Since Somalia's pirate boom has resulted in record booty (like 9 ships in 12 days), the world's navies are stepping up patrols and combatty ops all around the thorny looking horn of Africa.
To really get a death grip on it - offensive ops are the only way to go and the AO (Area of Operations for the non nautical) are increasing as pirates organize, bling for sophisticated tech and plot their raids miles away from shore with 'mommie ships' like the one India's INS Tabar literally blasted out of the water.
British Royal Navy Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces in the Middle East, said he feared no amount of coalition forces would be sufficient to secure the 2.5 million sq nautical miles of the Gulf of Aden, let alone the Indian Ocean waters where the supertanker was seized.
“The pirates will go somewhere we are not. If we patrol the Gulf of
Aden then they will go to Mogadishu. If we go to Mogadishu, they will go to the Gulf of Aden.”
Way back in the last millennium, when a royal family lo down ho down finally busted out into the first world war, Allied commerce faced a very similar threat.
Revolutionary technology like submarines - or Unterzeeboot - U - Boats in nautical slang, cruised sea lanes unsweetly torpedoing tonnes of precious materials, munitions, food and people.
Then, like today - the vast trackless expanse of oceans made it nigh impossible for warships to be everywhere at once.
And Germany had a field day.
An early weapon against the u -boat threat was the Q - boat. Essentially a decoy ship that appeared safe as milk, phat, fat and lazy - fully stocked with booty and toted 'panic parties' to act all freaked out when the naughty U - boats closed in for the booty.
Actually Q boats were loaded to the gunwhales with cannons, machine guns and several squads of heavily armed cats who excelled in repelling unwanted boarders.
When the knights of the Kriegsmarine made their pirate run to pillage - it was the Germans who got the nasty surprise.
This is significant.
Especial ops tricked out like fancy yachts, slow traders, titanically fat oil tankers could be used as bait, suckering in pirates for a very short and very exciting encounter.
Pic - "one killer ho and a bottle of rum"
Trick out an expendable freighter or tanker with a made-up manifest, and about 5 tons of remotely-triggered explosives in the hold. When the pirates take it, *POOF*. Not a bad Q-ship for the 21st Century.
ReplyDeleteIn da woids of Sheriff Roscoe P. Coaltrane, "hot persoot, geyuch, geyuch!"
Hubby says it would not take much for the US Navy and Air Force to start picking these guys off and send a real message... "Yo Ho Ho You Bottles of Scum"
ReplyDeleteDebbie Hamilton
Right Truth
It is time for the Great Satan to kick some pirate butt like we did back in 1790. It wouldn't take much to destroy them and the world would be a better place for it.
ReplyDeleteLimbaugh was commenting yesterday that theses "pirates" were using their hard earned ransom money to hire professional chefs to cook for their hostages. As dangerous as this situation, there seems to be a mildly comical side to it.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, these pirates don't seem to want blood - just the loot. And, what about the companies using the tankers getting their own dang security?
ReplyDelete