Apparently, one pirate ship has been taken out, and the seized oil tanker has been spotted, though I do not believe it in fact could ever be hidden considering that nothing much can be in this and age of satellites.
Quote:
An Indian warship destroyed a pirate ship in the Gulf of Aden and gunmen from
Somalia seized two more vessels despite a large international naval presence off
their lawless country.The buccaneers have taken a Thai fishing boat, a Greek bulk carrier and a
Hong Kong-flagged ship heading to Iran since Saturday's spectacular capture of a
Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million of oil, the biggest ship hijacked in
history.
It is very easy to deceive satellites and other military/security platforms.
Okau, what could they have done to something that large in order to obscure it? Paint it blue?? ;)
Say nothing of global tracking devices it would have as part of it's instrumentation?
Watched a great news report last night on the Canadian Naval ship from PQ who was guarding off the coast of Somalia until recently, when it was handed over to the Dutch. Interesting to me that all this piracy got really active after the Canadians left.
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"watching the tide roll away"
I think I watched the same report Remind or at least one on the topic. I don't remember the part about the dutch but do remember that they said that right now there's something like 250 ships sitting in the ports in Somalia waiting on various demands like ransom, some with hostages as well.
They also said that it's a real problem getting local help with dealing with it because the piracy is helping the local economy as all of the ships and personal need supplies. Plus the pirates themselves get tons'o money and build huge houses and buy lots of things.
Apart from a handful of Naval Reserve Divisions (ie, stone frigates), there are no Canadian naval vessels based in PQ. I didn't see the news report you refer to, but I seem to recall that the HALIFAX Class frigate VILLE DE QUEBEC was the ship in question, hence the confusion. VDQ's home port is Halifax.
There are a variety of ways to hide a cargo ship in the wide open - including paint jobs. Hiding them from sattelite would involve electronic warfare capabilities which may - or may not - be beyond the capabilities of Somali pirates.
Ah..yes you are correct that is the name of the frigate. Oops!
It wasn't a cargo ship it was a huge oil tanker. They would have to have a hell of a lot of blue paint and some serious painting going on.
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The origins of Somali piracy:
"Beyond the immediate need to temporarily send warships to police the
troubled waters, a coalition force tasked with fishery protection
should be deployed. It could be done under the auspices of the United
Nations, African Union, or a coalition of willing states. This option
will address a root cause of the piracy problem, rob the modern-day
buccaneers of their legitimacy, and be more acceptable to the region as
an enduring part of the solution.
First, this option will address the very problem that originally sparked this rise in piracy. The problem of piracy in Somalia
originated about a decade ago because of disgruntled fishermen.
The headless state had no authority to patrol its tuna-rich coastal waters
and foreign commercial vessels swooped in to cast their nets. This
proved a slap in the face for Somalis, who saw these vessels as illegal
and raking in profits at the expense of the local impoverished
population. To make matters worse, there were reports that some foreign
ships even dumped waste in Somali waters.
That prompted local fishermen...."
I understand that the people in the area of that pirate port are eating properly for the first time in years.
If only they could make it a legal toll operation, like the one sold to international interests, called the 407 . Everyone in Somalia might begin to eat well, eh? So the price of our oil goes back up. At least it would not be further fattening the sheiks, who from their pictures, clearly do not need more food at all.
It is relatively easy to hide things from sattelites. Countries have been doing that for years. Most sattelites have known orbits and nations are aware of when they'll be overhead. So they hide things when the sattelites are around. Ben Rich talked about that in his book Skunkworks. The US hid the B2, the F117, and the Have Blue test vehicles from Soviet sattelites by only flying them or taking them out of the hangers when the sattelites weren't looking.
Also, many parts of the word are not covered by spy sattelites at all. If they have no strategic importance then there is no reason to task a sattelite over the area. Consider the deep South Pacific east of Australia. Cargo shops barely go there at all, let alone anyone else. So there wouldn't be that much coverage.
If a nation wanted to task observation sattelites to the Horn of Africa, they'd have to lose coverage over areas of a higher strategic value.
Messing with the GPS transceivers could be as simple as pulling the plug on the box. No more feedback.
Well unfortunately or fortunately depending on ones perspective it sounds like the "pirates" days of easy boardings (because the civilian crews aren't armed) may soon be over. According to news reports the recent uptick in ships being taken have led companies to consider hiring armed mercenaries of the Blackwater type fame.
Avoiding naval and police boats is one thing. Going up against those types of people actually on the ship is another thing entirely.
Respectfully heywood that would not be the case here regarding no satellite observation of the area.
From the original linked article:
Moreover, given the situation in Somalia itself, and that general area, there would of course be satellites in that area watching.
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"watching the tide roll away"
I'm not sure that Somalia itseld would warrent satellite coverage. I'd be somewhat surprised if there wasn't coverage of the shipping lanes but between that and covering shooting wars I can see the west tasking primary coverage elsewhere. They may get secondary coverage but it wouldn't as on demand as this situation would need.
Huh? Did you actually read the news clip, there are naval ships from all over the world trying to protect cargo shipping in the area, and they aren't there without eyes in the sky.
Anyhow not going to waste any more time discussing survellance issues.
Though I will say; "go pirates go".
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"watching the tide roll away"
I don't think the issue is whether the tanker or even the pirate
ships could be hidden. There is likely sattelite coverage in the area,
especially since it has been growing more active in recent years. Say
a 'pirate' ship or suspect ship is spotted by a sattelite, it would
then have to be a determined that it was indeed a ship out there about
to do something nefarious. That would take closer observation.
I
watched a show once about a Canadian warship that was in the area that
was patrolling for gunrunners coming from the Quatar area and heading
for Africa. The ship was spotted by satellite, looked suspicious
because of the speed it was going and the navy ship sent to intercept
in order to try to determine if indeed it was doing something
criminal. Even so there are certain rules that have to be followed,
because they can't just blow someone out of the water or board on suspicion
alone. The chopper was sent to take close up pictures so a determination could be made. As an aside they did show what a joke the outdated technology was on that chopper (Sea King I think) as they had no ability to send the pictures back to the main ship for a looksee. They had to return to the ship, run the "film" (or whatever it was) to the authority, run it through some sort of database and then and only then get the go ahead to pursue and board if they could. By that time the ship in question, a cigarette boat in this case had turned around in an attempt to get back to safe waters.
So perhaps in the case of pirate , the same thing
happens, unless it is a known entity that has been proven to have
involved in other hijackings a determination has to be made as to
whether they're actually going after a ship. Even if say a group of
ships are spotted by satellite the warships would have to get to the
area they're at. It's a big area to patrol and most 'pirate' ships are
small vessels to begin with.
There's also the issue that by the time the pirate boats
actually show that they're going to hijack something it's pretty much
too late, because the last thing a warship is going to do is start
lobbing missiles at small ships for fear of the larger ship getting
caught in the crossfire. From reading the article, though it's not
totally clear, it seems that this particular group of 'pirate' ships had
already been caught by whatever observation technology hijacking
another ship at some point and were more then likely tracked from the scene of the 'crime'
Your loss, because it figures into an important crux of this issue. New surveillance methods are going to be needed in order to combat piracy. Somalia does indeed have satellite coverage, particularly the US, which has spy satellites floating around. However, those are no good if you fail to have human intel. And that is a bigger question regarding Somalia. How will the international community manage to use its far more high tech capabilities to police those waters? Well, first they need to lay down the human network in order to make those assets worthwhile. Chances are they will have some problems with that given that the regime in Mogadishu is breathing its final gasps. A lot of this information is no doubt highly classified and a lot of glaring questions will be left unanswered.
edit:: as difficult as it would be to hide the ships, there is probably a los'fer'words right after the hijacking occurs causing a scramble. This allows the Somalis to carefully put it into their ports. Besides why bother hiding it? What are they going to do? Storm it with guns blazing? There are millions upon millions of barrels of oil sitting in a tanker, ammunition on the Ukrainian cargo ship...lots of money at stake. You could drop a commando operation in there, but how will you move in tug boats and so many other logistical wonders to move those ships out of there during a fire fight without causing them damage? I haven't heard of many rapid response units being in that area, just big policing vessels that have big guns that you would use on smaller pirate vessels, not the big ones that they are trying to save.
Well, they are building human intel on the ground, there is no doubt, it may becoming from Ethiopia, but it is still being built.
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Yeah, but they also claim to have human intel on the ground in Iran. An article in MacLeans over the summer, as well as a fair amount of articles you can get from defense websites and others, shows that a lot of human intel is pretty much schizophrenic - particularly in the case of Iran. Iran and Somalia are more than a few hues of different. Iran probably has a very extensive counterintel op going on that is feeding disinformation, as well as a combination of a complacent, self-serving intelligence bureaucracy regarding that region. I have my doubts that there is much in way of dynamic change happening in the US intelligence community regarding the ME/CA. The US is blundering too badly to have good, solid intel from that area. Mind you, the pirates probably have enough funds and loyalty to launch a very basic disinformation campaign against the Americans if they ever get wind of too much sniffing around going on.
The application of any of this in Somalia is going to be a long and expensive endeavour. If they see Somalia as "lost" putting it into action in a way that would produce valuable information will never happen. Besides, the Ethiopians are probably jealously guarding their intelligence assets in Somalia so that they can always squeeze something more out of their American patrons.
I don't see why one would put pirates in quotation marks. These are criminals siezing vessels on the high seas. They are, by definition, pirates.
Are you speaking to me?
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"watching the tide roll away"
Malcolm, I'm afraid you're missing the forest for the trees. The criminals walk among you.
Yes, it can be that simple.
Ohh the Dutch, that explains a lot.
Does it? If so why?
I thought it was interesting that all this piracy got really going after the Canadians left, though.
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I don't remember who put pirates in quotation marks. (I suppose I could go look, but I'm slack and idle.)
I didn't read it as necessarily a political statement in favour of those who are siezing merchant vessels. I actually thought it might have to do with the fact that we all tend to think of piracy as all Johnny Depp and Hollywood and Long John Silver and Yo-ho-ho.
In fact, piracy has never ceased to be a problem on the high seas - although the amount of piracy in and around the Horn of Africa has increased significantly. I still don't think, however, that it is on par with the Straits of Molacca, the South China Sea &c.
And RP, while there are criminals all over the place, that doesn't make these guys not pirates.
The only perspective from which that is "unfortunate" is the perspective of the pirates.
Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
Interesting Saudis joining NATO actions now.
UN Force
"He called in an e-mailed statement for ``more sustained and coordinated
efforts by the international community to support the peace efforts in Somalia,
including the early deployment of United Nations peacekeeping forces.''
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That is interesting.
Thanks for that, MS
Agrrhhh those pirates have struck again, another large tanker has been taken.
Where's Pompey when you need him?
While Snarfy the Wonder Girl and I were driving home from school with CBC radio on (no, it's not child abuse, I checked, and was as surprised as you) and they did a news story about the pirates taking over the oil tanker. The following is the resulting conversation:
"did he say pirates?"
"Yes."
(long pause)
"Pirates?"
"Yes."
(shorter pause)
"Real Pirates?"
"Yes, real pirates."
(longer pause)
"Pirates that say ARRRRRR?"
"No, they don't say 'arrrrrr' "
I can remember the news being confusing when I was seven years of age. Oh, it's still confusing at forty nine years of age, but for less entertaining reasons.
I want to be a Viking if piracy is becoming fashionable again.
Piracy never really went away, you know.
Site tracking the position of the Hijacked ships:
Google Earth Community: Somalia Pirate Attacks
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/peter_worthington/2009/04/09/9061306-sun.html
There were some 130 piracy incidents in 2008 with 250 hostages taken (most still awaiting ransom or rescue, somewhere in Somalia).
There was an interesting piece by the CBC's Joe Schlesinger the other night about how these pirates are simply retaliating for decades of toxic waste dumping by foreign ships and foreign overfishing as well, both of which has destroyed the local economies.
The French Navy stormed a French sailboat being held by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia, killing one hostage and two pirates in the operation, a presidential statement said Friday.
The navy also freed four remaining hostages, including one child, who were seized Saturday when pirates boarded their ship, the Tanit. Three other pirates were taken prisoner.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/616832
all they're doing is getting bacc for all the decades of piracy like sum1 else said. They helpin ppl to eat more then once a day for the 1st times in their lives. And someone metioned the mogadishu gov. Remember that even the ICU has lost public support cuz the leader ended up siding w/ AmeriKKKa. So now the puppet gov in exile and puppet ICU is both fighting the freedom fighters. Freedom to them. And remember the indian ocean as well as the pacific around southeast asia are the worst for trying to ship exploited materials that go to feed the capitalistic corporations. We gotta eat n we carry the heat, the ak so pay if u wanna sail our way. Str8 Up
What really pisses me off in this situation, is that Canadian tax payers, are footing the bill to have our navy there escorting oil tankers, and other cargo ships. I am sick and tired of corporate entities using government services for protectionism.
yup
Doesn't (or shouldn't) government protection extend to Canadians, wherever they are? Does working on a cargo ship mean that you don't deserve to have your government protect you from being kidnapped or killed?
OFFS, how many Canadians are working on cargo ships? 2? And you comments ring fucking hollow, at best, given the current situations where the Canadian government could give a rat's ass, about the plights of Canadians I.E Khadr, and the man residing at the embassy in Africa for 3 years now.
Face it, our money is being used to protect corporate interests and nothing more. So much for capitalism eh, can't make it on its own with out sucking at the taxpayer's pockets in everyway shape and form.
You can lie to yourself, and it seems you are, but please do peddle your shit somewhere else.
That was quite the over-the-top reaction. Are you a Somali pirate? :p
But ya, I see what you're saying. If "capitalism" can't form its own navy to protect its interests on the high seas, it's clearly failed.
It has clearly failed on several fronts, but perhaps your blinders fail to give you a clear enough view. Funny how right wing nuts are always yelling about taxpayers dollars being spent on health care and social programs etc, but when it comes to capitalist interests and making the rich richer, it is a go...
Not over the top at all just sick of fascist propaganda.
exactly they keep sayin they dont have money for this or this which would help the ppl but when it comes to their shit aint enuff money in the world.
Well, of course they don't have money to help the people whom they are stealing it from. It would mean they had none to steal.
Perhaps the corporations could pay into a common fund that could be used to hire and equip trained and specialized guards to protect their cargo. There would be employment for hundreds of people, capital expenditures on equipment, investment in manufacturing infrastructure on Canadian soil, and it would help protect the cost of goods to Canadians.
They could even focus recruiting for these positions amongst demographic populations where lower education and/or economic disadvantages would lower their chances of stable long term employment, especially when we consider the downturn that the economy is going through.
This has happen already, it is an organization called Blackwater.
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We are like cloaks, one thinks of us only when it rains.
Can they operate independantly for blue water operations? I know they've bought a ship.
I can not see why they can't start conducting these types of security operations. They could easily place a number of security guards on each vessel to defend them.
They have the training and weapons, and the will power.
I am kind of sympathetic to remind's argument that Canadians cannot expect the government to rescue them if they choose to go to dangerous parts of the world. There are risks involved in working on a cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden - or travelleling to any number of countries. Read the advisories by Foreign Affairs and decide whether it is worth the risk.
Then on the other hand, I see stories of someone like Laura Archer (from here on PEI) who was working in Darfur with Doctors without Borders. Should our tax money via our military help a Canadian citizen who is taken hostage in a country or maritime area they know is dangerous? Presently Beverly Giesbrecht from BC is being held hostage in Pakistan and our tax money is funding behind the scenes negotiations. Should these stop?
I feel sympathetic for people, but at the same time: why go to an extremely dangerous place willingly and then when (foreseeable) things happen expect the Canadian taxpayer (via the military) to rescue you?
Or in the case of the Maersk Alabma, food aid for a starving people.
"Corporate entities" aren't behind this, international law has recognised for many many years the responsibilities of all nations to combat piracy.
Besides, it is also connected to our own welfare. Canada depends on international trade and especially maritime trade and if ships can't sail safely through the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden/Indian Ocean or elsewhere with goods, that can have direct consequences on the economy and employment back here.
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