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Originally Posted by shakran
...it's time for the shippers to wise up. Some already have, by employing private security firms to guard their ships. So far, however, most of them have as their best anti-piracy weapon a fire hose. Either pay the Navy (or someone else) to escort them through those waters, or arm the ships.
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That's what I don't understand. These pirates have been a problem for quite some time. It seems that with just a couple of relatively cheap 20mm autocannons on each ship, they can deal with the majority of pirates. What are the pirates armed with? Machineguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, which really don't do much damage against a large merchant ship. (That is, unless those weapons are able to be fired with impunity upon the ship.) But a 20mm autocannon has a longer range than a machinegun or an RPG, and its HE shells will
shred the types of speed boats that the pirates mostly use.
Heck, even a few .50 cal. machineguns mounted on the ship may do the trick. They won't have a superior range to what the pirates are armed with, but they will still do far more damage to the pirate boats, compared to what the pirates can do to the ship. Furthermore, the ship's machineguns will be firing from a height avantage that the pirate won't have.
Sure, it will be somewhat expensive, arming each ship with that (or similarly capable) equipment and providing the trained personnel to use it. But consider the mounting facts...
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In all, Somali pirates are holding over 280 sailors on 15 ships — at least 76 of those sailors captured in the last few days. Pirates have attacked 79 ships this year and hijacked 19 of them, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a piracy watchdog.
Pirates can extort $1 million or more for each ship and crew seized off the Horn of Africa — and Kenya estimates they raked in $150 million last year.
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The Gulf of Aden, which links the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, is the shortest route from Asia to Europe. More than 20,000 ships cross the vital sea lane every year.
Pirate attacks in the region have rapidly increased lately, according to the International Maritime Bureau. In less than four months this year, there have been 79 attacks, compared to 111 for all of 2008.
In 2003, there were only 21 attacks by Somalis in this expanse of water.
Last year pirates took 815 sailors hostage and hijacked 42 ships.
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Or are they going to wait for the pirates now to capture a ship with an American crew and slaughter all on-board?