.
The US Navy needs to get a few cargo liners. Load them down with cargo containers filled with containers of seawater. Add a few SEAL teams to each ship and then sail ‘em around the pirate infested waters.
After a few boatloads of pirates get wasted attacking the bait ships, they’ll stop attacking any US flagged ship. If other countries follow suit pretty soon the pirates will realize that no ship is an easy target.
The trick to ending piracy is making it unprofitable.
I agree that UAV would be the most cost effective solution, however the method that the Navy is using to handle the situation now is not a poor one. A few more brutal shows of force from them could prove to beat the pirates into a light submission to return them to their old ways of only small piracy. That way the Insurance compaines could stand to pay again. While a convoy approach is a solution to a more reliable trade system, it is extremely costly and most likely will not solve the problem at all. Best solution is to but armed guards on the vessels and have a light armed patrol instead of one destroyer. I am not attempting to imagine the magnitude of force the pirates attack with, only that it is right to say that one destroyer and two patrol boats for an entire ocean is not a step forward in progress. A closer eye on Somlian activities may prove to aid the situation also.
An even cheaper solution. How about US cargo ships in that area, hire a few Blackwater guys per ship, arm them with .50 cal GAU-19s, and some Javelins. End of story for the barbarians attacking US ships.
It has to be more than just US Ships. Otherwise, the pirates just avoid us.
Blackwater needs to be on ships of all sizes and all nations. Keep the pirates guessing.
I suppose if the ships with troops flew Greek or Panamanian flags it would lure the pirates into hitting them. Blending in is the way to go.
Blackwater recently changed their name, to Xe. (It’s pronounced llke “Zee”.) NY Times article said it was to distance themselves from some controversial incidents in Iraq.
Taking a defensive stand point on this predicament will prove only to escalate the ferocity of the pirate attacks. It can only be through a show of force that the shipping lanes of northern Africa will become safe once more. This show of force will also cause the outlaws of the sea around the world to think twice before plundering any more booty from us land lovers.