Let me try again. Clearly, I am not writing well enough to be understood. If I were running the US Navy (poor Navy it would be), I would not want to be put in a position of looking impotent because the tactics/strategy is used are wrong. Here’s what I think the right strategy may be:

1. Do absolutely nothing until the merchant community begins to react to the economic issues. Until they do that, there’s no problem in my mind. Piracy will be just a minor cost of doing business.

2. Do absolutely nothing until merchants begin to harden their targets in reaction to economic issues. Currently, the pirate boats are too small to track well and too easily resupplied from coastlines to catch and destroy in large numbers. They also represent a very minor capital investment, so losing a few (and their crews, presumably) is no big deal to the pirates. Sinking some of these boats will simply cause the pirates to hole up until the danger of sinking is past — as it certainly will be when US carriers move on.

3. When the targets are sufficiently hardened, the pirates will either give up (unlikely) or resort to heavier equipment and larger crews that need more training to operate the larger ships. Many, if not all, of those ships will need ports to refuel and resupply, and they will be much easier to identify and track than the current small boats. These new ships can be identified and sunk at sea and/or in their harbors in large numbers, representing a very large capital loss for the pirate financiers. It’s at that point that naval action is both warranted by economic necessity and is likely to be most effective.

4. Forcing the pirates to make large capital investments and then having them lose those investments will make piracy unprofitable, and forcing them to lose money is the key to defeating them. Piracy has no reason to exist unless there is wealth in it.

Admiral Gary Roughead, who as Chief of Naval Operations is the service’s senior officer, says sea power is not sufficient to combat the Somali pirate threat. “Pirates don’t live at sea,” he recently told reporters at a Navy League conference. “They live ashore. They move their money ashore. You can’t have a discussion about eradicating piracy without having a discussion about the shore dimension.”

Jeff

I took his point to be that solutions are readily available that don’t take many, many people in multiple departments working very hard on the issue.

But i can’t see how allowing merchant ships to arm themselves is a good idea, especially since i recently purchased a big enough boat to allow me a new career opportunity. Yargh, i’ll be a piratin’ on the Big Lake, the scourge of Superior when i get the booty of the iron ore boats.

I suspect Jeff has heard of Tripoli, if it’s Jeff to whom you’re referring and not me. Sure, the Marines could take and patrol the NE coast of Africa at great cost and entangle the US in another ground action when they are desperately needed elsewhere.

Seems like something we shouldn’t consider seriously, to me.

As for sustainability, keep in mind that our carriers’ main mission for a decade was supporting the no-fly nonesense in Iraq. Theoretically, carrier counter-pirate involvement never has to go away. Like I said, we’ve got two of things deployed in the world at all times come war, peace, rain, shine, cats, dogs or chicken little.

Jeff

I have nothing but respect for what you write about the military, and I value your real-life experience with the Navy. But I’d like to walk with you a ways on this one so you can point out where I’ve got things wrong, because my prescription for fixing the pirate problem is to do nothing at all … at least not now. This will be long. Sorry about that.

It seems to me that the history of piracy has always been the same. Pirates prey on merchant ships and are tolerated so long as they never represent an unacceptable cost of doing business. Eventually, piracy becomes so profitable that too many pirates hang out their shingles, and merchants begin to scale back on trade because it is now unprofitable. At that point, the government of whatever nation steps in and defeats the pirates, and always in the same way: by taking their ports so they can’t resupply.

Now, I freely concede your point that there are some differences in the modern world. Seaborne aircraft make it possible to cover vast areas of the oceans and to close fast on distress calls, taking out pirate craft with no real danger of losing one of those aircraft to pirate fire. That’s new. I also freely agree that, given the small sizes of these pirate craft, they can probably be resupplied by two men in a rowboat moving fuel, food, and ammunition from a beach to the mother ship. So, we agree that taking ports at this point will not solve the problem.

Where we don’t agree (at this point) is that I don’t think US aircraft carriers are any sort of long-term solution. Historically, pirates faced with overwhelming force simply ceased operations until that force went away. And the force always goes away. The pirates then return until the next time they have to go to ground. I imagine that would be the pattern we would see in this case, as well. Once US carriers shot up some pirate boats, the pirates would disappear until the carriers were called elsewhere. Then they would return.

I think the trick is to make piracy more equipment and capital intensive so that their ships need ports to operate from. Doing that means arming merchantmen so that the small boats are no longer sufficient. Naturally, the pirates, faced with hardened targets, will attempt to bring more men and firepower to bear, meaning they will need to move up to larger ships. These ships can be identified, tracked, and destroyed in their ports without having to take the ports. It becomes impossible to go underground once your assets are so visible.

When it becomes clear to the pirates that piracy leads only to destruction of their assets, piracy will cease.

Frankly, if the merchant community finds the current cost of doing business with the pirates acceptable, I don’t understand why the US should step in. When the merchants start to hire security forces, we’ll know that the cost has become unacceptable, and it’s time for government intervention.

What have I missed, Jeff?