# Let's say I wanted to fight pirates, the Somali kind. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 20, 2008, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629 "2008-11-20T08:10:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2008, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/41 "2008-11-23T12:51:11Z")
I’m just saying, if these guys have RPGs, as has been asserted above, are dirigibles vulnerable to that kind of attack? If the dirigible got close enough to do any real damage, would it then be vulnerable to potshots? I assume it doesn’t take too many bullets to bring down the Goodyear Blimp. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2008, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/42 "2008-11-23T13:03:26Z")
> [@Hostile\_Dialect](#): > > I’m just saying, if these guys have RPGs, as has been asserted above, are dirigibles vulnerable to that kind of attack? > > If the dirigible got close enough to do any real damage, would it then be vulnerable to potshots? I assume it doesn’t take too many bullets to bring down the Goodyear Blimp. Again, Grasshopper, reflect on the fact that it takes more energy for an RPG shell to go **up** , than it does for a 30mm autocannon shell to go **down**. If the dirigible stays at a certain altitude, & fires downwards, the pirates weapons _cannot reach_ the dirigible. You have failed to achieve Enlightenment, Grasshopper. But, do not be distressed. I shall assist you, by anointing you with the Sacred Fishy. \ ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2008, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/43 "2008-11-23T17:45:12Z")
Reckon you could launch and retrieve Predator drones from a dirigible? A sort of mothership/sky command platfom. I’d totally wear an eye patch. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2008, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/44 "2008-11-23T18:47:39Z")
> [@glee](#): > > If you sorted out the political and economic mess that is Somalia, that would do it. I want to second this. Somalia is of course bad because it’s a failed state ruled by local warlords (similar to Afghanistan). The problem is that not only did the last US adventure in Somalia fail, as Afghanistan shows, a warlord system in a failed state is a kind of vicious circle and difficult to get rid off. The local people are organized in tribes and clans because there is no central authority that could control and establish order and give security to the common people. So the normal citizen has no choice but to turn to the clan leader or the warlord for any kind of security. But because of this, there are dozens of warlords and no central authority can be established. In a civilsed state, the state has the monopoly on power (I realize that this is foreign to the US with the idea of self-defence by gun, self-revenge fantasies, ineffecient cops and mistrust in authority, but that’s how it works over here) and uses cops to enforce safety and order for everybody. This only works if the citizens trust in this and the state fulfils its part of the bargain with competent cops. In a failed state - esp. one that never was a proper state before, but colonial artifical artifact - this kind of trust never was and is difficult to establish. Thus, even eliminating the current warlords means that new ones will spring up from clan leaders wanting to protect their people. What caused the current crisis of pirates were the fishing factory ships who with impunity fish all around the African coast, gobbling up all fishlife, leaving no fish for the local fishermen with their little boats. Neither the EU nor other international bodies stopped these ships (because their lobby is too powerful) and the western consumers only cared that the fish sticks were cheap. So in self-defense, to survive, the fishermen learned to attack the factory ships and take them over. Then they realised they could apply the boarding techniques learned this way to more lucrative bounty, and started boarding tankers. The local fishermen still don’t get rich by this since the warlords in the background take the lionshare (and provide the equipment - grenade launchers etc.). But building up a working society and offering real chances of earning a living with honest work would not only help the poor people in developing countries, it would also help the Western world. Unfortunately, building up a new country from a failed state takes decades and earnest dedication and lots of money and experts, and as the Iraq war has shown, the US is not interested in long-term thinking, spending money to better other people’s lifes or listening to experts, only in Hollywood-style big-show war and effects. > [@](#): > > If you do have fantasies of shooting pirates, remember they usually have hostages and nobody wants you to shoot them. Not only the hostages - we had a recent thread about the captured tankers, and several posters pointed out that one simple grenade/rocket launched from a tube can blow up the whole tanker worth hundred of millions of dollars. One side doens’t want to shoot at all, so this conflict can’t be solved by weapons. And simply shooting at everybody coming close is kind of illegal, you know. (Okay, that in itself wouldn’t stop the US, I know.) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2008, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/45 "2008-11-23T19:32:24Z")
I say form a security company and hire yourself out to shipping companies. As other posters pointed out, you might end up being mostly a deterrent. > [@constanze](#): > > Not only the hostages - we had a recent thread about the captured tankers, and several posters pointed out that one simple grenade/rocket launched from a tube can blow up the whole tanker worth hundred of millions of dollars. Somehow I doubt that. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2008, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/46 "2008-11-23T22:20:45Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > Yeah, and we can win The War on Terror by killing all of the terrorists! Sure, they can recruit and breed more, but all that killing has got to deter them, right? Right? [crickets chirping] We don’t have to kill them all. All we have to do is either A) Deprive them of cannon fodder. If 90% if the pirates that went out didn’t come home, How endless do you suppose their supply of cannon fodder would be? Remember these are not religious zealots, these are crooks. And / or B) Sink their mother ships. There is no way in hell their speed boats can get 200 miles off shore without a mother ship to haul them. Remove the mother ship, and you have removed the means for them to carry out their attacks. They do not have an endless supply of these ships. Every one sunk is a fair percentage of the pirates finite supply. Either way, problem solved. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2008, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/47 "2008-11-23T23:19:29Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > If the dirigible stays at a certain altitude, & fires downwards, the pirates weapons cannot reach the dirigible. That all comes down to my very question: is the altitude of effectiveness of the dirigible’s weapons _outside_ of the upward range of the pirate weapons? You can’t just handwave it away with circular logic. I’m trying to get someone who knows something about the relevant weapons systems to answer that question, not someone who still hasn’t gotten over the IRC memes of the late 1990s. ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2008, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/48 "2008-11-27T08:25:32Z")
I don’t know **Hostile Dialect** , but I think that’s a very important question. I too think the idea of a floating anti-pirate battlestation to be highly intriguing. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2008, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/49 "2008-11-27T11:23:30Z")
> [@Autolycus](#): > > I don’t know **Hostile Dialect** , but I think that’s a very important question. I too think the idea of a floating anti-pirate battlestation to be highly intriguing. You know darn well that the **only** reason you like the idea is that Hasbro would make a GI Joe Floating Anti-Pirate Battlestation. And you want one. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2008, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/50 "2008-11-27T11:29:35Z")
Why hasn’t our wonderful satellite technology been assigned to help monitor this trouble spot? I thought we could point one of those things anywhere and see the time on a pirate’s fake Rolex, if we so desired? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2008, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/51 "2008-11-27T13:15:39Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > …the fishermen learned to attack the factory ships and take them over… Do you have a cite on this? I don’t recall it happening, and I read the shipping press daily. Casualty reports do get kind of dull though and I may have missed it. > [@](#): > > Not only the hostages - we had a recent thread about the captured tankers, and several posters pointed out that one simple grenade/rocket launched from a tube can blow up the whole tanker worth hundred of millions of dollars. Nah. Damage yes. Blow up whole tanker no. They are big, and crude oil doesn’t blow up too easily. At least one got hit by a freekin’ Exocet missile a few years ago and it just received a nasty wound. > [@Rick](#): > > We don’t have to kill them all. All we have to do is either > A) Deprive them of cannon fodder. If 90% if the pirates that went out didn’t come home, How endless do you suppose their supply of cannon fodder would be? The figures quoted in the press mentioned $350,000 per man for one successful ransom. In a country where a few bucks a day would make you a middle class citizen, I think you would find the answer to your question is “pretty endless”. Particularly since your “90%” is optimistic. > [@](#): > > Sink their mother ships. There is no way in hell their speed boats can get 200 miles off shore without a mother ship to haul them. Remove the mother ship, and you have removed the means for them to carry out their attacks. Some attacks have been from mother ships a long way off shore. Many have been closer in, just from smaller vessels. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2008, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/52 "2008-11-27T14:06:32Z")
> [@Autolycus](#): > > I don’t know **Hostile Dialect** , but I think that’s a very important question. I too think the idea of a floating anti-pirate battlestation to be highly intriguing. Well, for what it’s worth, the maximum altitude for a Zeppelin NT is about 9,000 feet, and the record for a rigid airship is 24,000, but with the loss of the ship afterwards. The latter, I should note, was about 90 years ago. Reaching high altitude has not been an great design consideration for the (mostly civilian) airships built or designed since (I mean, why would it be?). However, I don’t know what kind of potential anti-aircraft weaponry the pirates made have, or could reasonably acquire. For all I know 8,000 feet may be far enough away to be safe enough from anything they could throw at an airship. Failing that, I can’t help but wonder how much modern engineering and materials could boost the height-climbing (_snicker_) ability of a modified or even custom built airship—it just hasn’t been explored very much. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2008, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/53 "2008-11-27T17:29:29Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > Yeah, and we can win The War on Terror by killing all of the terrorists! Sure, they can recruit and breed more, but all that killing has got to deter them, right? Right? [crickets chirping] If they are motivated by the money, ensuring that they don’t earn the money _would_ deter them. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2008, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/54 "2008-11-28T19:26:28Z")
Judging by their actions in Iraq,Blackwater may be the pirates. ---
**Author:** ![Omegaman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e480ec/32.png) [@Omegaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omegaman)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2008, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629/55 "2008-11-28T20:20:55Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Why hasn’t our wonderful satellite technology been assigned to help monitor this trouble spot? I thought we could point one of those things anywhere and see the time on a pirate’s fake Rolex, if we so desired? Because there’s no money in it? That’s why it would need to handled by a private contractor. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-say-i-wanted-to-fight-pirates-the-somali-kind/473629.md?page=2)