Shipbucket

I know I keep mentioning them, but the Floréals are amazing in the anti-pirate roll. After inflation the cost on a six ship run would be about $1.5 billion (the cost about .95 billion the first time around). The cost might come down with the 100mm being pulled.

_________________
𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆

In truth any military ship is overkill. Stabilised AFV sized weapons will always be when your opponent only has hand weapons.
The Reliance class doesn't have its own helicopter. A helicopter is a must since it's the only maritime asset capable of responding fast enough.
Why? The 25mm already outranges anything they have.
What for? Why would you want to enter their effective range when you have a perfectly good stabilized gun capable of dealing with them at ranges where they'll be unable to respond. See above for why that would be a bad idea.
The ships speed is a non issue. Once the pirates are onboard you'll have maybe half an hour to respond at most, assuming the ship has a proper safe room. Whether you're doing 18 or 20, or even 40kts won't matter unless you're close enough to shoot them before they get onboard in the first place.
What purpose would that serve? You already have the means to kill them well before they'll even have a chance to open fire at you
If it comes to chasing the ship then you're no longer dealing with an attack, but a hostage situation. That means negotiation and/or Special Forces of some type or other. The ships speed and armament will be irrelevant.
As I've said, any stabilized weapon is sufficient to do that. The issue here is not killing them, it's finding and identifying them.
Just about anything larger than a RHIB should be capable of that.
But it wouldn't be able to do a fraction of what they can do either.
However, those @500 million ships are already here. Your cheaper alternative isn't, and it won't be able to deliver any meaningful result.

_________________
“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.

Thiel,

How can your helicopter 'respond' to a pirate attack?
1.) Hover and throw things (like bullets and missiles, or some choice insults ) at the attackers?
2.) Fly up and monitor the enemy ship while being shot at?
3.) Drop a team of men on the boat... and hope they can do something?

RESPONDING to a pirate attack is not the answer, PREVENTING the pirate attack is what is necessary.
Anyone with any military experience will tell you that a PROACTIVE defense is preferable to a REACTIVE one, especially when life and limb are at issue.

To build a strategy relying on spec-ops guys repelling from a chopper might seem cool, but it's really dangerous and damnably expensive in both funding and potential loss of life. When a ship is taken, one must assume that the crew's lives are forfeit- it is a painful but necessary assumption. Saving the lives of the crew is a nice bonus, but its hardly what you should expect as a result. Most pirates will care less about 'non-essential' crewmen and worry only about the men they need to get the ship into a place they can plunder it- the rest will likely be dead or adrift before you get to the ship.

You are planning for this eventuality.


I say leave that option to the military warships already in existence, which are specialized for such operations. What is most necessary for anti-pirate operations is not a warship that you aren't calling a warship... it's a ship similar in capabilities to what the pirates themselves might use. Much like the Royal Navy of the late 1600's, I follow the belief that the best way to fight a pirate is with ships similar to what they might use themselves- something that is small, cheap, and 'good enough.' Sure, it won't be able to carry a helicopter and a platoon of marines for retaking a captured vessel- but it is not designed for that! It is designed to go into the shipping lanes where pirates operate, seek them out and pounce on them.

Why do I include a large number of heavy MG's?
Because you do not always get to choose the range of an engagement: when you pull up to that fishing vessel who is broadcasting a distress call and a squad of men with automatic weapons pop up and some guy with an RPG bounds up on deck... well, firepower that doesn't have a maximum/minimum elevation limit is a damn good thing to have.

Why do I have RHIBs aboard?
If I have to move supplies back and forth to my vessel, this is a very cheap way to do it.
If I want to transfer a boarding party, it is low-tech but effective.
If there is another small craft that needs chasing down, then I now have three vessels for it to outrun rather than one.

Why would I have TOW missiles aboard?
Honestly- why not? As a ground trooper who liked to make things go *BOOM* you always need mo' dakka. *the TOWs are personal preference and not really necessary to the design- this I will concede, though if my enemy will have an RPG, I want a bigger boom.


Looking through history, controlling pirates with large, powerful ships generally didn't accomplish much as they simply lacked the numbers. To PREVENT pirate attacks, there must be NUMBERS- then you have less need to REACT to the kinds of sticky situations you want big, expensive ships for. I'm not saying that we should ignore the bigger ships... just that we need to deploy many more smaller ones.

EDIT: The issue isn't killing the pirates?
What good does 'finding and identifying' do? It doesn't stop anything... only killing the enemy stops the enemy.

Carthaginian, you make several false assumptions about the ability to respond to an attack. I also remind you that the most proactive method we could use would involve turning the Somali coast into the worlds largest live fire range and/or sinking every Somali fishing boat into drift wood.

_________________
𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆

That (as much as a crime it would be) sounds fun!

_________________
Work list(Current)
Miscellaneous|Victorian Colonial Navy|Murray Riverboats|Colony of Victoria AU|Project Sail-fixing SB's sail shortage
How to mentally pronounce my usernameRow-(as in a boat)Don-(as in the short form of Donald)Dough-(bread)
"Loitering on the High Seas" (Named after the good ship Rodondo)
There's no such thing as "nothing left to draw" If you can down 10 pints and draw, you're doing alright by my standards

Again- focusing on REACTION is not the way to save lives- it is a way to risk them.
PREVENTION is where the focus needs to lie. Fielding a fleet of small-ish, inexpensive vessels who would patrol the shipping lanes for pirates is the best method for preventing and deterring pirates.

Helicopters can only do two things to a possible pirate vessel- look at it or sink it. PERIOD. They cannot board the vessel, they cannot inspect the crew, they cannot even make the vessel follow them to their mothership in order to have these actions take place. A helicopter, however, does present an easy and inviting target for a man with an RPG or a belt-fed weapon. It can be damaged or shot down with loss of life rather easily.

A boat, however, can force another vessel to stop. It can come alongside and- if necessary- force a boarding action. It can 'herd' another vessel, pursue another vessel, and even tow another vessel. It can carry more men farther than a helicopter, albeit slower. It can be more versatile than a helicopter, take more punishment than a helicopter and- if necessary- attack from a similar or greater distance.


Rescuing a crew is a nice news story- it is not a viable military strategy. It is akin to building a fortress and allowing the enemy to take it in order to know exactly where to focus an attack. Rescuing a crew should not be the focus of an anti-piracy strategy- it should be a contingency plan in case of the failure of the main plan. Yet the focus the debate here seems to be on letting the pirates commit criminal acts and then dealing with the consequences rather than preventing the act entirely. It's like forcing police to sit in the parking lot of the station and wait for a crime instead of having them get out and patrol, build rapport and seek leads independently.

Control of the sea is not achieved through lofting a fleet of aircraft UNLESS you intend to turn everything under their wings into a free-fire zone.
So tell me, exactly what can a helicopter do- besides sinking a pirate or radioing for a boat to sink it- to STOP a pirate attack before it starts?

Frankly, just sink them on sight and be done with it. Worked in the 16-1700s, will work today.

_________________
95% of my drawings are destined for NS, 4.9% for fun, & .1% serious.
Worklist:
Space Shuttle
Atlas V
Delta II/III
Project Constellation
Soyuz series

Carthaginian-

There are a lot of ships and the Ocean is big There is no way you can afford to paper the Indian Ocean with enough small boats to make a difference, mostly because a boat can't run at high speeds to make the intercept. Yes, Helos are 'vulnerable' but not to sea based technicals (that's what the pirates are). The mere presence of a helo showing up is enough to discourage the attacks. There is just not the political will to root out the pirates, especially when they are a whole lot nicer than those off of south east Asia. The Somalis take your ship and hold you and it for ransom. The Asian Pirates will kill you, and possibly sink your boat if it doesn't have anything they want on it.

_________________
𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆

maybe paint a few ships in camo?

http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-med ... 503-1.html

_________________
Work list(Current)
Miscellaneous|Victorian Colonial Navy|Murray Riverboats|Colony of Victoria AU|Project Sail-fixing SB's sail shortage
How to mentally pronounce my usernameRow-(as in a boat)Don-(as in the short form of Donald)Dough-(bread)
"Loitering on the High Seas" (Named after the good ship Rodondo)
There's no such thing as "nothing left to draw" If you can down 10 pints and draw, you're doing alright by my standards

Timothy:
1.) If the thugs in New Orleans can put bullet holes into a Blackhawk that make the pilots return to base, you cannot tell me with any degree of truth that those same birds are not vulnerable to the much better equipped Somali pirates.
2.) A helo showing up is not going to deter a serious pirate; they know exactly what you and I have have pointed out- that a chopper alone cannot stop them without sinking the ship they are taking, and that any mothership will be hard-pressed to get there before the deed is done.
3.) Asian pirates are certainly the nastier bunch- which is all the more reason for nations to band together to end the plague. With the economic problems we are going through right now, there might not be a lot of will... but we'll have to do it one day. They are also one of the reasons I say the only reason to stop the pirates is the historically proven methods- bullets, or nooses and gibbets.

PS- Pirates like choke points, so you don't police the whole ocean... you police the choke points. Forcing the pirates to give up the easy, fertile grounds causes them to be far less of a threat.