As a student of military history, I would say the solution to the Somalian piracy problem isn't too difficult.
I would do this:
- get some old supertanker hulls and anchor them every two-three hundred miles along the affected sealanes.
- equip them with helicopters, and healthy crews of ocean-borne commandos (SEAL, SAS, Legion Etrangere)
- place a squad aboard every tanker/ship heading through the affected region - you would likely only need 6-12 men per ship, for probably 100-200 ships at a time
- rotate them one week on, one week off and move them from hulls to ships via helicopters
If you're short on manpower, consider these live-fire training exercises and use special forces personnel in the last stages of their training.
It takes too long to respond to a hijacking after it has happened. It's too costly in lives and response time and potential environmental damage. You have to be onboard already when the hijackers arrive.
You probably cannot cover all the ships but those that you have squads on will stop any pirates from successfully taking the ship. And you'll have a couple of boats less of pirates after every attempt.
Surely this would be less costly than if you had to clean up after a supertanker going down or being hulled while full of fuel. Any there must be many Western militaries who need to either train or re-train their commandos.
Posted by artandscience at November 19, 2008 12:47 PM