People from Butte, Montana read The Economist?
-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
The Great Pirates off the Somali Coast thread
- Thread starter Beefalo
- Start date
People from Butte, Montana read The Economist?
And that's just while I'm waiting to get my hair cut at the barber's shop...
Wouldnt pirates just keep cruising by then until they find an unescorted ship? Or are you proposing that every single ship be escorted?
The shipping companies and owners not taking part in convoys is what they would deem acceptable risk right now, especially with the greatly increased international naval presence in the area.
As for 'asymmetric strategy', what do you mean by that?
Butte is a cultural mecca! Besides, I teach at the university -- a tiny bastion of eruditeness.
Isn't that what they are doing now?
By asymmetric, I mean some kind of strategy for winning. If convoys aren't the answer for putting these guys out of business, then that leaves either trying to stabilize the political situation in the region or taking more aggressive military action against the pirates.
Seriously? You think stabilizing Somalia is going to be high on our priority list right now?
Besides, we tried it once. You may recall it didn't end well.
Such as...?
What are you getting at? I think armada's point (which you hint at too) is that piracy is a symptom of the bigger problems in that country.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't blast them, but you're talking about people without other options. Chances are that no matter how many we blow away, they'll keep popping up.
Such as psychological operations, training local forces, and building accord between the Transitional Federal Government and the non-violent elements of the Council of Islamic Courts. Anything that we can do to support and encourage participation in their upcoming national elections and consititutional convention must be helpful.
I'm not saying that I have all the answers. I do, however, think the coalition should have some plan beyond indefinite conflict.
I'm not saying that I have all the answers. I do, however, think the coalition should have some plan beyond indefinite conflict.
Well, I was on IA in Djibouti for a while. As you might guess, the infinitely, impossibly dangerous and saddening mess that's known as Somalia was part of what we worried about there.
It's not that we don't have plans, or ideas, or things we've tried...and not just what you saw in Black Hawk Down. It's just sometimes, believe it or not, there really are situations so utterly hopeless that there's simply nothing to be done.
Somalia won't be stable again until the clans are willing to cooperate. Which should be about 30 seconds after one clan has managed to kill all the others off. And saying there are "nonviolent" elements of the ICC is sort of like talking about how the Hell's Angels do charity work sometimes. True, but not the point.
It's not that we don't have plans, or ideas, or things we've tried...and not just what you saw in Black Hawk Down. It's just sometimes, believe it or not, there really are situations so utterly hopeless that there's simply nothing to be done.
Somalia won't be stable again until the clans are willing to cooperate. Which should be about 30 seconds after one clan has managed to kill all the others off. And saying there are "nonviolent" elements of the ICC is sort of like talking about how the Hell's Angels do charity work sometimes. True, but not the point.
Agree. Anybody who was seen a GCCS picture of the Bab-el-Mandeb would agree.
Man, That GCCS-M is a great worth of data. Only if I knew how to use all those filters properly. Should've paid attention in that 1 hour training class I had for it.
Actually you'd probably be surprised at how little it takes to deter these guys from attacking a ship. They make these attacks because it's easy, relatively safe, and the payoff is huge if they're successful. Every time they're confronted before they actually manage to get aboard a vessel they back off. They know that as soon as they are aboard a ship they're safe because coalition forces don't want to risk hurting the crew.
I have a sneaking suspicion that we wouldn't even have to kill anyone to get the message across that we intend to play hardball if they don't stop. Something akin to an actual shot across the bow. They know better than to pick a fight directly with any navy. Of course if they call our bluff, we blow them out of the water as an example to all the others.
HOWEVER: The problem then becomes ID-ing who's a pirate and who's a fisherman. For the most part they're the same guys, some days they fish and some days they plunder, but you really don't want to send a note attached to a rockeye if you might kill someone who actually was innocent.
If you think rolling ashore, amphibious raider style would fix the problem, good luck figuring out who's innocent and who's guilty. So instead you send a more permanant force ashore to be able to take the time to sort the mess out and we're back to where we were in the early 90s.
So the conundrum summed up: they're easy to deter when we can identify them, but they're not always so easy to identify. If you can work out how to do that successfully without spending billions of dollars and or lives, you're a hell of a lot smarter than I am or anyone who's worked on the problem as a day job.
I would say that a well armed Fireteam-sized element could effectively deter any attempts to board a vessel as long there aren't more than two aggressive vessels. In the past, Somali Pirates have fled when taking returned automatic fire. A battalion-sized element could maintain the entire waterway, as long as it was a UN force. (This HAS to be true because I remember SOOOO many missions in SOCOM: US Navy SEALs where my fireteam killed all the terrorists and freed all the members of the crew with only two flashbangs and two magazines for an HK5SD)