Our aversion to any possibility of harming enemy "civilians" is what guarantees we cannot win.
The last war we thoroughly won, World War 2, saw us bombing entire enemy cities into rubble. We incinerated Dresden and Tokyo. We nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We killed hundreds of thousands of women and children. And we did not delude ourselves that this is what we were doing.
We did what we needed to do to win.
Looks like you formed your conclusion and worked your way backwards. There's a more efficient and cost-effective way to solve the problem: place armed guards (i.e., mercenaries) on ships transiting the problem area, with agreement between shipping companies to rotate them on-and-off. Companies agreeing to the program receive the benefit of support provided by the various nations participating in CTF-151. Companies that do not--"no pay, no play."
The mercenaries operate by Ready4Freddy's rules, really, a no brainer (no offense intended). There's no need to send in the B-52's, like we're all watching Apocalypse Now. Killing a bunch of skinny women and kids with flies up their noses is pointless (and expensive), despite PapaBear's need to prove a social point to himself.