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F.O.A.D.

On 1/12/14, 12:28 AM, wrote:
On Sat, 11 Jan 2014 14:35:29 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

Once again, you are dismissing the fact that most pirate boardings take
place at night, when those on the large ship cannot see the pirate
boats. What are you going to be shooting at with those weapons? Passing
waves?

It is the 21st century. Hunting catalogs have night vision equipment
these days and they have very good RADARs on those ships. They know
the bad guys are coming and where they are coming from.
It would not be that hard to light these guys up and "light them up"
if they wanted to but I also agree this is really a military issue.
There are probably good reasons why they don't want to arm the
merchants.
In a military sense, the hardware necessary to shut these guys down is
trivial. You may not be able to protect every ship at all times but
you could create a reasonable deterrent and I suspect that is what
happened off the horn of Africa.
If a surplus A10 came over the horizon in response to a SOS, it would
be pirates zero, A10 all of them.

Indeed, and stepped up military patrols and responses to curtail piracy
would give navies around the world something useful to do.