The more, the merrier.
Russia captures Somalia pirates
A Russian warship has seized a pirate vessel with 29 people on board off the Somali coast, Russian news reports say.
Guns and navigation equipment were found during a search of the pirate boat, officials were quoted as saying.
Notably absent from this account – or this one, or this one – is any indication that the pirates were let go afterward. It’s suspected that these were the same pirates that attempted to seize a Russian tanker earlier:
…so they probably won’t be, either. Meanwhile, the Indian Navy has nabbed some pirates in the Seychelles, or possibly it was the Spanish. And the Somalis themselves are starting to organize anti-piracy vigilante groups. All of this is good news, of course… but I do have to wonder: what’s the US Navy been doing lately on this?
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
For the best general coverage on “piracy”, I like EagleSpeak (http://www.eaglespeak.us/), but for more tailored discussion with a Navy focus, I recommend Information Dissemination (http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/).
To answer your question more directly, it appears that the US Navy’s response has been to blow out the brains of anyone who tries to take a US-flagged ship (or take them prisoner if there’s no way around it), and then to say to everyone else something along the lines of, “Wow, that piracy thing sure sucks. Guess you guys ought to stop freeriding and get some naval patrols around here. We’ll be happy to coordinate with whatever you guys can scrape up — go talk to CTF-151 and they’ll set you up. Buh-bye!!!”
I’m actually pretty good with this solution, at least for the short-to-medium term.
So am I, but I just want to see more of it.