Piracy only continues when it is profitable.
In Somalia, tragically, sadly, and really dangerously – the only growth business seems to be piracy.
Every ransom paid spawns more piracy. I hope the combination of a dead pirate – and no ransom – reduces the number of pirates. I also strongly urge that no more ransoms be paid to Somalian pirates by any ship, any country, any company!
Piracy is not business. It is theft. It also raises costs and negatively impacts trade across the board.
I am very very very glad Captain Phillips, who placed his men’s lives before his own, and showed all of the characteristics of a real leader came out of this alive, and did not have to be a martyr to honor.
I am not sorry a pirate, who was willing to place his life and the lives of others at risk is dead.
He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword, MATT 26:47-55.
Now, if somehow NO ONE paid those pirates ransoms any more, and there was “Q Ship” type program set up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q…
“Q Ships” and that program, brought into the yar 2009, may be what is needed to extinguish the plethora of Somali pirates and their home-grown crime wave. The idea is that a random sprinking of ships that look like juicy prizes are actually wolves of the sea that can blow pirates out of the water with ease, so that the pirates never know when a tanker/merchant/yacht is a valid prize, and when that same vessel is a “modern Q Ship” that will gobble them up.
Combine a “Q Ship type program” with no more ransoms and piracy will not look like a cash cow anymore. Piracy can be extinquished and the combination of “no more ransoms” and Q ships is the way to go, based on a review of history.
But that is just my “.02” – what do YOU think?
1) Pirate ships aren’t warships and don’t really need warships to fight. In most cases, you could probably fend off a pirate attack by the presence of a couple of marines with automatic weapons.
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p>2) Pirate vessels sometimes carry innocent hostages from previous raids. If you blow pirates out of the water you may kill innocent people and you can bet that pirates would make sure to use such “human shields” when possible. Are we really that ruthless that we would be willing to kill hostages along with bad guys?
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p>In any case, I was wondering if putting a couple of marines on every boat that travels through the danger zone would be enough of a disincentive to take care of the problem.
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p>It also seems that raids on pirate bases on the mainland are called for. Pirates need to know that they will never be safe once they have committed their crimes.
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Outfit these large ships with a deck-mounted 50-cal and pit a 200-300 yard kill zone around it like US Warships following the Kole attack in 2000. Train a guy on the ship how to use the deck gun effectively.
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p>Cheech and Chong on their little boat with a couple of AK’s and an RPG Launcher would get shredded by a deck-mounted 50 cal.
This will not and should not happen for a hundred reasons, but here are a few:
1) No commercial port is going to allow what amounts to a gunboat to dock there.
2) The insurance costs to Maersk of having guns on their ships are going to be higher than whatever losses they incur due to piracy.
3) This matters less now that the world economy is in the crapper, but every bit of weight and space taken up by guns and ammunition means less room for shipping containers, which means reduced profits for each voyage.
4) If pirates do somehow gain control of these outfitted ships, they will have infinitely more firepower as well as hostages and the stolen goods.
5) What if Chinese owned COSCO wants to do this? Are you cool with such a ship pulling up to the Conley container terminal in South Boston? What about any number of other ships flying flags of convenience?
And 5 is offensive. What does it matter that its Chinese? Everyone’s been shitting on the Chinese, but they are still important allies of ours.
They’re the only shipping line that I could think of off the top of my head that currently serves Conley. The Chinese actually have more to lose than most due to piracy. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re going to like armed US ships docking in Shanghai or Hong Kong.
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p>And yes, I do have a better idea. It’s convoys. There are only two or three piracy hotspots in the world. Publish a schedule of times when you’ll have a gunboat escort ships through the Gulf of Aden or the Strait of Malacca. If you don’t want to be escorted, that’s your choice.
Why, because they don’t want the competition?
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p>Oh, wait – different kind of piracy – never mind:)
I really doubt that the Coast Guard or the Harbor police would allow a ship carrying any weapon bigger than a rifle to get anywhere near the LNG tank farms or any of the gas tankers. An M2 would shred them, too, and the ensuing fireball would be a major catastrophe.
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p>Also, it’s ironic that the author of the “Cheech and Chong” reference is offended by sco’s naming a Chinese shipping concern. The Chinese are not “allies of ours” in any normal sense, either.
As sco said, your idea is simply not tenable. Ships armed in such a fashion would indeed not be allowed to dock in most ports, which would entirely defeat the purpose.
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p>If you are going to arm them, perhaps you could get away with UN-provided soldiers who would not necessarily even need to be on the ships when they are in port.
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p>It also seems that there needs to be an effort to get at the pirates where they live, provided it can be done without incurring too many civilian casualties.
The United Nations can’t produce much of an army. Sure, there are some top-level units from powder blue loving countries such as Canada, but the meat of their force are Bangladeshis, Romanians, and Uruguayans turned over to the UN for budgetary reasons. The UN pays for soldiers it uses, giving struggling countries a way to have an army without paying for it. In one notorious case, Bulgaria opened up a mental institution for peacekeepers.
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p>All this to say that the level of training, equipment, and experience of the typical UN peacekeeper isn’t high enough to provide, much less operate, a navy.