Piracy on steep rise
 

Germany now being the most affected state.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-912089.html

German and European reaction: well, you tell me.

Convoys and escorts - come on world, it's worked well (ish) before. :/\\!!

Precisely...a couple of dozen merchants and two helicopter capable naval vessels with a couple of fast inflatables each should do the trick.

The merchant companies and insurers each pay a fee to the naval budget to cover costs.

Usually I am not that radical but if a boat with pirates armed to the teeth sets course for a cargo ship, tanker, whatever, clearly trying to board it... just use them as target practice.

Maybe their brothers in arms will consider attacking merchant vessels in the future?

German ships sometimes already have mercenaries aboard, a decision by their owners that is made by pure desparation. Which would be acceptable if it works, and it seems to work. But by German law, these companies are not really allowed top defend their ships, and are acting in a so far only tolerated legal grey zone.

That Western govenrments allow Western hostages by the hundreds being held in captivity over months and years, exposed to physical and psychic terror, fear, disease and what ther eis more, is a scandal, and worse: it is a crime.

Armed drones, loaded with area-affecting ammo, some kind of cluster ammo. Gunships. Could you imagine what a Cobra would mean for attacking pirate boats?

That surprises me coming from you. Cluster munitions are amongst the most indescriminate ever created - Just outside Pristina airport is a field littered with them (or it was in 1999/2000), fenced off from me - although I did go in a couple of times on a proven route (some idiot put our mast up in there without checking first!!!) - but not from the handful of houses that backed on to it with kids playing in it - although they knew exactly where they lay, pointing to them and shouting 'mina, mina', the livestock didn't.

Cluster munitions either get all, or at sea will get nothing.

We'll throw in a couple each of these:

http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/3034/41hb.jpg

http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/6770/pztp.jpg

Drones would be the most cost-effective solution I guess. It would be more expensive to have ships patrolling there all the time than a drone controlled from wherever, launched from a base in Africa.

And a AGM-114 Hellfire missile is not that expensive (~ $70k?). Well worth a boat with pirates and the "show of force" effect I feel. Also, pirates could do nothing against high flying "invisible" drones.

Hang the thieves from the yard arm when captured by the navy escort could help deter the attacks, or at least help reduce the number of pirates. :arrgh!:

Where's the Christian and sense of fair play in you....throw them overboard (even if 130 miles offshore) and give them a fighting chance with the sharks and a possible swim back ashore.

Just remember folks that these pirates aren't in it to make themselves rich but rather to keep from starving.

I forgot that the cost of fuel to go fishing is more than to attack an unarmed merchant.:06:

I think he was being sarcastic... at least I hope he was :D

Then tell them to stop buying rifles, ammunition, RPGs, fast boats and fuel, and buy some food.

I wish I could earn $3m for 134 days work, of which only a couple were probably 'work'. (source - http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow...181529222.html)

Or if you've cash burning a hole in your pocket, try some investments - http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/...5B01Z920091201

Must have a word with those nice people down at the Joke Centre....could well be the next form of growth in the employment sector.

I'm fairly certain that this would only lead to hostages being aboard the raiders as human shields in the future.
And for the choppers and drones, these guys have money and connections. I don't think it would take long before they come back with some shoulder launched SAMs that went "missing" in some former Soviet arsenal.
I think the best solution would be for ships to be armed. A convoy system doesn't work anymore with modern traffic demands. There are too many ships heading to too many destinations (hey, we all want our cheap stuff from China, don't we?), or at least that is what I would expect.

Just because a couple of kingpins made some real money don't try and claim that tricked down to the rank and file. They are doing it for barely sustenance wages.

Catch the buggas and lop off their hands so they can no longer hold a weapon, eat or wipe their butts and I'd wager a lot of this nonsense would stop.

You want to pinpoint a racing speedboat with an iron bomb, dropped by a drone, and on the water? ;) Or use a hellfire on a rubber boat?

A drone has the needed standing time to be around a convoy or s hip or in an area for longer time than a fighter can. Also, more cost efficient.

And why are you surprised about me? I never rejected that even on land cluster ammunition, like mines as well, make a lot of sense. I just would like see them being used under very strict regulations, and not in just any random scenario, under just any circumstances.

I do not care that much for them being poor or not. The business model of piracy is successful, the leaders make a fortune with it and establish new social structures breeding it even further, and the operation areas of pirates are expanding - fast, it seems.

Also, most of them treat their hostages not nicely. Psychoterror, torture, and months and sometimes years in fear for life and mistreatment is what many of the hostages have to endure. Unacceptable.

So far I was about protection of ships at sea, obviously. But I indeed think that we have to strike their bases and villages, headquarters and harbours on land as well. Here is where more conventional military things like fighters should play a role. But you cannot have a fighter circling overhead a small traders flotilla for days and days. And surface units cannot cover all the area all the time, it is too huge. Pirates thus will always find a prey. That is why the traders must be capable to return fire by themselves, without needing to wait for a frigate arriving hours too late. That means: the traders are armed, or they are accompanied by weapon platforms that have long standing time. And so I come to mercs or regular troops, drones, combat helicopters temporarily stationed aboard the ships.

Strikes on land to destroy pirate infrastructure, is a more conventional military option. Freeing hostages obviously is a thing for special ops. Since the latter are high risk operations, I would prefer to bomb pirates into oblivion elsewhere and tell them that I'd stop only when they stop striking at ships and if they free their hostages immediately.

My priority is to get our people out (that includes also contracted foreigners in the hired crews, of course) and to protect our ships and goods. Once that is achieved, the good-doers can jump in and lament and do as much as they want. It should be obvious for everybody that if the pirate business model is allowed to flourish and to be successful, one cannot seriously expect at the same time that it will decline all by itself. The punishment must be felt, and it must hurt as terribly as needed to make the lesson understood.

Since years the EU runs Atalanta. Piracy grew and grew all the time, so did our losses, and now piracy is exported to the other side of Africa - that successful Atalanta is. Obviously our approach so far does not work.