Help US Navy Hunt Pirates

[Viking Sailor]

The United States Navy has begun crowdsourcing ideas for fighting Somali pirates.

Office of Naval Research Home Page

MMOWGLI was developed by the Office of Naval Research to focus exclusively on combating piracy in Somalia

Help U.S. Navy Hunt Pirates

[GordMay]

Cool.
Sign Up ➥ MMOWGLI: launches spring 2011

[capngeo]

OK guys.. Let's see how long we can keep this open. NO POLITICS!

[kevingy]

I'm signed up. I'm very curious to know how the ONR is going to handle the "ship problem". In game design, there is a common problem in MMO games with realistically handling travel times in a virtual environment. For example, if I'm playing the Navy role and responding to a piracy report that's happening seven hours away (if it's even that close - it's a BIG ocean), do I have to stare at my monitor for seven hours while steaming to that location? If so, that's not a fun game and participation will suffer. If not, how will the interaction with other players converging on the same location work? It will be interesting to see.

[David_Old_Jersey]

Clearly the USN don't read CF...........

FWIW, I think they should go after the Pirate King

[Jon Hacking]

I'll be interested to see if they allow us enough vessels to quarantine Somalia. They've got a 1,600nm coastline. Can we have, say, 32 ships? That would put one every 50nm. Define a few "safe transit" lanes where arriving & departing vessels would be inspected for weapons, but vessels trying to run through elsewhere are tracked by radar & met by an armed helicopter.

I don't know how big the (real) multinational anti-piracy fleet is, but each time we've been in the Seychelles, 8-10 of them have been there.

[David M]

The only real way to do this is to remove their tools of the trade. Sink the known motherships at anchor or at the dock simply by going into their ports either by air or boat and machine gunning the boats below the waterline. We have the ability to gather the intel on which boats are the motherships. Give them a 30 minute warning to leave the mothership.

This is called being proactive over being reactive and nobody dies or gets captured. It is also far less expensive than having a fleet of warships on standby reactively waiting for the next attack.

When they stop the attacks then we stop sinking their motherships. If they are smart they stop before losing them all.

[Alecadi]

Talking about piracy, here in Florida we see a lot of pleasure boats showing some sort of pirate flags... I know that we should never argue on tastes and colors, but with all that is going on with real piracy and people taking hostages and killed by pirates , in my own opinion I think this is very bad taste.

[hellosailor]

I'm just surprised no one has put q-ships out there yet. Surely, WW2 anti-u-boat tactics haven't all been forgotten?

Put a nice fat target out there like a 60' private yacht, or a fat slow cargo ship or car carrier, let it limp around with bogus motor troubles, add some marines with shoulder-fired missiles below deck, or a Predator hanging up out of sight, and wait for someone to show up in a small boat firing guns.

Then blow 'em off the planet when they're not expecting it. Worked in WW2, will still work today. All they need is the OK from the politicians to ACT, the knowledge is already "in the box", no need to go outside it.

[GordMay]

Q-Ships were used in WW I.

Initially successful, the Q-Ship ploy resulted in the sinking of some 11 enemy U-boats by the British and French. As the war progressed production of Q-Ships notably increased, so that by the war's close the British alone deployed 366. However the Germans quickly developed a certain caution in approaching small enemy vessels, wary of decoys.

Torpedoes were increasingly used to sink Q-Ships at longer range; and with the introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare the crews of Q-Ships were not given time to abandon ship before being fired upon.

The British lost 61 Q-Ships in total. By 1917 the effectiveness of Q-Ship deployment was minimal and the overall endeavour could not be termed a success.

[hellosailor]

Fortunately, Somali pirates are in the business of capturing ships, not sinking them, and apparently they have not deployed torpedos to any extent. Making the situation somewhat different. All you need for a monkey trap is a crate and some bananas. All you need for similar fish trap is the crate and some bait. Same same, and they always have worked and always will. The average pirate chief isn't operating on the same level as a monkey, but isn't on the same level as the old German navy either.

Q-ships during World War II
I wasn't aware they were so quickly obsoleted, but they were tried again in WW2 as well.

[markpierce]

In WWI torpedoes were expensive and unreliable. Submariners preferred surfacing and attacking unescorted freighter with their cannon. Freighter crews were frequently given the opportunity to abandon ship before its sinking.

Since pirates want to capture the ship and its crew, they don't intend to sink the ship and kill the crew without warning like later submarine tactics. This gives a modern Q-ship the opportunity to completely turn the table on pirates.

[hellosailor]

Mark, there's only one way to really find out about this. Please sign the petition, ask your Congressman to provide a half million in grant money to me. I'm planning to buy about 54', add ballistic protection inside the hull, and then entertain a squad of marines for a month off the Somali coast. We'll flash lot of bling while in port and make sure word gets out there's only a couple of dumb rich Yanks drunk all the time on board, who really don't know how to sail.

If the study confirms the theory, I'm sure we can get more funding. Half mil a pop, that's cheat for a warship. Well, maybe make it a million and we'll go for sixty feet and call the boat "FAT AND SLOW".

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

... Worked in WW2, will still work today ...

My point was that you base your suggestion on two errors:
- Didn't work
- Weren't widely used in WWII
Suggest you rephrase to eliminate obvious factual errors.

[sarafina]

The reasons it didn't work in the world wars do not indicate that it will not work in the piracy issue.

Pirates are not torpedoing their targets!

and that it didn't work for long or arguably very well doesn't make the fackt *wrong*, just incomplete.