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Mariners Develop High Tech Pirate Repellents
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.'"
An M-16 with a full clip.
Brett
a firearm, worked as a defense against boarding parties hundreds of years ago, it will work just as well now.
Is it more humane to flood those little pirate boats and let the pirates drown then just shooting them in the head?
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".
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Now hold on just a minute, I thought the best pirate repellant was a good, old-fashioned lawsuit. Are you telling me the RIAA LIED to me? I am shocked, SHOCKED I say.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Actually, in their minds, it will make the pirates more willing to kill. After all, if people will potentially shooting at you, you're more likely to shoot first if someone looks funny. Frankly, I'm a fan of the convoy idea. Heck. One destroyer could protect a dozen commercial vessels, I'm sure.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
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.
I thought the whole idea of not arming crews was to prevent possible death to the crews. Do these people think that only applies to GUNS, and not other forms of arms? The pirates are armed with guns, RPGs and the like, not fucking water pistols. They do not have a "stun" setting. Does anyone in their right mind think the pirates, after getting a ship flooded or tasered aren't going to actually use the weapons THEY have? Do they expect the pirates to say "Gosh, you fought fair and humanely. We'll just ignore all that extra effort, pain and discomfort."
Wrong.
How about just adding armed and trained guards to the ships? Maybe armed and trained escort ships? Q-boats? A Naval destroyer sitting in the main bay, shelling their HQ?
Or is this just the kinder, gentler pirates of the 21st century?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"pirate repellents"
WTF are we talking about... TICKS???
"We're getting boarded... must not have sprayed the pirate repellent last night..."
The best pirate repellent is two squads of armed marines. Just have the ships pick them up in the port before the gulf of Aden... and drop them off in the port after, where they can board the ship going the other way.
Much cheaper than flooding the area with warships... and more effective to boot.
To be fair, ninjas and special operations/forces are pretty much the same thing. Ninjas were pretty much feudal Japan's special forces. Their legendary superhuman abilities and magical powers are merely the results of their skill and efficiency. The incredible feats performed by the Navy SEALs and other special forces, while not as easily attributed to magical powers, their feats are often considered superhuman in that the average person could never perform the kinds of things SEALs can.
In short: NavySEALs == Ninjas
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.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Due to activities of privateers and pirates in the past, many nations have laws against armed merchant vessels being allowed in their harbors and/or waters. This is the reason the companies want devices that won't be considered weapons by these countries, Afterall, what good does it do to arm the vessel if it can't dock anywhere.
Does not make sense. Pirates aren't movie aliens and Marines(TM) are known to work quite effectively against them. Marines cost to feed and shelter anywhere you put them so you might as well assign them to ships that are likely to be boarded and let them get some work in. Two squads of Marines do not take up very much space at all (particularly in respect to the capacity of these cargo ships). Their presence would have a negligible effect on crew and cargo. They do cost to train but that money is again going to be spent anyway no matter where they are stationed. They don't get paid all the time that they are on guard (assuming we are talking about United States Marines). They draw a monthly paycheck whether they are on guard duty off the coast of Somalia or stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else. We have plenty of them, they are easily replicated to a point, and can be rapidly sent wherever they're needed. Slippery foam covered pirates wash off and come back to try again. Dead floating in the water until the sharks get there pirates are no longer a threat.
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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.
Yes lets debate between lethal and non lethal firearms instead of addressing the actual causes of the problem. Like an ineffective government and global inequality
Oh give me a fucking break. "Global inequality" doesn't give you the right to start holding human beings hostage for ransom money.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Oh spare us the BS. The pirates aren't hijacking fishing vessels or garbage barges to police their waters. They're hijacking cargo ships and ransoming them. They're doing it 100% for greed, which is motivated by a lack of consequences (little rule of law there) and lack of alternatives (crap economy there).
When they stop taking tankers and start taking fishing boats and garbage barges, you can speak in their defense. Until then, STFU.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Personally I am rooting for the pirates maybe they can drive up the cost of the goods being transported making more local or regional options viable in areas of commerce and energy supply.
Forget your anti retard pills today? If you're rooting for them, you have to realize that most of the shipping there goes INTO Africa. They would be raising the price of aid to areas where local and regional options are insufficient. The pirates are shooting their own region in the foot for their own profit... it helps no-one. I say nothing works better against pirates than hot lead.
This really has to be the cheapest, most effective method - so there must be some, likely political, reason that it's not being used. Much of the issue with arming crew members seems to revolve around 1) training and 2) what to do with the weapons in whatever random port the ship ends up at where weapons aren't welcome.
International Maritime treaties forbid merchant ships from army themselves during peacetime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_passage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea
If ships armed themselves, then they waive the "right of innocent passage" and when they are out of international waters, then they might run into problem with the local authorities.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Remember, terrorism isn't about money, it's about instilling fear in people, i.e. terrorizing. So if you start shooting down every hijacked plane, what actually happens, is that the terrorists will use their readily available supply of martyrs to continuously hijack airplanes with no other intent than getting shot down. Then you either keep your word, shoot the planes and the people within, and soon nobody in their right mind will ever board a plane again (public uproar notwithstanding), or you don't shoot the planes and start negotiating with the terrorists.
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.