Cavguy,
There are a couple of factors at play, IMO:In all seriousness, why isn't the US Navy out there cracking down on the Pirates? I've seen more action out of the Dutch/French than the USN, which strikes me as odd.
We're the largest, and the Royal Navy ended lots of piracy in the 1600's/1700's.
While the navy is contributing in Iraq, it's pretty hard to send a AGEIS crusier up the Tigris, so what are they doing to end this threat to one of their core tasks (freedom of the seas)?
1. Competing priorities. Anti-piracy is only one of CTF-150's missions. Now that these pirates are more on the headlines and now that their activities have increased, we'll probably see a bigger response.
2. International Law. Even though Somalia doesn't have a central government, the US Navy still has to respect Somali territorial waters, which extend 12nm from the coast. A recent UN decision apparently has provided some kind of authorization to pursue inside TTW, but the wording wasn't particularly clear and AFAIK the lawyers are still trying to figure out what the coalition can and can't do. The Navy is pretty sensitive about the TTW issue and has spent a lot of time enforcing the legal TTW limits, so it's doesn't like to turn around and violate TTW's willy-nilly.
3. International law part Deux. There are limits on the use of force and, unfortunately, it's not like the old days where pirates could be sunk or captured and killed on both sight and site on the authority of a ship's captain. As I understand it (maybe Lawvol can pipe up here), we can only engage them if they are in the process of committing an act of piracy. Of course if a US or coalition ship is nearby, they don't commit any such acts.
4. International law part tres: There is general reluctance to capture these pirates (especially by the Europeans) because then you have to figure out what to do with them. There's no Somali government to turn them over to and my reading of the law is that they must be tried in the country that captured them if taken on the high sea (international waters). I think the problems grow if they're captured in Somali TTW since that is considered Somali territory (assuming, of course, that the lawyers give that a green light). This is a headache because of asylum and evidentiary issues, particularly for the Europeans. They always have the defense (which they've used before) of being the Somali "coast guard" under the authority of some warlord.
5. It's a big ocean. There are only a literal handful of ships (6-8 usually) in CTF-150 and their AO includes all of the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, all of the Arabian sea out to Pakistan and then down the coast to Kenya. That's a lot of water for that many ships.
So what the pirates do is head out, stay in or near their TTW and look for good targets of opportunity. They have a general idea of where coalition ships are, so they can capture the targeted ship and get it back inside Somali TTW before a coalition warship can stop them.
Personally, what I would do is apply a navalized version of SBW to this problem. Load a few "bait" merchant vessels with some Marines then present said ship as a juicy target. When the pirates come, they all get killed trying to board by the Marines who are simply, for ROE purposes, utilizing the inherent right to self defense (a rare opportunity for us to exploit our own ROE!). If the pirate mother ship is close enough we can capture it, or, better yet, station an SSN nearby to take the mothership out completely with a torpedo or anti-ship missile. Take out a few score of pirates and the rest will be more cautious, at least for a while.
Of course I'm sure there's some legal inhibition and there would probably be protest from all the usual suspects, but we can still dream.
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