2009 WORLD YEARBOOK
PIRACY
tion forces are contributing sophisticated intelligence, command and control and platforms to respond to the challenge, the pirates have no intelligence and only the most rudimentary boats, armed with low-
tech ladders and grappling hooks. While they may have GPS, their weapons are old and worn. "They just wait for a target of opportunity," McKnight says. "The best sensor for finding a skiff is a
helicopter with radar," McKnight says. "The next best is a mod-one eyeball." Some ships never realized they were under attack until it was too late. "If they had lookouts they would have seen this
coming," McKnight says. McKnight says some vessels have a higher risk of being attacked. Ships with low freeboard; a slow speed of advance; transiting high risk areas during early morning hours or operating outside the agreed upon transit lanes; turning off Automated Information System (AIS)
"There are no treaties," said Capt. Greg Prentiss, USN, chief of staff for the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF). "This is a coalition of the willing."
transponders or not posting lookouts put vessels and their crews at risk, he says. While some naval vessels are escorting convoys through high-risk areas, McKnight says "area denial" presence operations provides a sort of zone defense that concentrates forces in high risk areas, and provides for economy of force and a freer traffic flow. In some cases the coalition forces have detained or arrested pirates, McKnight says. But that poses new problems. "It's kind of like the dog catching the car. What do you do now?" In other cases, says Prentiss, the culprits are "caught and released." But first, biometric data is obtained to identify them in the future, and they are interviewed to get the pattern of the pirates operations and educate them that piracy is not the answer. Three pirates who held Capt. Richard Phillips, master of the Maersk Alabama, as hostage were killed by Navy sharpshooters. Such rescues are the excep36 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News