On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:35:10 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:

On Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:15:37 GMT, Steve wrote:




They're looking for easy targets. If you're a bunch of pirates in a
little speedboat coming up to a tanker the size of an aircraft carrier
and while you're thinking of having to climb up a hundred foot rope
ladder there are guys on deck a hundred feet above you manning a few
mounted armored .50's and raining rounds into your boat while you're
still a mile out, you're gonna turn around real quick.

They weren't carrying anything to counter that. RPGs don't have
enough range. The rocket dies after only around 500m and they are
designed to self explode after less than 1000m of flight. An M2 .50
cal machine gun has an effective range (good enough to disable or sink
the speedboat) of twice that and a max range (good enough to let the
pirates know they are under fire) of over 4 miles.

And a huge freighter/tanker makes a great stable gun platform. A fast
moving speedboat does not.

You might be right about the .50's.
Still, that's a lot of gunners and watchkeepers.
I suspect the ship operators will get the military to handle it.

The only way the military can do it is to escort the ships. What
they'll have to end up doing to make it an efficient use of resources
is just like in WWII, set up a convoy of a bunch of freighters/tankers
and have a military ship run with them through that area of ocean.

Another way is to attack the pirates on shore, which involves us or
someone going into Somalia (again) and doing that.

I see one shipping company has told their captians to avoid the area,
adding thousands of miles and many days to the trip:

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk...6908-20906776/

You know how much it costs to take a supertanker an extra few thousand
miles? Much much cheaper to weld on some gun mounts and guns and hire
an extra 4 or 5 security people for watches and to man them.

Steve