Somali Pirates At Sea - Forbes.com
Differing national rules of engagement would have to be better harmonized and perhaps rethought. For example, a U.S. crew can act preemptively only once it determines pirates are “in the act” of piracy, yet they must back off once hostages have been taken for fear of imperiling them. It might therefore make sense to establish procedures whereby an American ship making initial contact with a pirate vessel can delegate interdiction responsibility to a vessel with more liberal engagement policies–say, a French one–or indeed to consider liberalizing rules of engagement.
Whatever the particular solutions to these essentially operational quandaries, the first step is diplomatic. The U.S., by default, has assumed primary responsibility for policing the waters off Somalia and its vicinity. Now it should call on all governments and private concerns with interests in the safety and security of those waters to meet and determine precisely how to achieve them.
As usual, the lawyers and politicians have screwed it all up.
There is a US carrier group handy? Fine. Any vessel that spots, or is attacked, by a pirate should immediately notify the carrier, which would then dispatch a couple of planes to sink the pirate.
I realize that pacifist popskulls would screech at such summary treatment of poor, innocent pirates who are driven to their predations by their lousy childhoods and poverty-stricken upbringings, but who cares?
Sigh. I know. Obama cares.
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Do our ships still have Yardarms?
Why yes. Yes they do. On a square rigged sailing vessel, a yard is any horizontal spar from which sails are set. The yardarm were the outer tips of the yard, so each yard has two. Conveniently, there was always a quite a bit of running rigging through tackle blocks, making the hanging of a pirate a very simple and quick chore with minimum effort. On modern ships, the yard denotes a horizontal spar used for detection and weather gear, and the yardarms are rigged for running up the colors and pennants.
You could hang a fair number of pirates from them, if you had a mind to.
I can almost see the youtube videos of our Naval ships cruising around with 20 or 30 dangling. Wonder if the other pirates would get the message?
It seems to me that even after the target ship has been overrun, there are still the pirate transport vessels to be sunk. It’s not an ideal situation, but perhaps the operations could be whittled down a bit, anyway.