Somali piracy--a new solution: UAV carriers

There are three problems in East African waters:
1. Piracy
2. Overfishing from non-Somali vessels
3. Toxic waste dumping.

The current solution for piracy:
1. Going real fast/evasive maneuvers
2. Various nonviolent defenses, from acoustic weapons to firehoses and barbed wire.
3. Armed guards on board.
4. Patrols by various navies with various degrees of cooperation and various policies.

The current solution for foreign fishing and toxic waste dumping:
Nothing that I know of.

Some interesting solutions have been offered on this thread, but nothing that would address all three problem. And addressing all three problems would be politically effective--it would be seen in the third world as much more even-handed. It would also be just, for what that's worth.

My solution would address all three problems and solve some additional challenges as well.
It is building and deploying a UAV carrier task force. A UAV carrier would be about the size and capabilities of an assault carrier/helicopter carrier. These aren't exactly tiny but they are a less than half the size of a supercarrier. I spent five hours touring such a carrier a few months ago, and I'm sure it would serve the purpose perfectly after conversion from carrying choppers and Harriers to carrying UAVs (plus a few choppers).

The purpose would be to patrol the coastline from which the pirate motherships and skiffs are setting out into an area the size of Europe. Navy destroyers can't do that cost-effectively. It would take hundreds, if not thousands. UAVs can do patrols like that on teacups of fuel, at an altitude from which they can't be seen or heard.

You have four types of vessels involved:
1. Pirate skiffs
2. Pirate motherships (usually stolen)
3. Pirate motherships with captured crews on board.
4. Captured freighters the pirates are taking back to their port.

Of course UAVs can't exactly capture vessels. Nor can they always tell an innocent fishing trawler from a pirate mothership until it goes into action--usually at night--much less whether a pirate mothership has a captured crew on board.

But UAVs can follow ships for long periods. Once they're revealed at pirate vessels, the hunter UAV's info is relayed to a killer UAV--the kind we use to kill terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen. It would come in and sink any pirate skiffs, then disable the mothership by blowing off its rudder/prop assembly.

Then the UAV carrier could coordinate with a Coast Guard-type vessel to go there and board the mothership. If the pirates surrender peacefully, they could be dropped off at the nearest coastline. If they put up a fight they would be killed on the spot. The ship would be towed to a friendly port and either sold as salvage or repatriated to its legitimate owners after paying cost of recovery.

Currently all our armed forces are rapidly developing and deploying many kinds of UAVs. UAV carriers would be extraordinarily useful and relatively cheap. Using them to solve this problem would also help us develop and refine tactics for using them.

Likewise, ships dumping toxic wastes in Somali waters would be stopped, confiscated, and sold, the value being used to defray the cost of patrolling. Ditto foreign fishing boats--though in this case they could be given a warning first, dropped from a recon UAV, and if they don't leave immediately, confiscate those too.

Pirates would be biometrically ID'd before being released on the nearest coast, wherever it was (Somalia, Mozambique, India, Yemen, whatever). If caught a second time they would be tried and executed by the assault carrier's captain, under centuries'-old law of the sea.  Not killing them the first time would serve the purpose of securing the safe release of innocent crewmen being held captive on captured ships.

Somali Piracy--should we fish or cut bait?

We can't leave Somalia alone, notwithstanding Bush's blunders and regardless of whether you think America is the Great Shaitan or the world's last best hope for international peace--for the simple fact that Somali piracy is wreaking havoc on international shipping. 

The pirate's apologists can rant all they want about how it's all our fault and they're just peaceful fishermen forced into this. Whether we played a role in their turning to piracy or not, and whether they'd (re)turn to fishing after making hundreds of millions of dollars from piracy (yeah, right), they're a menace to navigation and must be stopped. 

The Somalis do have a legitimate grievance against many other nations: foreign trawlers have not only removed most of the fish Somalis used to catch but have also destroyed the fishes' breeding grounds (that's what trawling does). 

But to the no doubt disappointment of those who think America's to blame for everything, those foreign trawlers aren't American. They're Portuguese, Taiwanese etc. 

Yes, Somali piracy is doubtless symptomatic of other stuff, and I doubt that stopping the piracy will do anything to fix that other stuff, and I agree that the other stuff needs sorting out--perhaps with a UN mandate, since self-determination would only be possible if you disarmed the warlords' militias so that traditional Somali institutions could function again. 

But we can't wait for that other stuff to get sorted out. Nor is an unfleet of warships from various countries--some of which are countries the poaching trawlers come from--working out so well.

We need a unified command imposing order on Somali waters--one that would both stop the pirates and expel the foreign poachers. International law needs to be updated to explicitly enable captains of ships who capture pirates to try them on board, sentence them to death, execute them on the spot and dump their bodies in the sea. All the Somalis on shore need know is that pirates go out and don't come back. 

This is also a perfect area for new technology like UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). UAVs could patrol Somalia's long coastline and notify patrolling vessels when pirates set out in skiffs (easily recognizable) or in motherships (which could then be interdicted and boarded by warships and/or choppers).

The ships now being held by the pirates (almost always under the control of several warlords) must be boarded and retaken--all simultaneously in a large operation. Some crewmen will die, but it's worth it in the long run.

Many left wingers quail at the brutal realities of the world. They believe in a Star Trek universe where everything is solved by sweet reason. The irony is that to the extent that they get control of nations' foreign policies they often cause as much human suffering as right wing warmongers do.

International peace isn't a freebie. If you study history, you'll sea that it has only been brought about by a tough, dominant nation, often administered unfairly and brutally--but better than the chaos that's the only alternative. The Romans did it. Now it's our turn. Bush gave war a bad name, but that's not because war isn't the only answer sometimes. It was because he's a fool in the purest sense of the term.

None of what I've said justifies Bush's blunders. I'm just trying to deliver a wake-up call to those who let their ideologies swamp their ability to perceive things as they really are, for better and for worse.