A very interesting briefing on counter-piracy operations.

Found here, by Vice Admiral William Gortney. Blackfive sums up the whole thing nicely, I think:

The entire point, of course is to “disincentivize” piracy. That’s a nice way of saying they want to make piracy more painful than fishing. Right now there is no disincentive, or what little there is remains vastly outweighed by the potential rewards. So Somali fishermen have become pirates. The average payoff today is $1.5 million to 2 million a ship. CTF-151’s mission, in reality, is prevent successful hijackings, capture the pirates and help the rest rediscover their love for fishing. When enough head out to hijack a ship and don’t come home, but end up dead or in prison for a long, long time, Gortney figures fishing will start looking a lot better again.

I’d add one other thing: if you read the entire transcript, you’ll see that a lot of the stuff that we’re doing to fight pirates is tied up with going after terrorist-related smuggling operations, or is made possible by our existing presence keeping an eye on Iran / supporting the GWOT in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do not assume that cutting back on the GWOT, or backing off on the Iranian regime, will have no negative effect on this operation. This isn’t a video game; the ships will not magically stay where they were inserted by the game designers.

Well, maybe some of you should start thinking in terms of the bigger picture. People will bleed and die if you don’t. They’ll still bleed and die if you do, but not quite as much or as often.