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Millions for Defense, not one penny for Tribute!

As befitting the the situation we need to fit out Old Ironsides with Radar and ship to ship missiles and sent that puppy out there. "Ensign, put a broadside into those pirates if you would. "

Oddly enough the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, which McCain and other domestically minded Republicans fought hard to can/cut back, would be perfect for this type of mission.

Can we please stop calling them pirates. All those fancy speed boats and rocket launchers..they just don't get it right. They probably don't even have parrots and peg legs. And how do you rhyme in a machinegun battle?

On a slightly more serious note. This could get VERY ugly.

Anung Un Rama wrote:Can we please stop calling them pirates. All those fancy speed boats and rocket launchers..they just don't get it right. They probably don't even have parrots and peg legs. And how do you rhyme in a machinegun battle?

On a slightly more serious note. This could get VERY ugly.

On the plus side, Ridley Scott can direct Sea Hawk Down. A film to dramatize the events, and give Josh Hartnett a job.

Wow.
Im guessing that the S on Superman stands for Super Fat Man! rofl.

These so called Pirates have no taste at all! Not once did I read about anybody walking the plank!

First Oil, then Grain... you do know that they are actually looking for the illusive Tanker loaded down with 200 million tons of Ale right?

Aren't we all?

Modern pirates use fast, small speedboats which are faster than a navy ship like a frigate, small and difficult to spot from sea level, and hard to hit with normal anti-ship weapons.

What's needed for stopping themis helicopter carriers with recon, attack and transport helicopters and squads of marines.

Something like a torpedo boat would also be useful. Fast, manoeuvreable, with enough weapons and armour to fight a pirate boat.

Predator unmanned planes with a couple of anti ship missiles each forever patrolling the area would greatly help to stamp out piracy...

We need the pirates to feel their collars getting felt.

We need the public spectacle of pirates being boarded, arrested, put on trial and going to prison.

If we just want to blow people up, we can bomb their bases on land now.

See, that fits with what I'm saying KK. Outfit the Ironsides (or in your case HMS Victory) with some nice new engines and radar, give her some nice special forces types dinghies to locate the bad guys, and replace the old pounders with breechloading artillery, it'd be a blast from the past.

Alternatively we could spend a billion or so updating the Texas and couple of other historical battleships and send them in. Replace the marine quarters on the Alabama with storage for ninjas and Chuck Norris. More fun could not be conceivable then a rank of WWII battleships crossing the T on some pirates skivvies, then sending in the ninjas on the survivors for the ultimate Pirate vs. Ninja deathmatch.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Predator unmanned planes with a couple of anti ship missiles each forever patrolling the area would greatly help to stamp out piracy...

Anti-ship missiles tend to use a combination of radar and infrared guidance systems. Neither of which are effective against small targets with relatively insignificant heat and radar signatures.

Predator recon craft would certainly be appropriate here. As would the LCS program that I mentioned before. The US navy is pretty much completely unprepared to fight conflicts in littoral (basically anything less than about 200 feet deep) waters. However, the French have a good bit of hardware that can do the job, with both a dedicate helicopter carrier and numerous low draft corvettes.

The good thing is that these types of tactics are exactly what Iran would use to close the straights of Hormuz. So working in and around Somali waters should give world military planners some interesting stuff to look at.

LCS has NO weapons. I deal with LCS every day at work, dogma. There are currently TWO ships, neither of which have a single mounted weapon.

And the Navy can be quite capable in the littorals, but not if the opponent has air superiority.

Which the Somali's would not.

Because they have no aircraft.

Zero.

The relevant company will pay the ransoms in the end. It might not be the full amount, due to bartering down, but it will happen.

Company's do not like their boat getting hijacked, for obvious reasons. This has been happening for years, but the businesses have covered them up because knowing your shipping service gets nailed by six dudes with an rpg is bad for your reputation.

Ships in a convoy (safetey in numbers) is a logistical nightmare. Most of these super heavy vessels take minutes to make the slightest turn. Try co-ordinating that.

Armed guards are not the answer. Kitting out some mercs for months at a time is prohibitively expensive, and a danger to the crew. Also, for all you screaming ''but the pirates demand millions!!'', a ten man team of men can realistically cover 100 meters with the naked eye. In a vessel as large as a multi-storey building, this is impractical.

The crew are very rarely hurt, and if hijacked will simply do as told, understandably.

The only feasible measures that can be taken are comprehensive cctv coverage and rear spanning radar, calibrated to detect minute vessels.

Countries have deployed destroyers (the Indian navy recently destroyed a pirate ''mothership'') but, as the saying goes, it is a drop in the ocean.

I read that the tanker is worth $500 million and its cargo is worth $100 million.

The company would certainly pay a reasonable ransom to get it back, and who can blame them? Certainly not Lloyds, who probably insure the vessel.

I heard similar figures for the hardware and cargo. It's unsurprising really; a vessel like the Sirius Star could remain sea worthy for the best part of a century.

Assuming that the pirates are not clued up on its full worth, $100,000,000 is a pretty standard demand in the region. They never expect to get it, but then I'm assuming that getting a fraction of this would make you very wealthy indeed in Somalia. Money is definitely power in the region, corrupt as it is.

A french ship was recently re-aqquired for $8 million, after an initial $100 million demand. Go figure; the pirates are laughing all the way to the bank.

Edited for clarity

dienekes96 wrote:LCS has NO weapons. I deal with LCS every day at work, dogma. There are currently TWO ships, neither of which have a single mounted weapon.

I didn't mean to suggest that they be deployed right now; poor phrase on my part. I know they're still in the development cycle.

dienekes96 wrote:
And the Navy can be quite capable in the littorals, but not if the opponent has air superiority.

Which the Somali's would not.

Because they have no aircraft.

Zero.

point taken.

The Navy does have a (very) small fleet of PC's...Patrol Craft. High speed interdiction vessels. The Cyclone class. Now those might be fairly useful, they've been around over a decade.

dogma, I recognize you probably knew about the Somali Air Force. I was just arguing your assertion about Navy competence in the littorals (brown water - shallow - etc). That's a noted weakness, but only against higher level capability than the pirates have. It's a matter of will, not technical ability. I have a friend recently shipped to duty in Djibouti (the Horn of Africa). Maybe he'll let me know what our capabilities are.

dienekes96 wrote:The Navy does have a (very) small fleet of PC's...Patrol Craft. High speed interdiction vessels. The Cyclone class. Now those might be fairly useful, they've been around over a decade.

I forgot about those. If I remember correctly, and if Wikipedia is correct, there are 5 of them in Bahrain that could be moved fairly expeditiously.

dienekes96 wrote:
dogma, I recognize you probably knew about the Somali Air Force. I was just arguing your assertion about Navy competence in the littorals (brown water - shallow - etc). That's a noted weakness, but only against higher level capability than the pirates have. It's a matter of will, not technical ability. I have a friend recently shipped to duty in Djibouti (the Horn of Africa). Maybe he'll let me know what our capabilities are.

That would be interesting to hear. I don't do too much inquiry into naval warfare, so my knowledge of their capabilities is based on their performance in theoretical combat more than force to force comparison. For example, my knowledge of naval weakness in littoral waters is based only on my research into Iran's ability to shut the Straights of Hormuz.

Small craft like that usually need a local base to operate from.

Some of the pirates have anchored huge boats way out to sea to expand their operations. These are called motherships, which sounds pretty intense. It simply allows them to operate far away from the coast, where most of the destroyers operate, hence the Sirius Star getting nailed 200 miles offshore.

Ask the japanese navy for a few of these babies. I´m still trying to blackmail somebody to catch a ride on one

M.

Sounds to me like a few 'Q' Ships might not go amiss.

They were used extensively during WW2 to protect shipping convoys heading to and from Britain. They look like any other ship in the convoy, but have hidden guns and that, which are always good for a laugh.

Or we could just sic the Special Boat Service (naval equivalent to the SAS, and every bit as mental hard) on the buggers. That'd learn them. And by learn them, I mean severely bray, knack and hoof the Pirates into next week.

Orlanth wrote:Actually the French military have been taking action over pirates

o... so THATS why they keep doing it.

they think they need to make a point, the world dosent take them seriously becuse it sent the FRENCH after them