Like I said, I’ll leave identification of vessels to those that do so for a living. If it was that insurmountable, every country would be overrun with smuggling or piracy. In the long run, the most important thing is to get Somalia back on its feet and help it develop a functioning police force and coast guard - which is happening. But until then, a blockade and total interdiction may be the only answer.
I still think that would be cheaper than the ad hoc patrols currently in place, and using convoys would still allow the pirates free reign over the rest of the sea.
At the very least, the task force, any task force, needs to take out those mother ships. Hopefully this event will spur that to happen, and their lives will not be lost in vain. Never let a good crisis go to waste and all that. If this is not enough to create the political will, I don’t want to know what will.
692 mariners are being held hostage right now, no, sorry, 688 that are known. Along with an unknown number of smaller vessels. Does that number need to double? Triple? What more do we need to fucking happen before we take real concrete actions? Wait til the ransoms reach a billion dollars lost?
And I am not expecting zero pirate attacks with a blockade, but 1 or 2 every month or quarter, instead of at one attack almost every day would be great.
Sorry if this has already been hashed & re-hashed (I didn’t read the entire thread)
Anyone sailing a private vessel into waters known to be “pirate active” does so at their own risk. Lives will not be risked to save your ass if you’re captured. Good Luck! If you’re mistaken for or boarded by Pirates, you will become a target.
Said area WILL be heavily patrolled by the military of varying countries. Any vessel that falls under suspicion of pirating will be blown out of the water - no questions asked (including vessels in item #1 that have been taken over by pirates).
Believe me, the various militaries have a lot more shells that the outlaws have boats and pirates.
Do the math here. The pirates are currently operating over a million square miles of ocean (see map linked upthread). How many pirate vessels are operating at any given time? Ten? What the heck, call it a hundred. That’s ten thousand square miles of ocean per pirate vessel: a 100 mile x 100 mile square. As xtisme has pointed out, these aren’t huge warships. They’re little fishing vessels out in the middle of thousands of other little fishing vessels. Most of the pirates are fishermen who have turned to piracy to supplement their income. They look just like all those other fishermen, and their boats look like all those other fishing boats. No Jolly Roger flags. No deck-mounted .50 caliber machine guns. No armor-plated hulls. You don’t know they’re pirates until they whip out their AK47s or Uzis from under the tarp and start shooting at you – and they aren’t going to start shooting at a naval vessel.
I have a bunch of random thoughts from this thread, so I’ll just make a list.
Personally, I think that shows bravery more than asswipery. Well, some stupidity, too, but you might as well go out with a bang. It’s not like they would think of the US Navy as the good guys. (It’s not like anyone else in Somalia would, either.)
I don’t think the US would be comfortable putting special forces in Somalia anymore. Just a guess…
From the perspective of the world, this really isn’t a very important issue. Somalia isn’t even the biggest source of piracy in the world, an honour which goes to (or maybe went to) the Straits of Malacca in particular and Indonesia in general. Moreover, the cost of a naval operation is so, so far beyond the cost of paying a ransom that there isn’t much point in using the navy. I love how you think sending a couple of carriers to the Indian Ocean isn’t a big deal.
From the perspective of Somalia, why would getting rid of a source of supplement income be a good thing? Even ignoring the income, it’s better having them shoot at foreigners (some of whom are illegally stealing Somalian fish or illegally dumping toxic waste along the Somalian coast) than shooting at other Somalis. Of course, this brings up another point: it’s entirely possible that the international community’s illegal activities in Somalia are as harmful or more harmful than piracy. “Toxic” mean, well, you know… toxic. As in, kills people.
Not to mention, who would pay for them, anyway?
In general, I always think this issue is hilarious. It kills a couple people every year, and adds a tiny bit to the cost of shipping. We’re talking much less important than the crime rate in Washington or the use of corn syrup in our food, nevermind all the foreign policy goals that navies spend their time doing instead of wandering around the Indian Ocean and shooting at random Somali vessels.
Open ocean surveillance is incredibly difficult not only from air and sea (where it’s almost impossible to do effectively without prior knowledge of where the target may be at a specific time) but also from space. Contrary to what you may think we don’t have satellites that we control with joysticks and video cameras like Enemy of the State. You don’t fly satellites around like helicopters looking for stuff. The orbit is what the orbit is and you better hope what you are looking for is where you are looking when you are passing over AND that you are pointed at it AND that you are imaging at that moment or you’re hosed.
I love it when people’s own cites disprove their arguments. (Something that happens to all of us, but is really that hard to read the article before linking to it?)
From the Wikipedia Article:
The second sentence: " In recent years, coordinated patrols by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, along with increased security on vessels have sparked a dramatic downturn in piracy, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB)."
End of the article:
“By 2009 piracy had sharply decreased in the region due to cooperation among the governments.[15] However, according to piracy expert Catherine Zara Raymond:
“There seems to be a failure, particularly outside the region, to recognise this change in the frequency of pirate attacks and the scale of the problem. While piracy has certainly been a concern in the waterway in the past, with reported attacks reaching seventy-five in 2000, the number of cases has been falling since 2005.[16]”
From the perspective of the public, this is not an very important issue because of ignorance by the media. You hear a 30-second blurb when an oil tanker is hijacked, and then back to the latest bullshit about the Kardashians or the fucking idiot birthers. I consider myself more media savvy than most. Try to read the paper daily, listen to NPR and keep the news channels on for background noise and listen for the three whole minutes of actual news they carry instead of the endless talk shows with their commentaries and meaningless interviews. And yet if I had ever heard of EUNAVFOR, AMISOM, or the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia and that this is one of the major items on our Trade Representative’s agenda who issues regularbriefings, it is possible that I would not have lost my temper when I coined the OP. But I had not. And so I did. Yet think my main points still stand. While this is one the major tasks of world navies, the lack of real coordination and permanent task forces of sufficient size are preventing any real solution to this problem.
And this thread is making me disappointed in the Dope. I expect this group is also far more media savvy than the general public, but instead of getting a pile on of how the world is addressing this, and being blasted by cites and articles, I get spurious attacks by an idiot that has no fucking clue (not referring to you, to whom I referring I hope is obvious), general suppositions and basically a demonstration that everyone is as ignorant of this topic as I was this morning. By following the links provided by the BBC - which I recently added to my news routine since I have realized even the best American journalism is still too fucking provincial - I fought that ignorance.
And I learned that this is a very important issue that most governments are devoting significant resources toward. But like all international community and most governmental solutions, it moves at a snail’s pace - but then so does the world. Immediate gratification has spoiled everyone, including myself at times, on what is realistically achievable. Governments will always move slower than businesses and social organizations. It would be nice if they could address an issue as fast as Apple releases an new Iphone, or as fast as Facebook can help overthrow a regime, but they cannot. And never will if people don’t hold their gov’s feet to the fire, which we never will by relying on the piss poor media we have in this country that spends more time on how Apple released its new fucking phone which most people already know about since Apple spent a few million dollars on advertising. And the media spends almost zero time on the issues of how that fucking Iphone gets to the market and that it probably costs more than it needs to since who knows how many suppliers and shipments are being hijacked at sea.
Except that we already have carriers there. I would just like to seem them protect shipping and fishermen instead of hosting the goddamn Super Bowl champions. I am sure that will be great comfort to the families of those missionaries. So far you are not doing better than most of the people in this thread.
You consider kidnapping foreign nationals and holding them for ransom a valid source of supplemental income? Are fucking insane? So we should pull out of Colombia too since we are preventing those poor coca farmers from earning a living also?
And so you have ignored all posts in this thread which suggest that maybe a naval presence in that region might help cut back on that as well. But somehow armed Somali fishermen would be sufficient to stop all those illegal activities. What the fuck are you smoking? Is it Colombian?
I don’t know - how about all the fucking taxpayers who are already paying for billion dollar boats to hold Super Bowl parties?
And so you prove you share the general level of ignorance on this topic as well and having nothing important to contribute. But I have to ask - what foreign policy goals are more important for navies than protecting the goddamn shipping lanes - especially the most important shipping lane in the entire globe? Which is attacked at both ends, but as your wonderful cite shows, the Malacca side has been brought under control - it may flare up again, and we will never abolish piracy, but that does not mean giving them free reign until it hits some magical number.
Fuck - lets layoff all the police in cities with a low crime rates. They have no major crimes, so what the fuck do they need all those cops for anyway - all they do is write traffic tickets. So what if a drunk driver kills a family once a year or so. There are more pressing matters to attend to like how much fucking sugar in our soft drinks. Fucking hell…
Thanks for addressing an irrelevant point. I am so disappointed to find out satellites don’t work like that. I guess I will withdraw my application to the National Reconnaissance Office and become a drug smuggler instead since its so fucking hard for the government to track boats. I wonder why the cartels waste so many resources on submarines and tunnels. The oceans are wide open. Just sail straight into Miami or New Orleans. Those Coast Guard cutters are obviously just for show and have no idea I came straight from Cartegena.
Researching the systems in place, that looks likes exactly what the plan is. AIS. Essentially the equivalent of requiring car license plates and pulling over everyone that does not have one, or has expired tags.
As far as identifying fake ‘license plates’ or if the ship is hostile, I don’t know what is in the works. For that matter, the only comprehensive means land forces have to check vehicles are roadblocks and checkpoints. Naval blockades seem like the only comparable means as well at present.
I can think of one or two draconian solutions, but libertarians would through a fit (i.e. sealed transponders installed by governments that broadcast identity codes)
I am thinking that the current national flag system may not work for much longer either. For ships that ply international waters, an international certification and flagging system may be needed. One problem the IMO and ant-piracy efforts are facing is that too many ‘legitimate’ ships are not following the international protocols. But that would require a major international treaty that I doubt could be negotiated in less than a couple decades, even if everyone agreed to the underlying protocol.
Ironic or tragic? - briefing released on Monday. briefing released last week on Valentine’s Day.
I don’t know how current the information those couples had, but I think the State Department needs to issue a travel advisory for the entire Indian Ocean, not just the Horn of Africa. Reading news accounts, it appears they were sailing to Oman to join a convoy to sail past the Horn of Africa and into the Red Sea, but were attacked before they made the rendezvous. I am not certain. Information is still sketchy.
I think that is a major factor, plus there was a crackdown on the Asian piracy - facilitated by the fact that most governments in that region have the local capability to counter piracy. While Asian pirates have more hiding spots they are also far more local patrol vessels.
Most of the governments around the Horn of Africa lack any sufficient counter piracy capabilities. Not just Somalia, but Ethiopia, Yemen, Kenya, etc.
From the IMO FAQ:
Asia has more than enough rich countries to provide resources to address the problem. Africa and the Middle East, not so much…international donors are helping though. Japan donated $13 million to help fund a regional cooperative system like above.
I know you realize that USN Nimitz-class aircraft carriers don’t exist solely to host Super Bowl parties, but this phrasing makes the meaning a little ambiguous.
I doubt that the cost of having some Packers players visit a deployed aircraft carrier to entertain the troops is realistically comparable in any way to the actual mission cost of deploying such a vessel to, e.g., blockade duty in the Indian Ocean for anti-piracy activities.
But your link says that this identification is required only for international voyaging ships above 300 tons, and passenger vessels. This “licensing system” isn’t going to apply to piddly little fishing boats.
Moreover, even if we did have such a system for licensing all “legitimate” vessels, I don’t really see how that would do much to deter Somali pirates, many of whom operate out of “legitimate” fishing vessels anyway. AFAICT, most of these pirate guys are ordinary legitimate fishermen with bonafide fishing boats who just happen to do a little looting and pillaging on the side when opportunity offers.
AFAICT, Somali pirates hijack at most about a couple hundred of ships every year. That’s still too many, of course, but it’s not as though they’re bringing maritime trade to its knees or anything like that.
ISTM that the fundamental question here is not “Should navies protect commercial and private vessels from piracy?”—because of course everyone agrees that they should—but rather, “How much cost and effort is it rational for navies to expend in order to make marginal gains in protection against piracy?”
That’s a complicated issue, and IMO it can’t be dealt with by unrealistic demands to wipe out the problem and damn the expense.
Any nation that cares to bestir itself has jurisdiction in cases such as piracy, which fall under the legal doctrine of hostis humani generis (enemy of mankind generally).
I don’t really like line-by-line arguments, so I’ll just quote the block.
In regard to Malacca, the Wiki was unclear about relative frequency of pirate attacks today, although it did say it had gone down (thanks to domestic policing) —hence my use of the word “was”. It’s worth pointing out, though, that piracy in the South China Sea (according to your cite) is not that much less than off the coast of Somalia; but we only ever hear about Somalia.
In fact, the media bias that you complain about is bogus. It’s nice that you’re reading the BBC; they are a perfectly decent source of news, and they do have an international flavour that American media usually don’t. That said, if anything, the world media is biased toward Somalian piracy. Again, we’re talking about an issue that kills a handful of white people and a slightly larger handful of black people (namely, the pirates) every year, plus costs shipping companies whatever the price of insurance is these days (it’s been going up, which is part of the issue.) Remember how big the news story about that American crew was? In the US, it may well has been as big a story as the current Libyan crisis is — but the Libya crisis is going to a have a death toll in the thousands. (I don’t listen to American media, though — I just remember how big a circus that story was.) A propos to nothing, BBC Documentary Archive (it’s available as a podcast on iTunes) has a neat episode from a while ago called “Anatomy of a Hijack” (it should still be available.)
As to the Somali conditions, no, of course piracy money is not legitimate, and I never said it was. It’s still money. But I think you’re being naive about the conditions there —which are brutal —and the likelihood of policing foreign dumping —which is low, if we haven’t tried to do it already from the other end. I also never said the Somalis would be stopping illegal dumping; just that if we wanted to pick one of those two things to deal with, maybe the dumping would be better. And no, having random navy warships there doesn’t stop dumping unless they’re explicitly tasked to do so (and I really doubt that they would be.) It’s about hypocrisy, not about the noble pirate or whatever.
Finally, as to cost; navies are already spending a lot of money on the Somali piracy issue. I’ve heard it calculated before (it was orders of magnitude higher than the cost of piracy, but I don’t remember the numbers), and a few destroyers is itself more orders of magnitude less expensive than a carrier task force or two. Everyone will be trying to lower the cost, of course, but it’s still a ton for such a minor issue. You’re right, of course —it’s important not to encourage illegal behaviour —but at the same time, we can’t do everything at once, and you prioritize issues based on how damaging they are. I’m not saying lay off the police in cities with low crime rates; I’m saying it’s wrong to put your police where crime isn’t and not where crime is. I’m also saying that your outrage on this issue is bizarre. If you’re going to read the BBC (and again, they’re a nice source), don’t just read the stuff about Somalia. Read about the Congo.
Also, having read a cite, I would consider myself wrong about the cost of policing the waters and the cost of piracy. The pirates only actually got $238mil last year, but insurance and rerouting costs add up to anywhere up to $6bil. Private security and naval operations add up to as much as $5.5bil, which is definitely less than $6bil. So you could twist the numbers to support my point, but really, I was wrong; action against Somali pirates is about the same as the cost of Somalian piracy. That said, add in two aircraft carrier task forces, and you are talking an order of magnitude (or two) above the cost of piracy.
Either I don’t understand what the cost of an aircraft carrier task force is, or you don’t understand what an order of magnitude (or two) is. Are you really saying the cost of two carrier task forces would be as much as US$600 billion per year?
May I point out that these things, while sexy, were not really worth it? They were much less effective that no-so-sexy anti-U-boat measures (mines).
There’s also the fact that they really were only effective against U-boats, and even then only during the period where U-boats were checking each boat’s cargo before sinking it. During unrestricted submarine warfare the U-boats were pretty much useless.
There also the fact that most ‘hidden weaponry’ on cargo ships would not likely get a chance to be used. Most acts of piracy are not like hollywood where a big ship chases down another big ship - it is more like a small powered boat sneaking up on an enormous container carrier that is incredibly loud and running on a minimal crew to save expense. Most pirates are likely onboard before the crew has a chance to react. That makes a Q-ship little more than fantasy or free weapons for the pirates to loot.
Even in history this is how pirates most often operated - while hollywood loves to show huge pirate ships battling broadsides with armed merchants the more typical was a fast ship overtaking an unarmed merchant ship, or a crew sneaking up on a ship in small boats (a favorite of the buccaneers), or simply making it plain to the merchant crew that pirates were coming and it wasn’t worthwhile to fight for their cruel captain.
I think he’s using “order of magnitude” as hyperbole. In 1998, it cost about $100 million a year to operate a Nimitz-class carrier. That’s just direct costs: ship maintenance, overhaul, and docking expenses. That doesn’t include personnel, the air wing, ammunition, and so on.
Assuming the 3000-ish personnel make an average of $25,000 a year, that’s another $80 million in annual salaries. I assume non-embarked maintenance personnel are included in the figure given above.
It costs about $40 million to operate an F-18 ($19,000/flight hour, and I’m guesstimating 2,000 flight hours annually) per year. We’ll assume none are lost, (each would add another $40 million in replacement airframe cost).
So, in 2011 dollars, let’s say it costs $350 million per annum to operate one Nimitz-class carrier (we’ll leave out complex future costs like personnel health and pension benefits).
So, for the carrier and its battle group, I think $1 billion is probably a pretty fair guesstimate of annual operating costs (no idea what a squadron of destroyers and a guided missile cruiser cost per year).
Sorry, it is a bit hyperbolic, yes. That said, seeing as the fewer than a dozen destroyers from around the world (including countries with cheaper operating costs) cost $2.something billion per year, and a carrier battle group is more ships than that, and he wanted two, I suspect you’re underestimating.
So, yes, damn the expense of establishing a naval blockade, which does appear to be an order of magnitude less than the current costs to shipping and world trade.
My point about carriers was we already have them, but god knows what we use them for. This is the main transit time of the year for that region to avoid the monsoon season - the main reason the American yacht was there. Yet instead of patrolling off the Horn of Africa, the Vinson decided docking in Bahrain and hosting a bunch of football players was a higher priority.
I do, and that is another area where history will not judge the West kindly.