Somali pirates capture oil tanker.

[mikey_the_redneck]

That kind of pisses me off that they get away with dumping toxic crap in the ocean! Damn Euro's..........

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

Speedboats operating hundreds of miles off shore probably have a mother ship somewhere. . . . . . or some means to travel that distance.

Eliminating the ability to operate at that distance will eliminate the problem.

Go for the supply line.

I look forward to watching the feed from the Predator UAV as the mother ship gets slammed by all sorts of nifty high tech missiles and the such.

It would be a great operation for the US to undertake, operate under the assumption that the pirate mothership is a hostile aircraft carrier from a future hostile nation.

Diego Garcia (US strategic bomber base) is in the neighbourhood, find the mother ship and put those bad boys to work! I'm thinking B-52's with some standoff cruise missile action.

Edit: Or the American's could do the whole thing and not even tell the world, we would never know.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

That kind of pisses me off that they get away with dumping toxic crap in the ocean! Damn Euro's..........

If you watched the video I linked to, there is the possibility of Canadian uranium waste being found on the shores as well....

starseed: I posted much the same thing on the Devils site and I was told:
- If I really cared about the plight of the Somali's I should take the country's flag and jump off the CN tower to bring awareness to the issue
- If I'm going to go around defending the piracy, I should just move to Somalia and join them

Unfortunately, the piracy has gotten the worlds attention.... but not the attention that the country needs. There are calls to bomb the country into a million bits... but there seems to be no international appetite to try to solve the country's problems. Perhaps because there is no solution other than a carpet bombing massacre. Or perhaps it is because the U.S. got punched in the nose and they only know one reaction to that.

Here is a video I shot about a year ago. It's a clip from a conference I was asked to shoot where international solutions were being discussed. This is my MP Paul Dewar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm74Pik9t8E

[NuclearFart]

To dumb down the conversation and increase the man factor of this thread:

I saw in the news that those 3 killed pirates were simultaneously sniped at long range, one shot, one kill. Considering the sniper's ship and the target's ship would be independantly bobbing with the ocean, that's pretty rad.

[HPLovecraft]

Originally Posted by NuclearFart

To dumb down the conversation and increase the man factor of this thread:

I saw in the news that those 3 killed pirates were simultaneously sniped at long range, one shot, one kill. Considering the sniper's ship and the target's ship would be independantly bobbing with the ocean, that's pretty rad.

Navy SEALS. They are probably sniping you right now.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

If you watched the video I linked to, there is the possibility of Canadian uranium waste being found on the shores as well....

starseed: I posted much the same thing on the Devils site and I was told:
- If I really cared about the plight of the Somali's I should take the country's flag and jump off the CN tower to bring awareness to the issue
- If I'm going to go around defending the piracy, I should just move to Somalia and join them

Unfortunately, the piracy has gotten the worlds attention.... but not the attention that the country needs. There are calls to bomb the country into a million bits... but there seems to be no international appetite to try to solve the country's problems. Perhaps because there is no solution other than a carpet bombing massacre. Or perhaps it is because the U.S. got punched in the nose and they only know one reaction to that.

Here is a video I shot about a year ago. It's a clip from a conference I was asked to shoot where international solutions were being discussed. This is my MP Paul Dewar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm74Pik9t8E

If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

In all seriousness, there has to be a two-pronged solution: make piracy more costly and more deadly, and create a stable polity on land in which these people can build a real life. But that doesn't mean "don't shoot the pirates"--it means "shoot the pirates, but recognize that you're treating the symptom and not the disease. You also have to do something else."

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

There are calls to bomb the country into a million bits... but there seems to be no international appetite to try to solve the country's problems.

Bombing it into a million bits would improve Somalia.

The international community tried to help the country before, and got burned. I can see them not being excited about trying yet again.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

In all seriousness, there has to be a two-pronged solution: make piracy more costly and more deadly, and create a stable polity on land in which these people can build a real life. But that doesn't mean "don't shoot the pirates"--it means "shoot the pirates, but recognize that you're treating the symptom and not the disease. You also have to do something else."

So you're talking intervention now? Is that really our business? If so, then Somalia can get in line with a huge list of other countries requiring Western help. Bleeding hearts aside, in a real world there is only realistic response as this point and that's the American one. Kill the pirates.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by peter12

So you're talking intervention now? Is that really our business? If so, then Somalia can get in line with a huge list of other countries requiring Western help. Bleeding hearts aside, in a real world there is only realistic response as this point and that's the American one. Kill the pirates.

Well, fair enough--and involvement in Somalia might end up being somewhat value-negative, in the sense that a lot of resources might produce very little effect.

But you also have to recognize that killing the pirates is like popping a zit. Until you take the acutane, your acne isn't going away.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Well, fair enough--and involvement in Somalia might end up being somewhat value-negative, in the sense that a lot of resources might produce very little effect.

But you also have to recognize that killing the pirates is like popping a zit. Until you take the acutane, your acne isn't going away.

Well, I am not a utopian. I think we will always have piracy and the inequalities that go along with it. Might as well deal with it the best way that we can.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Well, fair enough--and involvement in Somalia might end up being somewhat value-negative, in the sense that a lot of resources might produce very little effect.

But you also have to recognize that killing the pirates is like popping a zit. Until you take the acutane, your acne isn't going away.

Thats pretty well the only choice you have. To protect innocent lives. So you broadcast one message on a radio band that you know that the pirates use, you declare a 1000 mile maritime exclusion zone, and anything that enters the zone with no permission is killed without warning.

We've tried intervention there, they don't want our help, so why bother.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

So you broadcast one message on a radio band that you know that the pirates use, you declare a 1000 mile maritime exclusion zone, and anything that enters the zone with no permission is killed without warning.

You do realize this is one of the busiest maritime traffic zones in the world? There are literally thousands of vessels in the Straits at any time, including smaller ships like trawlers and pleasure craft, so how are you going to enforce this exclusion zone? You'd need half the US fleet to even try, and that's going to cost far too much money considering the dubious return on value you're going to get.

The problem is that all you need is a couple aluminum boats with decent size engines and some AK-47s to start your pirate career there - so maybe a few thousand dollars at most - compared to billions of dollars for a warship and millions of dollars a month to keep it on station. Realistically the only way to permanently eradicate the pirates is to remove their base of support, which means imposing order on the country from the outside.

Since, as has been said, the Americans aren't going to try again as they got the crap kicked out them the first time, the only option I can see is picking the least offensive of the warlords and backing him to take over the place and end the chaos. Of course this isn't easy to do properly and we really COULD use the expertise of the Russians in skulduggery to make such a strategy effective... if they cared about the piracy, which they don't.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

We've tried intervention there, they don't want our help, so why bother.

Are you referring to Clinton's "Black Hawk Down" or Bush's funding of the Ethiopian invasion in 2007?

If by international intervention you mean poking them in the eye and kicking them in the balls then yeah, they probably don't want it.

-=-=-=-=-

In 2007 an ex-GF and still good friend of mine went back to bury her mother who had recently died. I wasn't worried for her safety as it was a period of peace and calm. The warlords had been defeated. A rebel grass roots insurgency had risen up and against incredible odds had taken the country back. They had a solid government in Mogidishu and the country was building itself back up again. However, this power that took over the country was called the 'Islamic Courts' and some of the members had dark pasts and the U.S. did not approve of having yet another Islamic state in the region. So they backed Ethiopia's invasion. They provided funding and equipment for Ethiopia to invade what it saw as a country ripe for the picking... the warlords were beaten down and defeated and the new Islamic Courts was still trying to restore order to the country and were spread much too thin. The Ethiopians easily took over everything from its southern border to the capital. They wiped out all the Islamic Courts fighters, but could not instill order themselves. When Obama won the election they realized that their funding was about to dry up, so the Ethiopians retreated back across their border. The warlords popped right back up to seize power once again and again chaos rules.


If that is the kind of intervention that the international community is going to give, then yeah, they probably don't want it. After 20 years of chaos they finally had 6 months of peace and then external forces combined to destroy that peace.

For 20 years after BHD the world said "You fix it yourself".
They finally "fixed it themselves".
Then the U.S. backed Ethiopians broke it because they didn't like they way they fixed it.
Now we tell them to "fix it yourself"?
That doesn't seem completely fair..... if western interests are going to interfere and tell them HOW they want the country run, it only seems fair that they help in molding the country the way they want.

More on the situation here:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Som...060/story.html

[Bigtime]

Oh it's on now:

Pirates take revenge on U.S. ship

MOGADISHU -- Somali pirates attacked an American freighter with rockets to “destroy” the ship in revenge for an operation that freed a U.S. captain last weekend, one of their commanders said Wednesday.

“The aim of this attack was totally different. We were not after a ransom. We also assigned a team with special equipment to chase and destroy any ship flying the American flag in retaliation for the brutal killing of our friends.” http://www.calgaryherald.com/Pirates...721/story.html

Time for that war-game simulation I was thinking about.

[mikey_the_redneck]

This will be good for the economy. All those auto workers will now train to become pirate snipers.

[Cowperson]

What the USA can learn from Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey's. To date, no French-flagged freighter has been hijacked . . . . for good reason says this examination in Newsweek

http://www.newsweek.com/id/194049

The problem is that all you need is a couple aluminum boats with decent size engines . . . . .

These small boats are operating hundreds of miles offshore. As the threat grew, the commercial traffic retreated away from the coast, forcing the pirates to go further afield. The pirates have been using larger ships, such as fishing boats typically taken at gunpoint as well, as bases for the faster, smaller craft.

I'd say their supply line is vulnerable to sophisticated tracking technology.

Cowperson

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

I'd say their supply line is vulnerable to sophisticated tracking technology.

Cowperson

Exactly. Get a couple of Global Hawk UAV's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-4_Global_Hawk ) to loiter around the area and find these motherships, then scramble some bombers out of Diego Garcia and splash them with some cruise missile love (or cruise missiles from a submarine/warship in the area).

Tom Clancy can write about it later.

[CaptainCrunch]

Nah, you want to use the MQ-9 Reaper with Hellfire air to ground missiles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-9_Reaper

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Nah, you want to use the MQ-9 Reaper with Hellfire air to ground missiles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-9_Reaper

I was looking at that guy also, but wasn't sure if they had the range or could loiter around long enough to find the target first.

I would think the USN must have an SSN (attack submarine) kicking around these waters somewhere. They could always pop up and take the shot if they are equiped with the vertical launch system, or for extra fun they could see what a Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo would do to a fishing boat.

Either way I better be able to see it happen in real time on a major news network.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

I was looking at that guy also, but wasn't sure if they had the range or could loiter around long enough to find the target first.

I would think the USN must have an SSN (attack submarine) kicking around these waters somewhere. They could always pop up and take the shot if they are equiped with the vertical launch system, or for extra fun they could see what a Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo would do to a fishing boat.

Either way I better be able to see it happen in real time on a major news network.

From a costs standpoint, do you really want to shoot a million dollar torpedo at a fishing boat. It would be overkill. Hellfires cost about 70k each, much better kill to dollar ratio.

Plus you get more of a holy sh@t moment when the crew sees the missile coming in as oppossed to surprise your torpedoed.