Back in the day of wooden ships small contingents of Marines were stationed aboard ships tasked with boarding enemy ships or fighting off boarders.While several countries, including the United States and China, are planning on using Marines against the Somali pirates they are thinking of large scale land operations or hunting the pirates down using warships.
There are no huge pirate land bases to attack and the Somali pirates hunt using skiffs launched from fishing vessels, they don't look like a threat until they attack. Traditional military strategies have failed and will continue to fail.
Eighteenth century tactics might work, however. If a platoon of Marines were stationed aboard a merchant ship as it transit the pirate waters attacking pirates would not be facing unarmed sailors but highly skilled warriors. Warships would be available as backup but the Marines would carry the fighting. As a ship leaves the pirate waters helicopters can transfer the Marines to another ship entering danger.
If the many nations with an interest in ending this piracy participate there would be enough Marines to protect nearly every vessel nearing Somalia. The pirating would end quickly if death becomes more common than booty. It worked against Blackbeard in 1718. It's worth a try.
2 comments:
Certainly worth a try. What we're doing ain't working.
How about adding in some pushing to get non-Somali fishing boats to leave aren't the entire problem pushing people in the area to piracy, but it could be contributing to some.
It would be worth looking into.
I'd rather see the ships arming themselves though. If the sailors were trained on how and when to use their guns, they could fight off attacking pirates. The guns would be stored in an armory, just like they are on a Navy ship. It would save the costs of boarding and feeding the military on a ship, as well as leave them open for any other important things the need to do.
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