Mariners Develop High Tech Pirate Repellents 830
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that owners of ships that ply the dangerous waters near Somalia are looking at options to repel pirates including slippery foam, lasers, electric fences, water cannons and high-intensity sound — almost anything except guns. One defense is the Force 80 squirt gun with a 3-inch nozzle that can send 1,400 gallons a minute 100 yards in any direction. 'It is a tremendous force of water that will knock over anything in its path and will also flood a pirate's ship very quickly,' says Roger Barrett James of the the Swedish company Unifire. Next is the Mobility Denial System, a slippery nontoxic foam that can be sprayed on just about any surface making it impossible to walk or climb even with the aid of a harness. The idea would be to spray the pirate's vessel as it approached, or to coat ropes, ladders, steps and the hull of the ship that's under attack. The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a high-powered directional loudspeaker allows a ship to hail an approaching vessel more than a mile away. 'Knowing that they've lost the element of surprise is half the battle,' says Robert Putnam of American Technology Corp. The LRAD has another feature — a piercing "deterrent tone" that sounds a bit like a smoke detector alarm with enough intensity to cause extreme pain and even permanent hearing loss for anyone directly in the beam that comes from the device. But Capt. John Konrad, who blogs for the Web site Gcaptain.com, says no anti-pirate device is perfect. 'The best case scenario is that you find these vessels early enough that you can get a Navy ship detached to your location and let them handle the situation.'"
A better plan? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bettery yet, why not take x number of ships, create a convoy that is protected by x number of war ships from different nations and run them through? Each nation gets it's chance to be the flag ship so that eveyone gets the credit. .
It worked good enough in WWII and would work now, unless the pirates get smart and buy a bunch of used U-Boats. But then sinking their loot would kind of defeat the purpose wouldn't it?
You start killing pirates and making it really risky to be a pirate and there won't be any more pirates willing to take the risk. Kinda like the old saying, "There are old pirates and there are bold pirates, but there are no old bold pirates".
what about the microwave pain gun? (Score:2, Interesting)
Privateers (Score:5, Interesting)
How about we reinstate the time honored tradition of privateering? Every privateer gets a representative from a multi-national body of privateer regulators. Kill pirates, take their shit, take their ships. No more pirates.
Re:If muskets worked before... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the poster's point was that the sailors using the weapons weren't actually trained military folk, but your basic sailors on merchant and shipping vessels.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:WTF? JUST KILL THEM! (Score:5, Interesting)
Newsweek just had an article on why killing pirates might be a bad idea. Basically, the pirates have a "code" that they live by which includes treating their hostages well. Their piracy is pretty much an economic transaction. Starting to shoot pirates might make them rethink how they treat their hostages.
Not that I agree with their assessment, but it's an interesting idea that escalating an economic situation to one of life or death might have adverse effects on the innocents involved.
Re:Best pirate repellent of all (Score:3, Interesting)
The op-ed page of the local fishwrap had another suggestion; Every US-flagged merchant ship should have a Phalanx gun [fas.org] with a Navy operator. When the pirate ship approaches, the navy man turns it into wood chips and fish chum in a few seconds. Bingo, no more pirate problem.
Re:WTF? JUST KILL THEM! (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno - I think you need to look at the incentives involved. These pirates are businessmen - not crusaders. They do it to make money. If they know they aren't going to make money they'll stop doing it.
I once heard somebody argue that when a plane is hijacked that the military should just shoot it down with hostages and terrorists alike perishing. Of course that sounds dumb, until you realize that you've eliminated any negotiating power the terrorists might obtain from holding hostages. A saner approach would be to simply not sincerely negotiate at all and always mount military responses if the terrorists don't surrender after a reasonable period of time.
Re:Best pirate repellent of all (Score:4, Interesting)
The M-16 is a great idea. Deadly force met with deadly force is the only answer that is likely to work.
But, I have to say that I am constantly amazed at the presumption of those who ban deadly force. Sheltered pussies sitting in a sheltered land, defended by armed men thousands of miles away, have the gall to prohibit weapons for the men who actually go into harms way.
People, these are armed robbers we are talking about. For whatever reason, they have decided to TAKE valuable items from innocent men who are only trying to make a living. Merchant mariners put their lives at risk to deliver the goods, only to have armed robbers come aboard, shove weapons in their faces, and demand their livelihoods from them.
Philosophers have the luxury of sitting at thier computers, justifying the pirates conduct, and insisting that the pirate's rights be upheld.
Sailors whose lives are at risk don't have that luxury.
Deadly force, however applied, must be used. There are multiple choices, after all.
Arm the merchant mariners. If ports don't want armed mariners, either avoid those ports, or have the weapons locked up while in port. No big deal.
Take on a squad or two of mercenaries. Trained killers, determined to protect the ship. Here we have no problems with poorly trained men whose marksmanship sucks.
Convoys. No ship transits the Gulf Monday thru Thursday. On Friday, one full fledged convoy transits southbound, and another transits northbound. The rest of the week, the Naval pirate killers patrol far and wide, searching for pirates to kill.
I repeat - I am simply amazed that so many people, around the world, can sit on their asses and pretend to know what life at sea is like, pretend to know how to deal with pirates, and they've never walked aboard a fucking SHIP!!
Morons. These are the same people who whine and cry because there are never enough cops to protect them, so when a bad guy comes along, they just curl up and die for the nice bad man.
I wouldn't sail anywhere without a weapon. I wouldn't even sail up the Mississippi river, let alone the Gulf of Aden without a weapon.
Let's get over this abhorrence we have for deadly force. If someone is trying to rob, rape, or kill you, the scum needs to be put down.
Or, you can kneel down to him, and make him your king.
Re:pirate repellents (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt the USA would allow Chinese container ships with cannons, and sailors well-armed with lethal weapons to enter US ports.
They don't need cannons. Rifles and pistols would probably suffice. And why would the USA care if Chinese container ships had small arms aboard ship, as long as those small arms didn't come ashore? A rifle in a weapons locker aboard ship isn't a threat to anyone.
Re:pirate repellents (Score:3, Interesting)
At this point the best thing we do is stop making things worse.
http://reason.com/news/show/132942.html [reason.com]
We didn't create their situation, but we've definitely exacerbated it.
Re:pirate repellents (Score:5, Interesting)
Two?!? One squad of US Marines is a heavily armed element; 8 or 9 M16s or M4s, a couple of grenade launchers, an M240 or M249 MG, and a bunch of AT4s (replacements for the old LAW rocket). More than enough to deal with the level of threat we're seeing in Somali waters. If the pirates want to rachet up, at least you'd have a force in place to delay them long enough to bring up the Navy.
Re:pirate repellents (Score:3, Interesting)
No. It doesn't. It does, however, explain why it happens. A person grows up in abject poverty, and thanks to mass media's portrayal of the western world, he realizes just how much poverty he's got to deal with. He sees that there's not really anything that separates him from people in wealthier parts of the world other than what's effectively birth right. He begins to resent that relative wealth, and he begins to develop a sense of entitlement. Why shouldn't he have the same wealth that the rich have?
That sense of entitlement is what, he feels, gives him the right to hold a person hostage demanding ransom.
Re:pirate repellents (Score:4, Interesting)
The real lesson is that pussies get raped. First ship gets hijacked out of the blue. Owner pays several millions to get it back. Pirates buy huge amounts of guns and bling-bling. Pirates are heavily armed and broke, hijacking the next vessel. Then the pirates' neighbors see all that bling and now try to do the same.
Rinse, repeat and then you have an economy of blackmail, robbery, extortion. Earning millions by simply hijacking a passing ship is sure as more profitable than planting wheat in soil as hard as concrete, so they're doing it. Now that they've tasted it AND have more weapons than they'd ever need, you cannot stop them without killing at least half of 'em.
Not necessarily. (Score:3, Interesting)
No amount of training can prepare you to kill someone. The prospect of THEM killing YOU is a fairly effective motivator though......
Actually, this is not true at all. Most people have to be trained to kill. For the early part of the century, in the world wars, it turns out that a huge problem for the American Army was that there were a lot soldiers that simply did not shoot at the enemy because they did not want to kill people. This actually happened even when soldiers were under fire themselves. It turns out that those soldiers that did shoot other people were more likely to have been hunters in their civilian life, so the idea of killing in their minds had been broached just not with human life.
In response to this, the Army would make a lot of changes in its training. Gone were circular targets, and in shaped were human shaped targets, is one. Also, drills and terminology were introduced to dehumanize the opponents. They weren't people to be killed, but targets to be engaged.
It could be argued that in today's culture, this is not so much of an inhibition. We look at something today like Gary Cooper's biblical inhibition against killing Germans in Sgt York and simply laugh as if its camp. But it used to matter to a lot of people. Now, it seems like killing is so common that it doesn't even matter at all.
I just wonder if, people have ever stopped to really look at the media, be it movies, tv, or video games, watched someone getting killed, and really actually just dwelled on what happened for a minute, the significance of the act. I guarantee you if you talked to any soldier that has killed, its an awesome (in the spiritually overpowering sense) thing to have done, and it makes you wonder if some of the alienation that veterans face is the realization that their own deep experience of having killed or be killed does not all square with the cavalier view of the media that holds the death of a man is almost the same sort of thing to talk about like, the weather.
Re:pirate repellents (Score:5, Interesting)
He sees that there's not really anything that separates him from people in wealthier parts of the world other than what's effectively birth right. He begins to resent that relative wealth, and he begins to develop a sense of entitlement. Why shouldn't he have the same wealth that the rich have?
Having actually lived in Ethiopia for a month, and having talked to dozens of people there, I assure you this isn't the case.
This view you describe, which seems to be based in cynicism and class envy, simply doesn't exist all over the world. I can't speak for Somalia, but in their neighbor Ethiopia, the attitude is largely one of overwhelming generosity despite having close to nothing.
I talked to one guy who said that he had a brother who lived in America, but he never even cared to visit. He loved his life in Ethiopia. The attitude that everyone in the third world resents everyone in the first world and is willing to set aside their morals to attain material wealth is ignorant and potentially racist.
Certainly every society has their criminals. But poverty is not itself a spawning pool for criminal behavior. Go ahead and witness children who eat about 10 bites of food per day offer you some of theirs, and come back and post again.
Re:pirate repellents (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever been outside of the US?
... because I have, and I can tell you most people I've met in the third world see their own nations as the place where success and material wealth are a birthright, and they see the US as the one place where success is actually accessible to anyone (even immigrants).
Re:pirate repellents (Score:3, Interesting)
What's stopping them from doing something productive, such as planting some crops? People got along just fine for millenia before boats were even invented, just by building themselves mud huts and picking berries. Now, it's even easier, as we know how to plant crops and grow food for ourselves.
These pirates aren't struggling to survive; they're taking their ill-gotten money and living in luxury with it, buying SUVs of all things.
Re:pirate repellents (Score:4, Interesting)
Having visited several other third world countries, including Honduras, Belize and Venezuela, I also almost no stealing. When I did see stealing, it was people who actually had comparatively high wealth, like having a beat up old pickup when 95% of families don't have a car.
Similarly, in the U.S., you rarely see people stealing to feed their families. It is almost always people stealing because they are greedy and want what someone else has but don't want to work for it. These are people who consider themselves poor, but have more wealth than 80% of the rest of the world.
I have been in the class that the United States calls poor, and I have been in the class that the United States calls rich, and now am in the class that the United States calls middle class. When I was poor, I felt the same attitude that many poor do, that the rich were somehow just given their money and didn't deserve it, nor the things that came with money. I never acted to right this perceived wrong, but I did have the attitude. Then after working my way up to rich, I realized that I had worked hard for what I had, and when people stole from me, I resented what i perceived their attitude to be, which is the same one I had when I was poor, but now having worked hard for what I had (and lost) I understood that the rich are not someone to despise for their wealth. Then I became poor again, thanks to 9/11, and now have worked my way up to middle class. I feel I understand (certain members of) the poor's attitude toward the rich, but think it is wrong.