The author of Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans had direct personal experience trying to protect ships from Somali pirates.
The author states that the world’s awesome navy ships turned out to be irrelevant. The key was putting a handful of guys armed with rifles on each commercial ship (1/100th the cost of patrolling via Navy destroyer?):
What ultimately changed the dynamic altogether and has largely resulted in the dramatic reduction of piracy on the east coast of Africa was the decision by the shipping companies to put security teams on board. … This has led to the embarkation of two to six personnel from private contractors, normally well armed and reasonably well trained (at least in the use of the firearms). The host of problems raised by this include how to provide weapons and ammunition, where to base such groups, how they are trained and certified, and what the rules of engagement are for them. Because their activities occur largely on the high seas beyond the jurisdiction of any one nation, this has become a complicated branch of international law. There is a sort of Mad Max quality to these forces, despite the efforts of the contractors to train and certify them. While they are not exactly rogue warriors, their presence can make more traditional military sailors nervous, much as police in a city don’t like to see armed bodyguards or armed mall guards for that matter. Nonetheless, the results have been striking: no ship embarking an armed security detail has ever been successfully hijacked. This is because the defending team has such a huge advantage in the height of the big tankers and also because the pirates are very lightly armed, untrained themselves, and quite vulnerable during the actual act of boarding.
As the human population on Earth expands and fish become harder to catch we might expect more piracy:
When young, unemployed men find a relatively lucrative (although very dangerous) way to make a living, they are easily recruited. Second, the traditional source of income for many who turned to piracy had been fishing. Due to overfishing and ecological damage in the immediate waters, the ability to make a living fishing had diminished in the latter part of the twentieth century. … Third, the local water conditions are conducive to pirate activity. Before the real ramp-up in pirate activity, the normal shipping route was quite close to the coast of Somalia as well-laden commercial ships sailed to and from the Suez Canal. The water conditions are calm enough to permit small-boat assaults on the vastly larger commercial ships.
A pirate in a $500 open boat might be facing $20 billion in military hardware:
Over my four years as NATO commander we typically had three to five NATO vessels on station, matched with a similar number for the European Union. Given that the rest of the informal coalition against international piracy also had three to five ships, this became a substantial force. However, despite the presence of those warships, we were often a step behind the pirates. This was because of the sheer size of the operational area off the coast of Northeast Africa, a space roughly the size of Europe. When people would question why we couldn’t catch all the pirates, I would point out that even fifteen warships would be like fifteen police cars trying to cover all of western Europe. We also supplemented the ships with long-range maritime patrol aircraft. These heavy, wide-bodied, four-engine aircraft lumbered over vast amounts of territory and could remain airborne for eight to twelve hours, operating from bases in Oman, on islands in the Indian Ocean, or from the Horn of Africa. Used throughout the cold war for antisubmarine patrols, these airplanes have the ability to swoop down to the very surface of the ocean, use radar from higher altitude to scan the ocean surface, and provide command and control to helicopters or ships engaged in searching for the pirates. The United States operated P-3 Orion aircraft and the British the comparable Nimrods, and several other allies had similarly equipped planes. Additionally, for overall command of the operation from the air, NATO had available the massive Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) E-3 plane, a flying village with extensive radar, communication, and well-trained personnel.
Catching a pirate turns out to be pointless due to a lack of paperwork:
The hardest part of the operation was actually what occurred after we caught a pirate, which we did with increasing frequency. These were young men, ethnically Somalis, … They have no papers, don’t self-identify with a particular functioning government, and thus we had no one to whom we could turn them over for prosecution. Naturally the minute we closed in on them, they would also throw overboard their scaling ladder and guns, so when we boarded their small vessels we would find “innocent fishermen” and have little evidence of their wrongdoing in many cases … The pirates were lucky that we couldn’t fall back on the centuries-old punishment for such crimes and string them up from a yardarm. While several of the nations in the coalition might have been actually willing to do so, we followed normal mores of Western judicial process throughout the time I was engaged in the exercise.
The author says that we can look forward to more piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, even as the waters off the coast of Somalia have become safer.
More: read Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans.
The problem is not billion dollar ships or the lack thereof. The problem is our suicidal adherence to political correctness and putting white gloves on our military. One will be wise to recognize that Rome did not succeed in pacifying and maintaining control over all the provinces because they made the “barbarians” love Romans. They did so by making the Barbarians FEAR the Romans and understand that the consequences of violating with Roman expectations will be dire and unacceptable (to them).
What is the point of having the most powerful military in the world if nobody is afraid of you and every little compliant will be met with endless apologies and retreat? If the US policy on Piracy is that any such act on US flagged ships will be met with a massacre of the pirates and the communities that harbor them they won’t attack US ships. If the US Policy on Piracy is that we will never communicate much less negotiate with pirates, and we will always respond with deadly force as soon as possible and with saving hostage lives being totally secondary to killing the pirates, they will NEVER take US hostages. If after every Pirate incident and US response, the coastline near the Pirate communities will always be lined with dead pirates strung up by their necks on poles left to rot in the sun, the pirates will FEAR US.
The WILL enforce your power is more important than the instruments of your power. If we fight wars and counter-insurgency actions like we do today in WWII we would never have won or be able to retain victory. We now fight wars to “feel good” and “look good” than to defeat our enemies. That is our problem!
Dwight above is so right. Either your military is a deterrent – or it is not. The asymmetry whack-a-mole implied in the original goes away when they figure out that none of the previous pirates ever come back.
Jeez Dwight, thanks for sharing your inner caveman with the rest of the group.
The “two guys with assault rifles on each” scenario didn’t have enough dead children in it for you?
Anti-piracy operations do not really fit well with the USN’s modern core function, which is to be ready to win a major peer war. It’s similar to the problem where the Army is not institutionally built to run counter-insurgency operations. Both functions are more like policing than warfare. You’d probably do better to spin out separate organizations for these distracting roles, like how the Gestapo ran counter insurgency and the Wehrmacht was not distracted with it.
Fighting small poorly armed (no RPGs!) sea maraudeurs is not in USN’s mission. It is better handled by shipping companies, can not get more eficient than that. Off topic but Dwight Looi is right on the money that will and logidtic to act can be critical in modrn warfaire. It is does not matter wheter strike aircraft does Mach 1.5 or Mach 3 if Mach 1.5 aircraft has 10 minutes head start and knows where enemiy airfields are. But will to act does not apply to this situation.
I doubt anyone wants to be accidentally be written off as pirates and summarily executed by eager country militaries while traveling on yacht on open seas, or kiddnapped form a beach by SA or Yemen security forces for example and executed for same pretense.
Bobby, what counter-insurgency you refer too? Wermacht and its communications were on receiving end of counter-insurgency and for example for a Jew who happenned to be on Wermacht-occupied territory to have the best chances to survive was to join (or start) counter-insurgency. Gestapo was German secret political police during Nazi rule and was not really that active on occupied territories with active resistance.
YouTube videos “Somali pirates vs private security” are oddly satisfying to watch.
It’s an interesting corollary to the “home self-defense” issue: that having a gun in the hands of the homeowner or shipowner, is far more effective than calling the police or maritime forces.
Compare the rates of home invasion when the occupant is home, in the USA vs, say, Britain. If a thief in the USA comes upon an occupied home, they will either wait for people to leave or go on to another home that is unoccupied – it’s not worth the risk of having an armed homeowner confront them.
Can’t find the reference now but there is an interesting story about the ships that are used by these contractors as armouries.
I am sorry Andrea Matranga, but unbridled compassion is the highest form of cruelty. Your compassion, and that of our nation’s girlie men leaders, is not saving lives, it is costing lives. If we make it unequivocally and irrefutably know to the world that we don’t care about hostages and we’ll kill every hostage taker with all the resources we have hostage taking will END. How many lives will that save? What makes the live of this one hostage more important than the hundreds of hostages in the future?
This applies to not just piracy but domestic policing as well. If we make it a universal and know policy that when somebody takes a hostage, his screams and phone calls will not be responded to. That there will NEVER be a hostage negotiator. That in 5~10 minutes SWAT or the SEALS or whoever will always arrive, and go in guns blazing with no pause and no hesitation. Oh, and BTW, let’s paying a ransom or negotiating with hostage takers is a capital offense punishable by life imprisonment and the forfeiture of your assets. If you do that NOBODY will ever take a hostage again because it is totally pointless.
How many lives will you save if we do that?