What would be the various ways of doing so? I imagine there are various methods. I imagine the safest is probably to enlist in some sort of navy and work my way up to a specialization in piracy combat. It would probably take a long time, and you might not see much action.
I guess a second option would be to form a mercenary group. I imagine this is legal in international waters, but what the hell do I know? While highly exciting, I imagine this idea to be stupid and highly dangerous.
Are there any other ways? I don’t imagine myself going down this road, but the idea of a gun battle on the high seas excites me, and I wouldn’t mind having some fuel for the imagination.
My apologies if this is best suited for IMHO. I couldn’t decide… yarrr.
More seriously – until some nation-state steps up and decides to fight these guys with its navy, enlisting in navies won’t result in any action. I don’t think navies have an “anti-piracy” specialization; getting a role in a mid-sized surface warfare vessel might be your best bet to be in position to be involved.
Combat against the pirates is going to take one of two forms, most likely. Because they don’t fly pirate flags, you’ve got to identify them by their actions first. Although you might conceivably blunder across pirates in the act of piracy, it’s much more likely that you’ll hail their ship in passing and demand to board and inspect it.
If they resist at that point, you can sink them like the Indian Navy did.
If they pretend to comply, you’ll have to send a boarding party. They may well try to riddle the boats with gunfire when they get close, or ambush and capture the boarding party, in which case you’ll have a shootout at close ranges, a much nastier proposition than just cranking off 20 rounds from the automated 75mm gun at 5 miles.
You could look for some Blackwater-style firm that might hire out guards to shipping companies, but I haven’t hea4rd about anything like that so far.
Or, you could join an intelligence agency and infiltrate Eyl “Bond-style”; sleep with their women, drink their martinis and take them out one by one with your Walter PPK (or wrestle them; depends upon your Bond).
If I was the owner of a ship going through the waters off the coast of Somalia, I would hire a couple of guys, arm them well, and order them to blow the f@cking heads clean off of anyone who comes within 500 yards of my ship. (Excepting, of course, any authorities, etc.)
The specialist teams are Royal Marines (or the equivalent) trained for close quarters water-borne combat. Naval training does not cover this sort of stuff. Or helicopters. But they have limited range and visibility. The sorts of boats the pirates use are hard/impossible to spot on radar. The real solution are long-loiter UAVs covering the shipping lanes with thermal and visual equipment. Then they can track small boats from shore to shipping (demonstrating intent) and vectoring intercepts to dissuade and/or destroy (or maybe just drop a Hellfire).
The problem is that a commercial ship is very vulnerable to RPG fire (as carried by the pirates). So the cost of any damage that the pirates might inflict during a fight with mercenaries on a prospective target far outweighs the costs of paying out if the boat gets taken. Plus you would end up paying the mercenaries for plenty of trips that nothing happens. And they don’t come cheap. So paying the pirates is the pragmatic approach. Of course, piratical success breeds success, and there are now more pirates. Eventually, the number of successful attacks will grow to the point that the costs of paying the pirates outweighs the cost of doing something different. But that point has not been reached.
ETA: re the Sirius Star. Money for nothing for Blackwater. Any ship escorted by them won’t get attacked, and the Blackwater team gets an all-expenses paid cruise. And those ships probably would not get attacked anyhow.
If you had sufficient funds, you could fit out your own Q-ship and simply wander up and down the Somali coast exterminating them. (I’d recommend the Phalanx CIWS disguised as the bases of cranes.)
The Block 1B of the Phalanx has been specifically modified to handle small surface craft (probably prompted by the USS Cole incident). Currentlky all models are being upgraded.
Wouldn’t this in itself be piracy? Does international law contemplate that a private (i.e., non-state) actor can permissibly take offensive action against ships suspected of being pirates?
While flipping channels, I’ve noticed a TV show on the History Channel called Shadow Force, which follows mercs around doing such things as combating piracy. You could join them as a cameraman and work your way up to pirate bait and then stone cold killer, although I’m pretty sure they probably avoid any actual combat.
You should read Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, for a taste of pirate-like combat with a suitcase-sized nuclear-powered flechette minigun.
We could go a-privateering. Does any nation still issue Letters of Marquise and Reprisal for private war ships? I see a couple problems. First is there any profit in capturing / destroying Somalian fishing boats? Second is there a prize court in operation any more? Third, I have this vague recollection that privateers were prohibited by some international convention or another (not that great nations much care about international conventions when it serves their interest not to – the axiom is that great nations act like gangsters and small nations act like whores.
Does any one else think of the free companies and Condottari that ravaged Italy in the 15th century. East Africa may well be comparable to Early Renaissance Italy in terms of political turmoil and free lance violence.
And no. The right of nations to issue letters of marque was effectively abolished under international law by the 1856 Paris Declaration on Maritime Law and the 1907 Hague Convention.
For effectiveness, I would go with an airborne platform, long dwell times, IR search and tracking cameras linked to some really fast or really big guns. One craft can patrol over many ships, and get to a trouble spot early. AC-130 type plane, or put some teeth on a P-3 Orion.
Even cheaper would be the UAVs with fangs, like si says, but we’d need a look-down platform to find the pirates. Maybe a couple dozen of those.
Buy a yacht. Go sail off the coast of Somalia. Maybe buy a few ads in the Somalia press bragging about all the hookers and blow you have all to yourself on your big fancy yacht.
Although NATO’s anti-piracy task force has been somewhat less active than they might be, some Navies have had recent clashes with pirates. In particular, the Royal Navy has a rapid response Royal Marine force in-theatre for boardings that has seen recent action.
