Piracy and Lunacy

The lunacy of Somalia being without a clear government the past 20 or so years is bad enough, but couple that with Piracy and you get a dangerous but equal harmony to paraphrase the smarmy McCartney / Jackson song of the 80’s. Since I’m the guy who likes to look beyond the next news cycle, I’ll add my thoughts to the many news articles you’ve seen on the topic, because there is a clear and imminent danger to this piracy.

It’s not a question of more patrols, there’s only so much open space you can protect. It’s a question of cutting off the bases, and stopping the ransom payments. The point in any attack should be to make piracy dangerously unprofitable. Right now it’s pretty lucrative, and the danger in the many multi-million dollar ransoms grows with compound interest.

The headlines today talks about pirates in rubber rafts and broken down trawlers, but if ransoms continue to be paid how long before we see speedboats or cruisers? Today we see AK’s and RPG;’s, how long before we see .50 cals and C-802’s?

Since it is profitable piracy is likely to increase, not decrease, and the outcome could be disastrous. The other day a loaded cruise ship outran the pirates, but the day will come when ships attempting to flee will be targetted with missiles.

Advanced tech is not that hard to scrape up, and the Falklands war and the Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006 showed us the clear danger of underestimating the weapons your foes might have. Maybe all the piracy is really for show, maybe they are trying to sucker a military vessel in, who knows? I do know that I support the current initiative for attacks on the pirate bases, because you must wipe out their capabilities to defeat them, not increase them by continued ransom payments. Like America’s first war with pirates, we must go to the source and tear out the roots.

4 thoughts on “Piracy and Lunacy”

  1. For what it’s worth, the shippers would be far better off to hire security that will stand and fight for the ships they are getting paid to protect. I’m sure there
    are a lot of former vets and Blackwater guards that
    would love to keep their skills honed. Rubber boats
    are hard to manage on the water when they are
    full of holes and the same goes for the passengers
    in them….

  2. I think the shipping lines are worried about the liability if someone actually gets shot or something, I’m not understanding it myself. A few good snipers with .50s on a ship could probably take care of things .

  3. Although a ship is a large target, a good sniper with
    a .50 cal Barrett could take out an RPG gunner with
    one shot at long range if identified. I believe if the
    pirates see weapons being displayed along the rails,
    they would hesitate to try to take the ship. Powerful
    search lights at night would discourage the small
    rubber boats by blinding the pirates and kill their
    night vision giving the ship time to make headway.
    Even if the boat(s) are innocent fishing vessels, a shot
    across the bow would discourage them from venturing too close to a commercial or tour ship…

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