India navy defends piracy sinking

The Indian navy has defended its action in sinking a ship near Somalia that maritime officials have confirmed was a hijacked Thai fishing boat.

The International Maritime Bureau said the Ekawat Nava 5 had been captured by pirates earlier in the day on 18 November and the crew was tied up.

The Indian navy said the ship was a pirate vessel in "description and intent" and had opened fire first.

India is one of several countries currently patrolling the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, amid increasing attacks by Somali pirates.

Almost 40 ships have been seized this year, the biggest the Saudi oil tanker, Sirius Star, which is still being held off the Somali coast.

Indian navy spokesman, Commander Nirad Sinha, told AFP news agency: "The vessel was similar in description to what was mentioned in various piracy bulletins.

"The Indian navy ship asked them to stop for investigation. On repeated calls, the vessel responded by saying it would blow up the Indian ship," he said Pirates were seen roaming on the deck with rocket-propelled grenade launchers."

Commander Sinha insisted that the INS Tabar only opened fire after being fired upon, and that "exploding ammunition was also seen" on the target.

Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's (IMB) piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, confirmed the vessel was the Ekawat Nava 5.

"The Indian navy assumed it was a pirate vessel because they may have seen armed pirates on board the boat which had been hijacked earlier," Mr Choong told Associated Press.

"We are saddened with what has happened. It's an unfortunate tragedy. We hope that this incident won't affect the anti-piracy operation...

yes they should have boarded the vessel. i´m all for killing pirates but it´s a tragedy that 14 innocent people have died.

You are proposing that pirates can escape consequences by seizing human sheilds? (That was a question, you noticed the rising inflection in my voice, right?)

It is unlikely that the Indian Navy's action affected the fate of the crew one way or the other. I find the recent trend towards negotiating with hostage takers infuriating. It inevitably encourages hostage taking and costs lives in the long run.

I am also extremely reluctant to second guess people who come under fire. I am appalled by how common it has become to casually suggest that people like the Israelis, for instance, have to in some way moderate their response because Arab savages hide amongst civilians. During World War II, when a Hitlerjugend took potshots at U.S. personnel from an apartment block or basement of a church, the U.S. responded by obliterating their nest, pour encourager les autres.

Piracy has been common threat, if not the most actual threat for decades now on the high seas. The US Navy, for instance continues to build multi billion dollar submarines. For instance, it’s only self contained SEAL delivery sub, 65 feet long, never having worked, and costs 2 billion dollars.

In the US Navy’s incompetence case, it also started at many billions a ‘Littoral’ combat ship building program, since cancelled due to the Navy’s inability to figure the fig what it wants to do.

Flush. A few billion more.

I don’t see why, or how, we have 18 year old squad leaders kicking in door in Iraq, and we have a world spanning fleet, that last I checked wasn’t that busy, that can not pull up along side, by force and board a fishing boat.

I know the enlisted Marines would do it. Maybe the Navy forgot about them, or doesn’t want to get it’s hulls scratched up.

Maybe the Navy is busy somewhere. Maybe we should make five or six more Admirals, and start a 100 billion dollar program to build the next generation anti Thai fishing boat/pirate ship destroyers.

Or maybe just do some yelling and collect a cigar box of ex Admiral stripes.

> yes they should have boarded the vessel. i´m all for killing pirates but it´s a tragedy that 14 innocent people have died.

My objection isn’t so much the 14 innocent people (for all we know they could have been dead already) but rather that the pirates got to go down in a blaze of glory, rather than be executed after a trial.

There’s a long, established and sensible rule-of-thumb that it is a poor move to negotiate with terrorists. I don’t see negotiation as being a particularly useful thing, even if it might save the lives of hostages. All it does is provide the terrorists with a degree of comfort that they won’t actually have to dodge bullets, as long are there is a prospect for hostages to be freed.

In that context, the Indian Navy did the next-best thing to board-and-capture: they sank the vessel, killing the pirates stone dead.

Hopefully this will give future pirates pause to reflect. They now have an excellent prospect of being fired upon and killed if they ply their trade, and the presence-or-otherwise of innocents may not save them.

Listen, thanks for your service, but go easy on the inter-service stuff.

As an ex-navy guy, and the son of a man who spent 30 years in through three wars, I have an obvious bias.

But the precepts behind Mahan’s “The Influence of Seapower Upon History” are just as true today as when it was written.

I have a lot of things I disagree with the Navy about but one thing is certain...if their only job was to be the chauffeur for the US Marines, that would be an honorable and necessary job. The 82nd Airborne is an effective force, but without ships to protect the vessels that carry the supplies to them across the oceans, the 82nd Airborne, the US Marines or anyone else doesn’t have a chance at success in someone else’s backyard.

Just as a war cannot be won without soldiers to take ground, it cannot be won without a navy to supply support, protection and interdiction. And that support, protection and interdiction cannot be done by Special Forces, the Marines, the Air Force or the Army.

That is the thing about the Navy (and every other service as well)...everyone begins to think it is obsolete and should be eliminated during times when it isn’t vital to our survival. Navies cost a lot of money. It takes national discipline to keep it modern, maintained and trained. Like a trained and equipped army, people only seem to understand fully what it means to have one when their backs are against the wall.

Piracy is just one threat. It has been around as long as people have taken to the water, and always will be. I don’t think the US Navy is going to spend its time and limited budget to engage in anti-piracy actions on behalf of OTHER countries who will not only fail to appreciate the effort, but will actively vilify us if any action taken results in the loss of life (be it pirate life or otherwise)

If our ships are targets anywhere in the world, I fully expect to have US Forces, including the US Navy on the scene. But I don’t give a rat’s ass if the dumb ass French, Chinese, Russians or anyone else whose ships are stupid enough to get nailed along that coast don’t have their own navies patrolling and protecting.

Ah yes, the old we have more important things to do. It reminds me of the school teachers when I ask any of them why the high school kids can not write, read, or think. Why they do not know, at all, what the ‘Civil War’ was. They reply that they have more important tasks.

Anyways.

Try to expand the box beyond entrenched patterns.

First let me work over the Army. Since the end of WWII, 99% of all of the millions of deaths, have been in non classic, non European states. In a phrase, the third world.

Never the less, the Army, in it's wisdom, has, more or less, been waiting up until 9/11, in this age of nuclear weapons, for massed Soviet Armor to pour through the Fulda Gap.

Meanwhile, for forty years, it has had SF on life support, language and cultural studies by the Officer and NCO corps as career killers.

Even if one was totally anti-Communistic centric( not a bad thing ) one of the leverage tactics for communism was destroying the local economy. Further, if you remember,there was a small thing about Hitler's rise in Depression era Germany.

Now, back to the way life has been for, say, Africans. These wars, besides the interruption of resource exploitation they do, increase the costs of basic commodities to us. There is the secondary local effect of retarding the local markets to buy expensive American/European products. So, economically, it's a two fer. We get cheaper commodities, they are able to buy our products. Peace, trade, prosperity. That kind of thing.

There is a moral/ethical component for action too, but let's just be economic actors in our own interest and leave the squishy stuff out.

I even vaguely remember, now and then, the Navy mumbling something about trade routes. It even, at one time, had a history of opening up, and ensuring trade. Maybe the Navy doesn't read Mahan anymore.

Anyways, by and large all this seems to have been forgotten until Iraq, where now the Army and Marines have remembered in the Army's case, its domestic heritage of bring security to tribal areas, and the Marines of its stability actions, mid wars duty in Haiti and such.

Now you might recall something about the Arabian/Persian Gulf and open sea lanes and the Cole and small boats and the Navy bureaucracy not liking the ancient idea and known idea of how easy it was, for decades, for a few dedicated men to approach, if not board a Navy ship.

Lesson re-learned, again.

Back to the pirates. I'm kind of embarrassed that the Indians had to do this and the august US Navy, didn't, wouldn't, or and couldn't.Back to the Navy. I always liked those posters of a single destroyer out in the North Atlantic, ‘on patrol’.
I guess not.

Now, if the Navy is all hot and bothered about scratching up a hull, give the Marines an old oil burning destroyer and let them have fun.

And no doubt the Coast Guard would be more than happy to practice.

Anyways, back to my general theme of most all the military waiting for the big one while the kitchen is on fire.

There is a world to be won. And it is in Africa, South America and the Middle East.

We should go and get it. The Navy should look at the map, and see how much trade flows by poor, ignorant, Muslims coasts, and think how better it would be not to allow the opening of a half world wide, profitable, Islamic piracy.

Just how I as an not well skilled SF medic used to look at Navy ships and think how easy it would be to board them and wreck havoc.

If I was on a coast line, or a Nigerian oil filled delta, and an Islamist, I'd be looking for a few good large 2-stroke outboards, so long as it is reasonably safe and profitable. The costs can be passed upon consumers at large, the same ones that are taxed to support a Navy.

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