An Unconventional Solution to African Piracy
In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a plea for unconventional thinking about unconventional conflicts. The following is a limited response to that plea regarding the unconventional conflict being unleashed by the pirates of the Indian Ocean/Gulf of Aden.
Numerous articles have been written about this problem. A new Security Council resolution is being floated by the United States. A few ships have been assigned to the area for short-term deployments, but forces are clearly inadequate to provide deterrence and safe passage. More cops need to be on the beat.
Piracy is illegal and has been for a long time in accordance with international law, now encoded in the Law of the Sea. No new resolutions are needed.
Today’s pirates seem to be in the business simply for the money. Some estimates suggest that they’re getting nearly $100 million a year for their efforts. While that estimate may be a bit high, nobody is clear as to where the actual ransoms are going. We do know that some of it has dramatically raised the standard of living for the pirates, but this cannot account for it all.
Some reports say that much of the money flows to criminal or terrorist elements, but proof of this is limited and inconclusive. With an abundance of cheap arms and explosives floating around the continent, even limited terrorist financing would go a long and harmful way. But for now, we simply don’t know the level of complicity between terror on the high seas and terrorism abroad.
So what do we do? Several countries have sent ships to the area, but they are large and unlikely that the ships will be in the right place. There appears to be no organized surveillance system in the region. Problems with prosecution of suspected pirates have occurred due to issues of nationality. This suggests that a strong emphasis should be placed on deterrence by raising risk of encounter. Merchant marine reports posted by the International Maritime Bureau tell of cases every week where attempted piracy has occurred and the event reported to maritime authority, but investigative ships were too far away to impact the situation.
Unconventional weapons have had an impact. Fire hoses under high pressure are effective, as are the large wakes a creative master can make. But these tools should be viewed as a last resort as opposed to a primary source of deterrence.
The US Navy should take the lead in making piracy an undesirable career path; hopefully as part of a UN peacekeeping force. But it can’t. It has no ships suitable for such a mission. Almost all the smaller surface combatants have been scrapped. It makes no sense to involve current complex surface combatants since a simple shot with an RPG rocket could cause hundreds of millions in damage and puts the lives of many sailors at risk.
Such an unconventional problem calls for a less-than-conventional solution.
First, how do you increase patrol density? Use small ships based on current workboats used to support the offshore oil fields around the world. Outfit them with updated armaments and deploy them. Outfitting existing boats could be completed in weeks along with training crews. Hopefully, local countries would be willing to provide naval infantry for any necessary boarding and inspection. This approach to boat acquisition and operation was the source of swift boats in Vietnam.
Where do you base these boats? The pirate threat seems to loom from the Gulf of Aden down to the coast of Somalia and back. For this reason, sea basing is a desirable choice. On what? In the past, the Navy used heavy lift ships to return the damaged Roberts and Cole to the US. It has also chartered these ships to move groups of smaller Mine Countermeasures ships when long ocean transits did not make sense. The next step would be to use heavy lift ships as a floating home port for the patrol ships. Logistical support, communications and other necessary support could be installed on a temporary basis. These ships are available competitively and often on very short notice.
Heavy Lift Ship bringing USS Cole home for repair
The Military Sealift Command is proficient at acquiring shipping and ships in the open market and should be able to have the force assembled in a few weeks; ready for crew training. It’s possible to charter the patrol boats with operating crew, leaving the Navy only to furnish necessary interfaces with the 5th Fleet if local countries provide the boarding crews.
How will the forces know where to patrol? I do not know the quality of intelligence available on surface traffic and it may be that it cannot be provided to patrol forces. During the 1930s, the Navy was active in blimp development. These were later used to patrol for submarines. Utility was spotty because it depended on seeing a snorkel or a recharging surfaced submarine at night. German skippers learned to look out for them.
This is a good application for a chartered blimp, or several blimps. As you can see in many televised sporting events, camera resolution is amazing, information is instant and they can hover over areas of interest. Secondly, the very visible blimp should help deter daytime piracy and identify mother ships.
The pirate threat appears to be mostly bands of dedicated crooks rather than Islamist radicals. A low-tech, highly mobile force will deter some of the piracy and possibly catch the rest. We do not know where the ransom money goes, but even the slightest chance of it going towards terrorism demands immediate American attention.
Current naval protective forces are apparently too small to make a significant impact. However, increased surveillance and patrol capabilities can be implemented rather quickly and is the kind of unconventional thinking Secretary Gates requested. I am sure there are other ideas and possibly better ones. I hope something more is implemented quickly as part of an international surge against piracy.
