Somali pirates hijack Saudi oil tanker

Okay, somebody get some balls and stop these jerks. < :-)

Picked the wrong target this time, did they? Property of the guardians of Wahabi-ism... Bit embarrassing for our jihadis.

Get a rival gang of pirates to hijack it back again and pay them a coupla mill. for the job.

Drive up the price of oil! This has the hallmarks of Al Qaida thinking, or even the Saudis themsleves hijacking their own ship... LOL.

Start arming the merchant ships. It has been done before. Let them try to hijack a tanker with a few disguised stinger missles on board. Next time it will give them pause.

From Fark.com:

"Pirates hijack huge Saudi oil tanker, plan Waterworld sequel"

You are thinking of the Q-ships by the British during WWI, techall. This is a bit on the large size like three times the size of an American aircraft carrier, so hard to dequize I feel.

they have 100,000 million worth of oil on board. Cannot they afford to hire a few Green berets to guard the ship?

Smythe:

Historically the Q's and many other including (going way way back) the Eastindia merchantmen. But this idea has re-surfaced very recently. See quote below:

The Round Table presented a statement to IMO including the following: “Since 9/11, the international shipping industry has spent billions of dollars to comply with stringent new security requirements, agreed by the international community to address concerns about terrorism. Yet when merchant ships – which carry 90% of world trade and keep the world economy moving - are subject to attack by violent pirates, the response of many governments is that it is not their problem and that ships should hire mercenaries to protect themselves.”

Another quote from the Chicago Sun-Times:

"The growing interest among merchant fleets to hire their own firepower is encouraged by the U.S. Navy and represents a new and potential lucrative market for security firms scaling back operations in Iraq."

I would not recommend using Blackwater but there are reputable security providers around.

"somebody" being America, of course?!?

Pirates have been spreading their attacks southward into a vast area of the Indian Ocean that is extremely difficult and costly to patrol, maritime security experts said.

any chance the Japanese whaler will use that route?

Oil tankers generally have radars equipped aboard their ships to notify of vehicles of all sizes in the surrounding vicinity. I'm not an expert on maritime law nor the surveillance equipment used aboard these ships, but I just thought this would be an idea:

Post guards 24/7 along the periphery of your ship; maintain close satellite data with US intellenge of any threats in the area; and when you see a bunch of ragtag "skinnies" racing toward your liner firing Kalashnikovs into the air -- neutralize them.

Maybe this is easier said than done, and my apologies if I sound like I'm oversimplifying the matter.

76waystofly:

They all have radar and gps but the pirates usually use RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boats). These are inflatable boats with a glass fiber "V" hull. Very fast and invisible to radar. The Pirates use automatic weapons (30 and 50 cal machine guns), RPG's and anti-tank weapons. They have to hail the vessel to order them to stop so they can board. This would be a good time for a security officer to pump a stinger or hellfire missle into the boat.

The pirates figure, probably correctly, that owners/nations rather pay up than foot the high cost of policing the waters. Until the limit is reached.

Blackwater would be ideal for the job! You need a security organization that isn't afraid to pull the trigger to get the job done. The Navies patrolling the waters now seem to be afraid of getting involved to the point of spilling some pirate blood into the water! I don't think too many "innocent civilians" will be darting around in pirate boats so what is there to worry about? These pirate boats should be fired upon anytime they approach a vessel transitting in international waters. The amount of firepower should be brutal! Turn the SOBs into toothpicks and shark chum! Then go after the motherships and port facilities - again without warning and with savage firepower! Somali is a giant toilet badly in need of flushing!

Blackwater would be ideal for the job! You need a security organization that isn't afraid to pull the trigger to get the job done.

Under the theory, it takes a thief to catch a thief?

I don't know if we'd want Blackwater pirates any more than Somali pirates.

I wonder why Sea Shepherd isn't tossing rancid butter on Somali pirate boats.

"The Navies patrolling the waters now seem to be afraid of getting involved to the point of spilling some pirate blood into the water!"

Not true - the Royal Navy killed 3 pirates in a gunfight last week and took the remainder of the pirate crew prisoner. The French have also killed a few in various operations - these greedy boys with AK's haven't the guts or guile to fight highly-trained troops.

Soon enough the pirates will find that their little money tree withers away as a combination of re-routing, naval escorts and private security make this kind of crime impossible.

I'd love to see about 10,000 paratroops dropped on the main pirate town to destroy and burn down the assets of all of these people involved in piracy, but that ain't going to happen. They have to find other ways of making it impossible for these criminals to operate. But they will.

With two Brits on board I expect the British government to get involved in this. Which would probably mean that the SBS are heading over to the area for a bit of a change of scenery.

Piracy is rapidly becoming just one more horrific symbol of the failed medieval death cult that is Islam.

powderfinger - piracy is criminal activity for material gain. It is nothing to do with Islam at all.

Ironically, if there was a Islamic government, or any other kind of proper central government, in Somalia, this would be far less likely to be a problem.

frontandcentre: "piracy is criminal activity for material gain. It is nothing to do with Islam at all."

You might want to google "al-jihad fil-bahr".

Well if they can't patrol the waters to protect the ships, it would seem that the next best option would be to take away their ability to bring ships to port. The ocean may be big but I'm guessing you can't just park a tanker that size anywhere you want to.

Eventually the hijackers have to get off so make every mission a suicide mission to dry up recruits. Even if a government or a company pays off the hijackers it doesn't necessarily mean other governments have to let them live. Now we know that tanker has been hijacked so it can be isolated with governments taking a "no hijacker gets back to land alive" approach.

Tankers are a little difficult to guard due to the rather explosive nature of the cargo. You would have to establish a perimeter around the ship out of the range of an RPG.

It might be expensive to patrol the whole ocean but it is less expensive to guard the ships. But there are a lot of rules regarding having weapons on board that come into effect as soon as you move into national waters. That becomes a big issue for a shipping company.

The only way to beat that would be to have troops from the flag country stationed on each ship. But a lot of ships are registered with flags of convenience to avoid costs associated with flying the real national flag. Oops! That gives the governments an excuse to ignore the shipping company.

But I wouldn't want to piss off the Saudis. They have enough cash to hire some serious retribution.

Change the maritime law and permit non military ships/vessels to arm themselves and use whatever force necessary to defend themselves. Use satellite reconnaissance to pinpoint unusual vessel traffic (i.e. small boats heading towards large vessels) and send them to davy jones locker via aircraft launched missiles cause they are going out 300 miles to deliver groceries now are they.

Perhaps the peaceful countries should run convoys. The patrolling vessels would have the authority to kill the pirates on sight. Another action would be to raid the pirate nest and sink every ship that is capable of being a threat! The peaceful countries need to ACT NOW!

Something to clarify. Crude oil is not explosive - in fact, it is actually pretty difficult to set fire to. Quite a number of oil tankers were hit by anti-ship missiles during the Gulf War in the 1980s but though holed and spilling oil, they didn't blow up. Similarly, there was a suicide terrorist attack off Yemen on a large tanker about 5 years ago and though the attack caused some major damage to the ship and killed one crew member, the cargo never caught fire.

There are already some convoys in operation but they can't escort every ship. Hundreds of ships pass through the area every day.

The way to stop this is by re-routing ships via South Africa, putting security guards on board and by escorted convoys. I think that there should also be a task force sent to the main pirate towns to basically sink everything that moves and send large numbers of troops ashore to destroy and / or confiscate pirate property. Once it becomes impossible to take ships without being shot at and all your property has been destroyed, being a pirate ceases to be an option.

The forces of law and order will win this one in the end.

And powderfinger - you are simply wrong. This is not a religious or political matter AT ALL.

frontandcentre Just because you don't like what is said does not make it completely untrue. Somalian rebels are desperately trying to establish an islamic nation under sharia law. Powerfinger's mentioning of "al-jihad fil-bahr" as being a factor is credible.

I would agree that it may not be the only reason that piracy is exploding in this area of the world, but logic would lead an intelligent person to take recent developments into consideration when analizing recent problems. Al-jihad fil-bahr can not be arbitrarily dismissed because you think it puts the extreme practitioners of islam in a bad light.

wookwook - sorry, but you are not correct. If there was a functioning government in Somalia - even an Islamic one hostile to the West - then this problem would almost certainly be tackled. There have been several reports that the Somalian islamists have declared war on the pirates for seizing a Saudi-owned vessel. The only motivation for pirate acitivity is financial gain