Article

2003-06-23 Britain

Send warships to fight pirates, urges union

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Posted by Steve 2003-06-23 12:23:26 PM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Some of the pirates are elements of local navies. That's why it's hard to catch them. The fox is watching the chicken coop.

I've read rumors that the Chinese navy was involved in some incidents where the ship and the crew basically disappeared without a trace. The Indonesian navy was also allegedly involved in some incidents, but these were apparently more of a smash and grab nature.

Posted by Zhang Fei 6/23/03 10:01:19 PM|| 6/23/03 10:01:19 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 The straits of Malacca (FYI greek speakers - I am not using foul language) are rife with pirates. There is not one base of operations, or even several bases of operations, but hundreds. Each with their own agenda. A colleague of mine was picked up by a pirate ship. He managed to keep his head attached to his shoulders (It's a long story), and saw decks laden with weapons (like RPGs etc). The Malacca straits are very dangerous. There are different kinds of pirates for different kinds of targets. But hey, the spearfishing is great - Yum!

The Sulu Sea is also crammed with pirates, mostly islam-o-fascists. The seas between Malaysia and Indonesia have lots of pirates. The Indonesian navy boats looks exactly like pirate boats (or at least what you'd think pirate boats look like). I was on a sloop off the Anambas islands and was scared nearly to death as we were outrun by this boat and boarded, but turned out to be the Indonesian navy. They wanted to check our papers. People think the pirate thing is funny, but it's real and it's serious. If you listen to the radio while at sea (in asia anyway) you can hear distress calls of boats being threatened by pirates.

Posted by parallaxview 6/24/03 2:50:28 AM|| 6/24/03 2:50:28 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Do some navies still have "jeep" carriers? Two to twelve jets (A10 Warthog or RAF Harrier: slow or even capable of hovering) dispatchable to radio distress source.

Full-fledged Q-ships may be overdoing it, but during WWII almost any merchant ship could get a 20mm cannon for itself: some such program, maybe with one or two 50cal Gatlings and two trained maintenance/gunner personnel?

Posted by John Anderson 6/24/03 3:57:47 AM|| 6/24/03 3:57:47 AM|| Front Page Top

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