Re-introduction of the Merchant Aircraft Carrier...

...Specifically on tankers and container-ships in the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea and Malacca Straits/South China Sea areas, as on-board piracy interceptors.

Squadrons of Sea Kings or ex-RAF Harriers, with landing-pads/short 'ski-jump' ramps. One or two aircraft land on each tanker ready-armed. The tankers have containerised refuelling and accommodation facilities and a small Marine detachment landed as groundcrew. A spare munitions-load landed by helicopter.

Acting either as CAP or as quick-reaction, the Marines and heli or Harrier air-support watch for approachers and warn them off. Any BSF pressing his luck gets gutted.

On leaving the Danger Zones, the Marines (less two liaison) and heliborne kit land on a ship returning through the Danger Zones. Costs borne by insurers or oil and containber-ship companies who then don't have the piracy risk to trouble them.

Something the Saudis and Malays could set up, perhaps?
 
Why couldn't you just base the planes on land?

Also, I suspect this would very quickly lead to innocent people being blown to bits. I honestly have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm under the impression that the Malacca Straits are crowded.
 
'Keep Clear' signs might help...

...The problem at the moment is that reaction times are too high and the pirates have an easy ride. It's not perfect, but if you reduce the shipping costs, you reduce end-user costs as well.
 
...The problem at the moment is that reaction times are too high and the pirates have an easy ride. It's not perfect, but if you reduce the shipping costs, you reduce end-user costs as well.

Putting Harriers on cargo ships is not going to reduce shipping costs. And I looked it up: the narrowest point of the straits is only 2.8 km wide. Adopting a "shoot-on-approach" strategy is simply not viable here.

If piracy gets so bad that you need an armed response, either take a different route or give the ships machine guns, or even autocannon. Cheaper and less likely to get passers-by killed.

Even if you absolutely must have Harriers to do the job, it still makes more sense to base them on land. You need at least one Harrier per X kilometers of strait in order to achieve sufficient coverage, right? So you put one base per X kilometers of strait, instead of putting one Harrier on every Y cargo ships. Otherwise, you end up adding facilities to ships that go unused 95% of the time.
 
Putting Harriers on cargo ships is not going to reduce shipping costs. And I looked it up: the narrowest point of the straits is only 2.8 km wide. Adopting a "shoot-on-approach" strategy is simply not viable here.

If piracy gets so bad that you need an armed response, either take a different route or give the ships machine guns, or even autocannon. Cheaper and less likely to get passers-by killed.

Even if you absolutely must have Harriers to do the job, it still makes more sense to base them on land. You need at least one Harrier per X kilometers of strait in order to achieve sufficient coverage, right? So you put one base per X kilometers of strait, instead of putting one Harrier on every Y cargo ships. Otherwise, you end up adding facilities to ships that go unused 95% of the time.


Time to bring back the "Q" ships
 
Time to bring back the "Q" ships

Actually, given that the pirates have attacked (mistakenly) several warships and other naval vessels (with predictable results) Q-ships might be overkill. :-}

Seriously, this isn't a high-tech problem. Low-tech solutions like Marine guard detachments will work much better. I've yet to see a pirate craft off Somalia that a .50cal MG or a shoulder-fired rocket launcher wouldn't be able to sink.

There's a military blog I read that often has some good information on this subject, some recent posts:

http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/02/troubling-developments-off-somalia.html
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/01/south-korea-storms-hijacked-ship.html
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/01/somalia-its-tribes-stupid.html

And especially:
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2010/12/2010-counter-piracy-churn.html
and:
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2010/12/statistic-of-day.html

Edit to add, one more good one:
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2010/12/comprehensive-open-source-african.html
 
Any sort of reaction resulting in putting any kind of force on merchant ships, is reactionary and will not resolve the problem itself. It is resulting in a sort of armsrace, also seen in urban warfare between gangs and police forces, but this time at sea.

The only real way to deal with piracy is to harm the pirates, where it hurts, namely their financial base. If Pirates cannot spend their illegally aquired money that easy, they will see that piracy is not profitable as a way of living.
 

mowque

Banned
What are the odds your ships get attacked by pirates? Surely not enough to justify huge expense of weapons...?
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The cost would be way out of proportion to the problem.

The solution, assuming one wants to kill the arrow instead of the archer (which would be messy and politically difficult but also far cheaper and more effective in the long term) is to simply employ guards on the ships. The ships are attacked because they are soft targets that are not allowed to have weapons aboard without hiring specific trained personnel. The shipping companies would easily hire a team of "security specialists" from one of the PMC that would prevent attacks (taking an armed vessel is one of the most difficult things that you can do). When you look at the cost/benifit of probably $20K per trip vs. $5 million in ransom (to guard $20-30 million of cargo) the ROI seem pretty solid.

Putting fighters on a merchie to deal with a half dozen fishermen with AKs is a bit of a stretch.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
Rather than build Q-ships, why not put Marines (US or others - anti-piracy doesn´t exactly take a first-rate military force) on some ships chosen at random, or on all ships, which pass through the danger zone. A squad or two of riflemen with a heavy weapon (man-portable ATGM or something like that) should be more than enough to defeat any bunch of pirates in a defensive battle, and they´d be vastly cheaper than helicopters or aircraft.
 
What are the odds your ships get attacked by pirates? Surely not enough to justify huge expense of weapons...?

It is like buying insurance; pay a little now or pay a lot later... maybe. Shipping companies tend to buy insurance.

If you follow the links I posted above, you'll see there's an attack or an attempted attack every day or two. The cost to the ship's owner of ransom for a ship and crew is generally in the millions. The cost of a couple of armed contractors on board in the danger zone is a few tens of thousands, tops.

The only real problem with putting an armed party on board is that it can be hard to tell the sheep from the goats.

Edit to add: remember that the cost of weapons need only be small arms or a light crew-served weapon. We are NOT talking about aircraft here, nor special forces-level troops. We're talking a step DOWN from a 1st World rifleman.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
The only real problem with putting an armed party on board is that it can be hard to tell the sheep from the goats.

Hence my suggestion of using soldiers. Which also avoids that awkward "why the hell am I paying taxes when I have to pay for my own protection on top of that?" moment on the part of shipping company owners.

Edit to add: remember that the cost of weapons need only be small arms or a light crew-served weapon. We are NOT talking about aircraft here, nor special forces-level troops. We're talking a step DOWN from a 1st World rifleman.

Exactly. Even a "second-rate" or reliable "third-rate" military could do this - I´m thinking of South Korea or Taiwan for example, since a lot of freighters seem to be theirs to begin with. But this is probably an international matter anyway.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Hence my suggestion of using soldiers. Which also avoids that awkward "why the hell am I paying taxes when I have to pay for my own protection on top of that?" moment on the part of shipping company owners.



Exactly. Even a "second-rate" or reliable "third-rate" military could do this - I´m thinking of South Korea or Taiwan for example, since a lot of freighters seem to be theirs to begin with. But this is probably an international matter anyway.

The ROK and ROC troops are anything but 2nd rate. The ROK troops are some of the best on Earth (not to mention being flat scary bastards).

Problem with having the registry country provide forces is that better than 40% of big cargo vessels are Liberian, Marshall Island or Panamanian registry, with another 15% being other flag of convenience registry states.. Even if these countries wanted to put troops on board, they don't have the manpower to make it happen. Liberia has 2,500+ ships registered, it has 2,400 active duty troops. Panama, with 6,300+ ships has no active military at all. The Marshall Islands have no military of any kind.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
The ROK and ROC troops are anything but 2nd rate. The ROK troops are some of the best on Earth (not to mention being flat scary bastards).

Problem with having the registry country provide forces is that better than 40% of big cargo vessels are Liberian, Marshall Island or Panamanian registry, with another 15% being other flag of convenience registry states.. Even if these countries wanted to put troops on board, they don't have the manpower to make it happen. Liberia has 2,500+ ships registered, it has 2,400 active duty troops. Panama, with 6,300+ ships has no active military at all. The Marshall Islands have no military of any kind.

Point taken.

However there are quite a few countries whose naval presence, and thus presumably their marines, are FAR less numerous and less geared towards power projection than those of the US, but who are nonetheless capable enough for this sort of thing - starting, for example, with my own country, Germany, and including a lot of other countries like the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Brazil and so on and so forth.
If each of these countries, and perhaps some of those on the next lower tier (Indonesia? Thailand? Argentina? Chile? China?), each contributed a modestly sized force, - let´s make it a bataillon each - then there would be enough enough troops to guard most or all of the ships transiting the Danger Zone off East Africa.
 
If each of these countries, and perhaps some of those on the next lower tier (Indonesia? Thailand? Argentina? Chile? China?), each contributed a modestly sized force, - let´s make it a bataillon each - then there would be enough enough troops to guard most or all of the ships transiting the Danger Zone off East Africa.

Unless they've improved markedly over the last ten years or so, no sane merchant skipper is going to want Indonesian troops aboard his ship in pirate waters.

I think you'd have better luck confining it to NATO and selected others.
 
The simple answer to piracy is to say that you're randomly putting Ghurkas on your ships. Who's going to attack a ship when there's even a remote chance of it being full of Ghurkas?
 
The simple answer to piracy is to say that you're randomly putting Ghurkas on your ships. Who's going to attack a ship when there's even a remote chance of it being full of Ghurkas?

Heck, I'm not going to attack a ship that contains ONE Ghurka!

Now that you mention it, they might be ideal. Ghurkas are some seriously tough troops, don't mind getting their hands dirty, have a long history of working with the UK which has a major interest in anti-piracy ops, all while still being far enough outside the core 1st world that they'd be fairly cheap to hire. Not sure how many Ghurka units there are nowadays but historically they supported multiple regiments, so providing one for anti-piracy ops should be doable.
 

Cook

Banned
Any sort of reaction resulting in putting any kind of force on merchant ships, is reactionary and will not resolve the problem itself. It is resulting in a sort of armsrace, also seen in urban warfare between gangs and police forces, but this time at sea.

The only real way to deal with piracy is to harm the pirates, where it hurts, namely their financial base. If Pirates cannot spend their illegally aquired money that easy, they will see that piracy is not profitable as a way of living.

Their bases are in Somalia which is presently not in a position to stop them; therefore for the time being reactionary is the only option.

Presently with the rules of engagement, if the pirates throw their AKs and RPGs over the side of the boat when they are approached by a naval search party they are allowed to continue on their way, so no great disincentive there, especially given the return for capturing an oil tanker.

Mounting prefabricated helipads on tankers and large freighters and clearing the area of cabling would be a bonus, it would make getting armed people on and off the ships a hell of a lot quicker and easier than rappelling down a road while the helos trying to avoid a dozen towers and cables.
 
1. Destroy pirate camps with Special force ... Spetznaz or whatever elite troops of the country/countries who intervene.

2. Put Armed troops on the ships

3. Destroy any ships known to have been used by pirates
 
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