US Navy channels Monty Python

Of course you remember the command given by King Arthur at the end of the k'niggets' attack against the French castle:



"Run away!"

Well, that's the advice being given by a senior US Navy officer to ships transiting the piracy-imperiled waters off Somalia: "Navy ship outruns pirates, officials say."

The attempted attack happened Wednesday against the USNS Lewis and Clark, a dry cargo and ammunition ship that supports the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet and coalition ships in the area, the Navy said.

Two pirate skiffs pursued the Lewis and Clark for more than an hour as it headed north, the Navy said. They got as close as one nautical mile from the ship.

The Lewis and Clark sped up and tried to escape the pirates, and the ship's security team issued verbal warnings to the approaching skiffs, the Navy said.

The suspected pirates, who were then two nautical miles behind the Lewis and Clark, fired small arms at the ship. They fell a mile short of the ship's stern, the Navy said.

The Lewis and Clark sped up and the skiffs stopped their chase.

"The actions taken by Lewis and Clark were exactly what the U.S. Navy has been recommending to prevent piracy attacks -- for both commercial and military vessels," said Capt. Steve Kelley, commander of Task Force 53, assigned to the Lewis and Clark.

"Merchant mariners can and should use Lewis and Clark's actions as an unequivocal example of how to prevent a successful attack from occurring," he said.

To which Galrahn at Information Dissemination blog, devoted to matters maritime, responds,

On one hand, the US Navy is telling shipping companies they need to protect themselves, and Congress is suggesting they arm their ships to do it.

On the other hand, the US Navy is telling everyone to run from pirates. Maybe the Congress should go after the US Navy first, because apparently the US Navy hasn't even armed the gray hulled MSC operated US Navy ships to deal with piracy, because according to the US Navy, fleeing from pirates is an "unequivocal example of how to prevent a successful attack from occurring."

I'm not looking for blood, I'm looking for a strategy.

This response seems to confuse a strategic approach to dealing with piracy with the tactical solution to deal with individual pirate attacks. But the pirate threat is actually so low that the best strategy for now may well be simply to deal with individual threats on a case-by-case basis.

The fact is that Somali piracy is not a pressing national-security issue for the United States, so avoiding, rather than escalating encounters is indeed the preferable thing to do. Running away from pirates is the best course of action if the ship has that kind of speed. After all, "don't start nuthin', won't be nuthin'." Speedy sailing is the best tool in the toolbox for mariners in those waters, but it cannot be the only one. CNN's story points out that,

[L]ate Wednesday morning in the Gulf of Aden... a Greek vessel fended off a pirate attack. The Greeks hit the approaching skiff, causing the pirates' boat to capsize, the European Union's Maritime Security Center said in a written statement.

A Spanish crew recovered seven pirates from the water and detained them, the statement said. No casualties or damage was reported.

Which is bully good stuff. On the other hand, there may be large gaps in the tactical, too. Galrahn links to the blog of a merchant vessel captain who reports,

During my transits of the Gulf of Aden I receive no information at all regarding military assets available for protection. In fact the response I get to my numerous reports is ....NOTHING, not even so much as an automatically generated email, something along the lines of "your call is important to us", I mean nothing, not a single message or email even acknowledging that I exist, let alone that I am transiting the GoA. ...

I find myself transiting the Gulf of Aden wondering if any one is even receiving my reports, let alone reading them.

Not exactly a confidence builder, that.