Pirate Boomtown - thoughts?

[slacker]

A marine once suggested the way to deal with Mogadishu was to build an 8 foot fence around the place and just throw khat (a form of amphetimine leaf popular with the locals) and weapons over the fence. His idea has merit.

Essentially, isn't that what the world has done? Except now those fu(kers have boats.

[pawnman]

Essentially, isn't that what the world has done? Except now those fu(kers have boats.

We neglected step one, build a fence. That would have prevented the boating.

[yerfer]

So if we know where the boom town is...how about some JDAMs on Somali pirate HQ?

Theirs talk going about this right now. I was watching the news tonight and according to the journalists in the area, the pirates have said it was an act of revenge rather than ransom. To add to that, a group of pirates said their will be more attacks.

Officials are pushing for US attacking pirate HQ's, but Obama is holding off on us... no surprise to me.

[discus]

The following was an E-Mail written by a good friend of mine in response to all of this. This amazing guy enlisted as a Marine, served in the USAF Reserves while going through college, and is now a Navy Lt. (He refuses to try the Army stating "Three out of four ain't bad".) I thought it was put together well enough to post out on here.

As you all may or might know I have been a Surface Warfare Officer in the Navy for the past 8 years. During that time I have done 3 Tours on 3 different ships to this area of operation, conducting maritime security operations mostly off the coast of Somalia in and around the Indian Ocean dealing with these pirate scum. ROE has always been a thorn in our operating forces side. But never has there been a level of micro management to a mission since the Iran Hostage Crisis and we all know how much of a cluster F$%& that was.

History seems to keep coming around to bite us in the ass. Every time our political elect try to play Theater Commander we lose. Korea, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Somalia etc. The only thing that made this mission a success is decisive leadership of the on Scene Commander and the Seal Team leader in taking imitative in resolving this situation with the only possible outcome of which is 3 dead pirates and one free American citizen.

The law of the sea, which predates our country and is inherent in all navies, is that you will always assist vessels in distress and sailors in peril regardless of flag. Even if a vessel of our worst enemy was under attack by Pirates or in distress by other forces weather it be fire, flooding or the fury of Poseidon himself, we would do everything in our power to assist. There is no greater brotherhood than that of a Sailor at Sea and every sailor knows this to be true.

Let our navies do there job. The strategy of appeasement didn't work for Lord Chamberlain, nor will it ever work. We only need to revisit history on how our Great Nation dealt with the Barbery Pirates. It was simple,,we took the fight to them on the shores of Tripoli at there base of operations and destroyed them. We have unfinished business in Somalia and need only to look back the Barbery Pirates War to find the solution.

Everyone who has ever lead a unit or a command knows they only need a mission, after that leave it to the professionals to accomplish it.

LT XXXX-XXXXXX

USN

Former Marine and Wingnut

Edited April 19, 2009 by discus

[Butters]

Looks like the anti-piracy task force is getting better.

Oops! Pirates Captured After Threatening Wrong Ship

[snoopyeast]

Found this cartoon interesting.

[Stuck]

https://images.starpulse.com/news/media/sou...ark-pirates.jpg

Cheers!

- Stuck

[Stitch]

And so it continues...

https://www.military.com/news/article/us-na...l=1186032325324

[Guest Lockjaw25]

Evaded the pirates? Would have been better if they had been destroyed. Oh well...

[StoleIt]

Evaded the pirates? Would have been better if they had been destroyed. Oh well...

It's not an armed naval vessel. It's a USNS, not a USS. Actually a pretty big difference. Surprised a pirate prison ship wouldn't have a Frigate, Destroyer, or Cruiser near by though.

[Guest Lockjaw25]

It's not an armed naval vessel. It's a USNS, not a USS. Actually a pretty big difference. Surprised a pirate prison ship wouldn't have a Frigate, Destroyer, or Cruiser near by though.

Agreed about the lack of escort/rapid air cover. However, I remember hearing something about a similar vessel (under Military Sealift Command, named Westward Venture) that fired warning shots at two speedboats near Iran about a year ago. Not sure if the "security" was private or military. Maybe it's time to bring back the Naval Armed Guard...if not for our flagged merchant vessels, at least for the USNS vessels.

[Vertigo]

Results after 2 rounds

USS Maersk-Alabama 2

Somali pirates 0

https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/11/18/maersk.alabama.pirates/index.html

The U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama, which played a central role in a bloody hijacking drama last spring, was attacked again Wednesday. This time, the container ship evaded the attack by firing back, the European Union's anti-piracy force said.

Pirates fired automatic weapons at the ship as it sailed about 350 nautical miles east of the Somali coast, the EU naval force said. Guards aboard the ship fired back, repelling the attack.

No casualties were reported.

The Danish-owned ship was previously hijacked in the Indian Ocean in April.

The pirates seized the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, and held him hostage on a lifeboat after their failed attempt to hijack his ship.

Five days later, U.S. Navy snipers fatally shot three pirates, rescued Phillips and arrested a fourth pirate.

[GrndPndr]

Seems Somali pirates were released by the Russians with an interesting outcome...

Story

My favorite - 'It seems that they all died'

Story

Ten suspected Somali pirates captured by the Russian navy last week may have perished after their release, a defence source in Moscow has told reporters.

Marines seized them during a dramatic operation to free a hijacked Russian oil tanker far from shore, killing an 11th suspect in the gun battle.

They were released in an inflatable boat without navigational equipment.

Within an hour, contact was lost with the boat's radio beacon, the defence source said.

"It seems that they all died," the unnamed source was quoted as saying by Russia's Interfax news agency.

Russia initially said the 10 pirates would be taken to Moscow to face criminal charges over the hijacking, but they were released instead because there were not sufficient legal grounds to detain them, the defence ministry in Moscow said.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which Russia is a signatory, gives sovereign nations the right to seize and prosecute pirates.

Western officials were very surprised when the Russian authorities dropped plans to put the pirates on trial in Moscow, the BBC's Richard Galpin reports from Moscow.

Now there is even more surprise the pirates were set adrift in the Indian Ocean to make their own way home, he adds.

Unknown factors

The tanker, the Moscow University, was seized on 5 May some 350km (190 nautical miles) off the Yemeni island of Socotra as it sailed for China, carrying crude oil worth $50m (£33m).

BBC map

Marines from the Russian warship Marshal Shaposhnikov stormed the ship the following day, freeing the 23 Russian crew members who had locked themselves in a safe room after disabling their ship.

Cdr John Harbour, spokesman for the EU naval force in Somalia, Navfor, said the Russian navy had been within its rights to release the suspects.

It was, he told the BBC News website, impossible to judge their situation without knowing the details of the boat - described as an inflatable by Russian sources - and the radio beacon they had been given.

It was quite likely the Russian ship lost radar contact with the boat after an hour, Cdr Harbour said, while the signal from the beacon would depend on the strength of its battery and whether or not it could be detected by satellite.

The Navfor spokesman suggested the loss of navigational equipment would not necessarily be critical if there was an experienced mariner among the 10 men on the boat.

Stressing that nothing could be said for sure without knowledge of the boat, the weather and other factors, he noted that pirates had been known to operate up to 1,200 nautical miles (2,200km) from the Somali coast.

FM

[tac airlifter]

No complaints here!

[AmpXLZH]

Honestly I think that Russia is the only country that has a pair of balls and deals with these pirates right. Send them in the middle of the ocean in an inflatable raft and as you are leaving pop the damned thing... Everyone is thinking it but they acted.

[TMFan]

Looks like now we know what happened.

[Smokin]

We just need to turn this whole anti-pirate campaign over to the Russians. Looks like they're the only country with the balls to do what needs to be done.

[capt4fans]

Looks like now we know what happened.

Anyone speak Russian and want to translate the end of that?

[contraildash]

Is this the same Russian/pirate incident where Russians captured a bunch of pirates, then later on the Russians put out a press release saying they somehow ended up dead?

Edited May 30, 2010 by contraildash

[PapaJu]

Is this the same Russian/pirate incident where Russians captured a bunch of pirates, then later on the Russians put out a press release saying they somehow ended up dead?

I believe so.

[Guest Stoop]

Been seeing commercials for this, airing soon apparently...

https://www.spike.com/blog/spike-goes-pirate/76196

[SurelySerious]

U.S. Judge throws out piracy charges against 6 Somalis who attacked Navy ship

A judge on Tuesday dismissed piracy charges against six Somali nationals accused of attacking a Navy ship off the coast of Africa, concluding the U.S. government failed to make the case their alleged actions amounted to piracy... Defense attorneys argued last month that the Ashland defendants did not meet the U.S. legal definition of piracy because they did not take command of and rob the Navy amphibious dock landing ship. Jackson agreed in his ruling, finding that the government "failed to establish that any unauthorized acts of violence or aggression committed on the high seas constitutes piracy as defined by the law of nations. Jackson, who issued the ruling from Norfolk, wrote that the government was attempting to use "an enormously broad standard under a novel construction of the statute" that would contradict a nearly 200-year-old Supreme Court decision.

[tac airlifter]

U.S. Judge throws out piracy charges against 6 Somalis who attacked Navy ship

Exactly why we should kill these dudes on the ocean and sidestep the courts entirely.

[contraildash]

Exactly why we should kill these dudes on the ocean and sidestep the courts entirely.

Like what the Russians did recently. "we didn't intend to kill them"

[GrndPndr]

Thread Revival!

This story about Marines taking back a German ship from pirates. Too bad no shots were fired (on our behalf).

DUBAI—U.S. Marines early Thursday boarded and seized control of a German-owned commercial vessel that had been commandeered by pirates, in what appeared to be the first American-led military boarding of its kind amid a recent surge of attacks in the Gulf of Aden and along the east coast of Africa.

A raiding party of 24 Marines boarded the ship about 85 miles southeast of Mukallah, Yemen, in the Gulf of Aden, according to the U.S. Navy. Pirates had captured the vessel, which was carrying steel chains, in the same vicinity the previous day, the Navy said.

The U.S. said there were no casualties among the raiding party or the ship's crew. Nine alleged pirates were captured in the operation.

More

Somalia-based pirates started to ratchet up their attacks in the gulf and along the east coast of Africa in late 2008. In the spring of 2009, the U.S. military intervened in a pirate attack on an American-flagged merchant ship.

The crew of that ship retook control of the vessel, but pirates escaped in a lifeboat with the captain of the ship as a hostage. U.S. snipers killed three pirates, captured a fourth and freed the captain in an elaborate naval rescue.

American warships since then have intervened a number of times to ward off attacks while they were still under way, often sending helicopters over ships being pursued by pirates, for instance. But this appeared to be the first time that a U.S. military team boarded a large vessel under pirate control.

French commandos have in the past stormed French-owned ships taken by pirates, with mixed results. In April, the French Navy recaptured a 48-foot sailing yacht from pirates, who were holding five hostages, including a toddler. One of the hostages—the owner of the yacht and the father of the child—was killed during the French operation.

Amid the increase in attacks, a number of multinational naval task forces have sprung up to patrol pirate-infested waters in and around the Gulf of Aden. Still, naval commanders often have been frustrated by not having ships or aircraft available to respond to attacks, considering the large expanse of ocean they are patrolling.

A U.S. Navy spokesman said Thursday's raid didn't necessarily signal a change in tactics in the U.S. response to pirate attacks. But because commanders had resources available this time around, they decided to act.

"This is a case of us having the right people, with the right capabilities at the right place and at the right time," said Lt. John Fage, a spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.

In a statement, the Fifth Fleet said 24 Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, attached to the amphibious warship U.S.S. Dubuque, boarded the German-owned M/V Magellan Star, after pirates attacked it the previous day.

The U.S. military said a Turkish warship, currently in command of a multinational antipiracy task force in the region, responded to a distress call from the German ship. Two U.S. warships also part of the task force, the Dubuque and the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Princeton, joined the Turkish ship on the scene.

A spokesman for the task force said in an email response to questions that no shots were fired during the boarding, which lasted about one hour. No pirates were injured in the operation, he said.

FM