Somali pirates

by hostages I mean the families of the investors, I'm assuming armed forces would only be partly successful at repatriating the pirates hostages so I was kinda thinking that if you took some investors families hostage and then demanded "ransom" maybe a trade might free the remaining few. No sense playing with these "people" when there own tactics would probably be one of the more effective "tools" for gaining the release of hostages unharmed

 

Haha! Let's not get carried away! A Daisy Cutter should do the job adequately.

 

Poverty??

I am ammused by the reasons for pirate attacks as "poverty," like it is an excuse for doing it.

The pirates are reported to have boats and would have to be fairly large to tackle a ship in the ocean and they have weapons and once again not just toys.

I don't think the Red Cross is supplying boats and weapons to impoverished countries so the pirates have the money to buy them or thay are supplied by another entity.

Also the sums of money being paid, if a pirate received that amount of money they wouldn't have to pirate another boat and there would be no more pirates because they would be living on the French Riviera.

So, another entity is supplying the boats and weapons and taking most of the ransom.

Now, countries are starting to pay ransoms when they vowed they wouldn't, why?

Because paying a ransom is making a trail, a trail that will eventually lead to the financer and the recipient of the ransoms.

As we say the Western Governments are doing nothing, I was one, maybe they are and very close on the heels of the organisation behind it.

 

Maybe the insurance companies are financing there own piracy.

They get the money and increase insurance as well.

 

Maybe you are onto something!

 

Not really. Somalia had a decent sized fishing industry back when they had a government that could keep other countries from poaching it. There are plenty of boats available for piracy ops. If you look at the pictures of the captured pirates, they're most often in 10m open boats powered by outboard motors. These aren't exactly state-of-the-art vessels, they just need to be faster than a freighter. Somalia has been a seafaring area for thousands of years, they are no strangers to boats and blue water sailing.




This image was doctored to add the boxes.


The "motherships" they're using are fishing boats they captured on earlier attacks.

Likewise, the weapons are nothing new. The whole region has been flooded with weapons for the last 40 years and they're cheap and readily available. Some of them even date from WW2, but hey, they still work. This pic shows female members of the West Somali Liberation Front with the one in front holding a WW2 German StG44 assault rifle (I wonder where they find 7.92mm Kurtz ammo for it?).

If someone approached your boat with a collection of bolt action rifles and old shotguns, would you argue with them?

 

They capture a ship, get ransom for it and the Chinese supply them weapons and ammo.

 

agreed
they have investors just like any other business venture

I really like that ole gun by the way
the one I've always wanted was the old German 98 Kurtz long riffle version

 

A Kar 98K? I've got a bayonet for one.

 

thats the one
the snipper version
a 7.whatever good out to 1000 meters
not bad for a 70 year old riffle
deal is I think they burned barrels a lot and it would likely be hard to find one that was still accurate

ok sorry for the hijack

pirates
ya
hang the bastads

 

Melt their old shotguns and bolt-action rifles in one explosive event so that voyagers can travel more safely.

 

i still like the idea of a squadron of predators based in the region, extremely cost effective and deadly when equipped with hellfire missiles. stick a couple of hundred of them in the air and blanket the region for a few months, the somalis would be thinking twice if none of there boats returned home. the u.s has this technology they should try it. all this talk about who has the best range and who has the biggest guns still puts the users in harms way . i don't see the point with all the remote control technology that is available.

 

I strongly agree.

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

 

one hellfire missile costs about $70,000 and one predator drone costs about 4 million, then there's the will it ever fly global hawk at 15 million

my bet is that they don't deploy these systems into a theater with difficulties like the ocean environment because it would highlight the radical failings of this program.

 

I heard a report the other day that they --the pirates held up the captain by his feet up on deck and beat him in full view if the military came near--needless to say the military retreated.

Now--how do you tackle that problem?