Shipbucket

Thiel brought up points I hadn't even thought of. You can look to the modern "pirate wars" to see how things would play out. The pirates there have actually used captured merchant vessels as raiders (or more specifically, as motherships for raids) and a few of them have been successful at hiding for what amounts to a long time anymore - but in the end they do get found and sunk.

That brings up another point about small-scale raiding (that ~5,000 ton range I was talking about): even with modern technology it would be hard to track down because of the massive civilian traffic you can blend into. It's a reason why armed civilian craft are one of the concerns in the Strait of Hormuz. But you're not exactly going to sink a carrier with one despite what the Iranian Navy wants people to believe.

What about against pirates. The biggest problem with the pirates in the Indian Ocean is that when there is a warship about they act like fishermen and you can't touch them. The pirates don’t have radar, satellite observation, aircraft, coordinated radio networks. They have AK-47s, RPG-7s and the mark I human eyeball for detection and aiming. But the biggest advantage they have is the ability to blend in if they see a warship.

So the key to catching the pirates would be a warship, that doesn’t look like a warship. In this case they match the description in the thread title, a Q-Ship. Start with an AO or and AOE. Those are built to military specifications with referance to fireproofing and watertight subdivision. They can also make 20 knots. However they look like merchants to anyone not looking directly and Jane's All the World's Ships, especially if you paint them something other than Haze Gray and let a little rust accumulate on the sides. Wait for the pirates to start acting like pirates, unmask your weapons and take them out.

Their impact would be extremely low. There's simply so many ships moving through those waters that the likelihood of any one ship actually seeing any pirates, let alone get attacked by them is vanishingly low. As a result the chances of the ship actually meeting the pirates would be equally low unless they start trawling for them close to shore which would look mightily suspicious.

No, short of dealing with the root problem the best solution is armed guards on the ships. It's also worth noting that once a ship has troops on board, be they guards or soldiers, they're packing as much firepower as a supply ship and they're not required to attempt to take prisoners.

_________________
“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

and of course, IIRC the pirates actually attacked an naval vessel already...... and were taken out, of course.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

And that was funny as hell ... Couple of idiots shoot at warship with assault rifle fire ... and in return receive cannon fire. It was an absurd situation, even madness.

You can also have no ship zone where only registered merchants can swim, others will be sink at sight.

_________________

Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

Honestly I really really doubt that they actually attacked that USN frigate at all.
I realise that their ability to be mounted on a ship is being played up by a lot of people (Mostly by arm chair admirals, to no great surprise) but I really doubt that's the way these missiles are going to be employed. Their real advantage is as land based coast defence. Put them on a civilian truck and it'll be all but impossible to spot from a drone or satellite.
Besides, I can think of several much more effective things you can do with a container ship, like scuttling it in Puget sound, over the Hampton Road Beltway tunnel or in the entrance to Pearl Harbor. That would block off all the major USN bases for a good while until they can manage to remove them.

_________________
“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

It's not efficient to go out hunting for pirates all the time. It's more efficient to deter them with convoy escorts and use UAVs to surveil them (even a Predator flies too high for busy pirates to really pay attention to).