EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part two of Joe Buff’s story on the rise of modern piracy and the international response to swashbuckling banditry. Read part one HERE.
Is modern piracy a containable nuisance, a regrettable but acceptable cost of doing business for shipping companies? And should it also be allowed to continue as an unfortunate but bearable burden on various navies’ nations’ taxpayers? Would a land invasion to clear out the strongholds by force be very effective, or would it turn into a bitter bloodbath that backfires? Barring such a landward force-based solution, could the ongoing fight again Somali piracy turn into a new type of quagmire, at sea? Or need it best be viewed as any other crime-solving problem, as something that will more or less always be there, fluctuating in intensity with local economic conditions and with the varying extent of funding made available for law enforcement? The latter is not an attractive outcome. Nor does erecting a floating security wall, in the form of a close-in blockade along Somalia’s entire 2,000 miles of coastline, seem practicable or desirable to the authorities policing the piracy problem.
In a video just released by the pirates who hold them hostage, the British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler, seized with their yacht in October, expressed fear that unless the UK pays ransom very soon, they might be killed or sold to terrorists. Is this just an imagined concern of the Chandlers, or the latest bargaining tactic by their captors, or do the pirates really mean it? The specter of pirates selling hostages and/or captured ships to terrorists, if that becomes their only resort to raise cash from their efforts, is disturbing indeed. While the Somali pirates are inspired by the profit motive, not extremist ideology, they might have no compunctions about doing business with terrorists for capitalist reasons. That business might even come to include live operational training of Al Qaeda suicide pirates by Somali instructor pirates, preparatory to capturing an innocent merchant ship as platform for a horrendously costly WMD attack against some strategic strait (Malacca or Gibraltar?) or canal (Suez or Panama?) or populous harbor or oil terminal (Singapore or Galveston?).
It’s proving difficult for foreign countries and coalitions to deter Somali piracy. The overall phenomenon results from disparate extended family groups sending out expendable small units to first infiltrate, disguised as fishing boats, and then threaten a very wide area. Put this way, modern piracy sounds almost like a waterborne guerilla insurgency, a type of enemy that on land is notoriously difficult to dissuade by “third generation warfare” means. This is especially an issue when, at least so far, international law and foreign government policies alike have given the pirates sanctuary within their own territorial limits. The pirates do have a significant technical advantage as well, in that each mother ship’s or skiff’s arbitrary and evasive marauding path consumes food and fuel at a linear rate, whereas maritime security units need to protect a vast area that goes up with the square of the range of any individual pirate sortie. If pirates increase their practical operating range from 300 miles to 1000 miles, for instance, which is by a factor of 3–1/3, the area they bring under threat, which foreign navies and coast guards need to patrol, increases by a factor of more than 10. Another problem in deterrence lies in the rather poor target classification capabilities of the pirates themselves. When they close in and open fire with automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades, not realizing that a warship is a warship, Sailors can get hurt or killed.
How might this unstable equation tip further if pirates, who are basically just waterborne kidnappers, start to kill their hostages, and scuttle or burn their captive cargo ships, if larger and larger ransom demands aren’t more and more quickly complied with? Bear in mind that the $3.5 million Spain paid for the Alakrana and crew set a new record high. The pirates also seem to hold the initiative regarding how much risk they’re willing to take to complete a hijacking. The pressing home of more-aggressive individual attacks, against better-defended ships, would presumably lead to more pirate losses (wounded, killed, captured) but could also, potentially, yield a higher rate of successful takeovers of intended prizes. Inflating ransoms inflates the costs for everyone involved in suppressing the problem. Inflating success rates as well can compound that to a hyperinflation of aggregate costs. At some point, any such hyperinflationary trend will cross an intolerable pain threshold not yet experienced, destabilizing the situation even further.
We also need to ask whether the disputed waters off Somalia might become a tinderbox for tensions between the different navies of nations whose interests, along these same sea lanes, come to clash. China for instance has growing and intertwined foreign aid programs, business investments, and natural resource dependencies on the continent — and continental shelf — of Africa. China is also significantly expanding her military, including her navy, at an impressive pace. China can justify global reach for her naval forces, including her nuclear fast-attack submarines, by pointing to the valid need to defend her shipping from pirates, as well as to protect her commerce, her citizens, and her energy security, at what is to her the far end of the Indian Ocean.
China’s aspirations will hopefully be positive for world peace and trade. But some now-unimaginable future misalignment of antagonistic national regimes, both sides operating in the same waterspace with loaded weapons against Horn of Africa piracy but set at angry cross-purposes otherwise, might create a tinderbox situation that tragically ignites and then escalates. In this worst-case scenario, the Gulf of Aden could become the waterborne equivalent for World War III to what the Balkans were for World War I: as initiator site for global catastrophe.
It will be interesting to see what the Pentagon’s impending Quadrennial Defense Review Report has to say about modern piracy, both in and of itself and in the inseparable wider context of national security. With budget constraints at the forefront of lawmakers’ minds, will piracy take a necessary back seat via a de facto “reactive attempted containment policy” for now? If King Neptune is gazing into his crystal ball, I wonder what he sees that we might not be able or willing to visualize.
– Joe Buff
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
Meanwhile, breaking news:
(CNN) — An oil tanker bound for the United States was hijacked off Somalia with a crew of 28 aboard, maritime authorities said.
One wonders what more of this might do to the price of a gallon of gas in the US of A.
When a bully turns to extortion the only solution is to make it not worth their while. I dont look for any practical solutions from our present administration. Thye'll SAY their doing something when oil and goods go sky high, political expediance rules this administration. ARM those merchants.
The best way to deal with pirates is to simply kill the pirates.
This long winded article, that tells us about of all the this and that way of doing things, manages in a typical liberal " pot squatting way" to arrive at no solution.
The solution to piracy is straight forward and simple to comprehend.
Arm the ships!
A cheap couple of quad 50 cals, assisted by a half dozen mercenaries would solve this problem in but a few months, i.e. the pirates, along with their boats would become ventilated.
Blast the shit out of the pirates!
End.
Ships can't carry large weapon for they get confiscated during customs inspections and are hardly ever returned. It also increases delays in getting through customs. Time is money and any delays increase the cost of your products. If it wasn't for this issue of customs removal of weapons, hell yeah we would be carry 50 cals! For now we have to relight on other agencies to provide the protection. It's really a better option for I would rather higher a company to deal with getting shot at and we can worry about driving the damn ship.
Blackbeard was beheaded and his head hung from rigging,, but is anyone fighting back on these pirates,, it's almost as if the worlds navys are getting a cut, or are so PC that they cant hurt the poor people,, these poor people don't need a $2 mill. house on the beach.some thing must be done to stop them
As much as I agree with you Zandor, thanks to the "pot squatting way" liberals, that would be impossible.
The dork that wrote this intellectually overblown analytical waste of space about piracy, doesn't even seem to know how to spell piracy.
Which was, by the way, the entire subject of his learned writing.
One can only wonder what else the author does not know about the subject of "Pyracy".
End.
One knows that even the biggest idiots can be a spelling bee champ, however I will applaud you for being the very first to point that out in such an elaborative way.
Dear Mike;
Stop fixating about that big disappointment you had in the 6th grade spelling contest two years ago.
lol, O your good.
you realize that youtubers use the "you spelled it wrong your dumb because you can't spell" excuse.
It's like the whole article is just an insult to Zandor – it uses math for christsakes.
Wasn't the price of being caught in piracy having your ship scuttled or sunk? Were not navy captains able to try and convict and sentence pirates while on the open seas? At some point these guys are making landfall and being returned to the general population
Does the West just tow or sail back the mothership and skiffs so they are sold off to the next buccaneer? Or does the excuse of we are fishing with dynamite RPGs and AK47's actually float?
If this is a policy then the west shoots itself in the foot each time a pirate is caught and the ship is released back.
One can try these:
Meet Somaili peoples needs to deter piracy?
(food, seeds, etc).
Strike pirate bases from landside.
Use UAVs & Seaborne RVs for Patrols.
Use " Q ships" from WW1 & WW2 revised for Today.
SEAL Team probe pirate bases from seaside?
Bottom line, something is Done
Feeding the somaili's will accomplish nothing. They are not doing this for food they are doing this because it is more profitable than honest work. People in that region only understand strength / force. To pay ransoms or to negotiate is a sign of weakness / fear. That is why these Pirates / terrorists continue and their numbers increase. The only solution that is going to work to deter and stop the threat from growing more is to eradicate them like the vermin they are.
Dear Joe Buff;
In case you haven't noticed, the price of gasoline is a lot lower than it was a year or two ago.
Somali piracy has nothing to do with the price you pay at the pump.
The US government are the gasoline price pirates.
Zandor: Thanks much, I cheerfully accept the prize! By way of a concise acceptance speech, I will just present here one of the many existing hits that Google yields for the word "Pyrate":
The Pyrates Way, America's Favorite Pirates Magazine
The Pyrates Way magazine is devoted to the pirate enthusiast and is America's Premiere Pirates Magazine!
http://www.pyratesway.com/
Cheers! Or, should I say Arrrrrhhh, Matey!!!
Dear boy, you do know that Joe IS the author, yes? You dont? Oh dear! That wasn't very clever was it!
Once again, you need to troll harder.
Ah, proof positive of the decline and fall of the western powers. Too caught up in hand wringing and liberal guilt to do what is required to defend their interests. With the falling birth rate and the rise of appeasement I give us another 50-100 years before we collapse. If we can't get the resolve to blow away a few pirates all really is lost.
that long really you quiet a bit of an optimist
Yes, it uses math! It also intentionally uses an olde-fashioned spelling of "Pirate," i.e. "Pyrate", (which Defense Tech's editor was aware of and approved) for a touch of historicism and irony that seems to have gone rather quite over Zandor's head!
Do I need a remedial spelling class, or does someone else need a remedial reading comprehension course? The whole article talks about reasons why the time to stop Somali Piracy is NOW! By FORCE!!! Those who question my leanings on this should listen in the DefenseTech archives (or the link on my website joebuff.com's home page) to the podcast I was involved in back on April 14 when the USN used LETHAL FORCE to free Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama. I urged an amphibious warfare raid of the Somali coast to destroy pirate equipment and infrastructure. And another raid if the first one didn't solve the problem once and for all…
BTW, pirates had not before today hijacked a Very Large Crude Carrier bound for the USA. So we don't know for sure what effect this event or more such events will have on the price of gas in America. But it surely will not be to lower it.
AND, the problem with protecting these huge oil tankers is that authorities specifically urge that they NOT be armed, due to the risk of one bullet or RPG warhead setting off a humongous explosion, fire, and oil spill. The one hijacked today wasn't armed. Now that this info is in the media (as on a Military.com news item right now), the pirates know it too.
Is it time to start convoying oil tankers instead of the current naval patrols? BEWARE that convoys cause big delays in shipping departures and unloadings and this wastes time and costs multi-megabucks per day to the shipping companies — and their customers and end consumers.
Like I said, dudes and dudettes, when the true total cost of tacitly tolerating Somali piracy, by the current "attempted reactive containment" White House policy, gets high enough to cross a serious threshold of pain here in CONUS, it will be high time to inflict some of that pain back on the perpetrators on land along the Somali coast.
God Bless the brave Sailors of the USN in general and CTF 151 in particular! And God save us all from the "hands off" rules of engagement they have to work under most of the time.
Zandor just got lambasted.
Dear Captain Jack;
Did the USS Missouri have trouble with customs in Tokyo bay?
Change the silly laws, and put guns and folks that know how to use them, on these ships.
End of piracy problem.
Fast!
Dear Oble;
Would you please show me where I erred in my mathematics?
I await your reply.
Sincerely,
Zandor
I just knew that some idiot would come up with some sort of medieval spelling, and then justify the misspelling of piracy into pyracy, and justify a major glare by the author into a transcending intellectual feat of brilliance.
You win 1st prize.
Congratulations?
Yes I did happen to notice the name of the " author ", and yes , you aren't very clever.
Keep up the good work.
You did happen to notice the name of the author, after i pointed it out to you.
And twisting an individual's words carries no finesse.
I put it to you that you are not a troll, nor are you an intelligent contributor,
You're a common idiot, and most probably juvenile.
MIKE my friend, it appears you have me confused with Zandor
as stated in my name, i am Not Zandor.
“Wasn’t the price of being caught in piracy having your ship scuttled or sunk? Were not navy captains able to try and convict and sentence pirates while on the open seas?”
Piracy with Violence is one of a handful of criminal offences still punishable by the death penalty even in the UK (Although technically the right to execute people was given up, so although you could still pass the sentance in a mainland British court it can’t be carried out – for a captain of an RN warship at sea, though, I’m not entirely sure if the restriction applies). At the very least, I don’t get why you wouldn’t do just that – take them off the ship then sink said ship.
As noted, as long as piracy remains perceived as profitable, it’ll continue. It’s the classic comment of “If crime doesn’t pay, why do you think people do it?”. Ultimately, with no significant Somali legal or enforcement presence, either you have to attack the coast and torch every ship and dockyard (which, without being especially politically correct I think we can agree is a bit harsh on the people who actually *are* fishermen), or else put them in the situation where if an attempted raid goes wrong they end up getting hurt badly.
There is a reason that, historically, long-distance trading ships had cannons. All right, you might not want them coming into Rotterdam or Singapore armed, but the wonders of modern technology is that (as suggested above) a dozen or so friendly gentlemen can arrive on a ship, set up some crew served weapons, and probably outgun a world war II q-ship as a result, but then leave a few days later after its back in safer waters (probably to move on to the next ship!). Given the amount spent with ship’s insurance companies, I’m suprised Blackwater and co aren’t already offering the service….
…Obviously that is something you’d have to check with a competent lawyer, but I don’t see why you couldn’t carry something fairly heavy (By which I’m meaning HMG and/or grenade launcher heavy – I’m not advocating 4.5″ guns or anything daft like that) on a trading ship in international waters. You may have to remove them if in the territorial waters of a country that objects to them, but that’s doable, and if there was a Somali government that (a) objected and (b) was able to enforce such an objection then you wouldn’t need them in the first place.
Failing that, what the hell, have the PLA navy get involved. They have literally hundreds of 200-500 tonne, 30kt, cannon-armed patrol boats, a big flotilla of which will probably do a damn sight more good for the same expenditure than a half-dozen multi-million bloody dollar anti-aircraft destroyers that we have sitting there at the moment.
Zandor: "troll harder"
Lets not be overly hypocritical here.
Dear Zander30;
If you aren't careful you might become just about as popular here as I am.
Good luck. You will need it.
Evildoers…and some good bolsheviks…and it's KIM JUNG Il that oppressed America's poor and church? No, it doesn't matter what "party" comes the ideology….and they rather use the "poor will always be with you" to explain their oppression, whether it's greed ridden capitalist or the communist despot…
It's too bad the USN doesn't know how to field any boat that doesn't have digital up the wazoo, has no guns and has similar costs to a bigger vessel fielded years ago.
Does LCS have the firepower to deter pirates? Though LCS is so slow in being fielded we may never have enough. However, we should deploy the prototypes immediately and see if the government is buying a fat defense industry turkey or not.
The problem is not piracy in general.It is the fact that just like a child if a country is given everything they want instead of truly need they will become spoiled and lazy.Expecting everyone to do as they say.Somalia no longer has a real government.Which means that it can not be considered a real country.Anarcy reigns where law is not respected by the majority people.Law needs to be brought back to Somalia the only way it can be.BY FORCE!!
Go to google and type in USN LCS and you will find out the LCS has guns
among other things that are pretty nasty
USN CPO retired
I have one word to say to you: ROMANOV…A PICTURE speaks a thousand words…
It has a 57mm cannon as its main weapon. A PT boat was probably better armed…
Though now that I think about it, something like Vietnam's brown water navy would work here. Work with somewhat bigger boats for enhanced blue water capability, swarm the water with small boats.
I guess the Perrys are going to have to do the job.
Are you sure that your first name isn't Benzedrine?
If not, my suggestion would be to drastically cut back on those triple espressos with which you use to wash down those amphetamine tablets.
Keep up the good work, and above all stay alert.
Ciao.
Good Morning Folks,
Well it’s been over a year now and the Pyrates (I’ve been spelling the word that way for years) are still winning. I say again once on the water all the Navies in the world can’t stop the Pyrates. They must be stopped on the beach.
If the Pyrates can’t find a way to get money for taking ships the will have to turn to other vocations, perhaps they would do better as politicians.
Cut out the middle men and it’s, oh wait you can do that, there are some firms that are to big to fail who a years ago the Bush administration bail out with $5 trillion in this Pyracy venture. It appears with sub-prime mortgages dead the speculators have had to look to alternative investments.
Let see the ransoms are in the $2-5 million range, the teenage Pyrates get about $20,000.00 each, maybe a Pyrate a crew will be 10, that’s a $200,000.00 in labor costs. Then there is capitalization, and incindental overhead (old AK-47′s, RPG-5′s, or do it on the cheap and give the Pyrates some very old Chicom Type 56 rifles and B-60/61 rocket launchers since most will likely be thrown over board anyways, Sat. Phones, some old 5-50 Khz. short wave communications equipment for the mother ship, fuel, drugs etc.) is, say maybe is another $100,000,00 lets be generous that $300,000.00 in cost. There is a nice bit of net profit in Pyracy with zero risk.
The place to stop the Pyrates is on Wall Street not out in the the Indian Ocean.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
President Jefferson and subsequently President Madison both dealt with Islamic pirates. Along the way they sent Bainbridge and Decatur after the Barbary pirates. I find it interesting that one of the few attacks on the pirates by the US today involved SEAL snipers shooting from the decks of the USS Bainbridge – the significance of which was apparently missed by the media. However, thats one of and insignificant handful of actions against the pirates.
Wonder what Jefferson and Madison would think of they way we're dealing with the pirates.
I don't know if this would work find a large or multiple islands off the coast setup a base use thermal and satelite to find the motherships attack those then use the old vietnam PT boats (of course updated with new weaponary and equipment) to patrol. To clarify i'm talking about the ones with the twin 50s twin 20mms and the other two side mgs. Maybe make multiple of these and make them blatently obvious to the pirates but have well hidden defenses to once again kill more pirates. Is that feasible? I figure that that will work for killing the pirates which some agree is the way to go about ending this.
Ok reading my comment I found that it might be confusing when I say make multiple of these i'm talking about the bases.
What a lot of ignornance displayed!
Why are the Somalis Pirates? Because they're dirt poor and living in a failed state. Why wouldnt they risk this, there's little chance of actual punishment. Mostly these guys were fishermen. Fishing was totaly trashed by 'More developed' nations over fishing their waters and polution.
Now I see its making a comeback as foreign boats start to avoid the place. Many of the first attacks were just to drive off foreign flagged fishing vessels inside the national limits. ie Foreigners exploiting the lack of a effective Somali State. But hey it PAYS and now everyone wants to get a peice of that action.
Landing, invasion, bombing runs? Good Luck. its a BIG place and killing civilians and famillies of 'maybe pirates' looks bad on air and forces the currently pretty agnostic pirates straight into the islamic millitants arms. Way to give Bin Laden a Navy!
Maybe if the west tried to stabalise the nation state, give people jobs and you know, the rule of law…it might help a bit. If there's nothing to loose the cost of making it too dangerous to pirate is toooo high.