Posted on 12/02/2007 10:03:42 AM PST by george76
Pirates from two small skiffs seized the crew of a Japanese vessel off anarchic Somalia's coast. American forces fired on the skiffs and destroyed them. Now the navies of the U.S. and 19 other countries are after bigger prey.
The U.S.-led coalition working to secure sea lanes beset by pirates believe skiffs like the ones used in the attack on the Japanese ship must have come from elusive "mother ships."
"The small boats which are used for piracy could not travel" from shore as far into the ocean as ships have been attacked, said Commodore Khan Hasham of Pakistan, one of the U.S. allies in the anti-piracy operation. "So they needed a mother ship from which the pirates could launch skiffs."
Aboard the Pakistani navy ship Babur, Pakistani special forces load their rifles and meticulously go through their drills, readying themselves to board suspicious vessels and search for weapons.
U.S. Navy officers aboard swap theories with their Pakistani counterparts about where the mother ships could be.
Coalition officials are reluctant to name all the countries involved ...
The International Maritime Bureau has recorded 31 attacks off Somalia this year but believe many more go unreported.
The 31 includes the seizure a month ago of a Japanese tanker carrying as much as 40,000 tons of highly explosive benzene in the Gulf of Aden.
The mother ships don't carry weapons, he says, preferring to arm two or three smaller boats with anti-tank missiles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. They leave the small boats at sea, possibly with another boat loaded with fuel. When a merchant ship comes into view, the small, fast boats attack as a pack.
Mother ships simply blend in among the fishing vessels
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
target practice opportunity for the US Navy ?
Time for the Q ship trick..
Motherships, eh? This is what happens when you have a generation raised on video games.
Air strikes.
Just sayin’.
Time to bring back Q Boats
Referring to Islamofascists as "pirates" just romantacizes them in the eyes of a generation raised on Pirates of the Caribbean. Obviously these psychos aren't after conventional treasure.
And here I thought Waterworld was just another bad movie, not prophecy ....
I just read this article. It reminds me of the Barbary Coast Muslim pirates all over again. You know what we did to them, thanks to Thomas Jefferson who went against Congress and sent ships over to eliminate the problem.
This thread should be rated Arrgh.
Maybe they could get that Democrat kunich guy to describe the mother ship to them so they’d know what to look for. He probably only remembers the bright lights and strange experiments though.
AC-130. Long loiter time. Plenty of firepower.
Yep. Jefferson studied the enemy, read the Koran, and knew what we were up against even then. It’s amazing that so many Americans still haven’t figured it out.
I'd like to see the AC-130 nicknamed the WOH. As in, World Of Hurt. It can fly low, fly slow, and bring the pain on an epic scale. When you see that MF'er coming, there is no time to prepare and little chance to defend. If you're lucky, you have enough time to pray and then to double over and kiss your ass goodbye.
There might be a mother ship or there might not.
In the third world, necessity is the mother ship of practice so these skiffs may be used in spite of the danger of being so far out at sea.
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