Pirates outwit the Navy

In the past two months alone, the pirates have attacked more than 30 vessels, eluding the naval patrols, going farther out to sea and seeking bigger, more lucrative game, including an American cruise ship and a 1,000-foot Saudi oil tanker. The pirates seem to have been able to escape the military of at least nine nations to capture some of the biggest ships in the shipping industry. This rebellious pirate activities threatens to bring the entire shipping industry to a stand still.The pirates are recalibrating their tactics, attacking ships in beelike swarms of 20 to 30 skiffs, and threatening to choke off one of the busiest shipping arteries in the world, at the mouth of the Red Sea.The pirates are totally outgunned. They continue to cruise around in fiberglass skiffs with assault rifles and at best a few rocket-propelled grenades. One Italian officer said that going after them in a 485-foot-long destroyer, bristling with surface-to-air missiles and torpedoes, was like “going after someone on a bicycle with a truck.”

However the pirates are not the least bit worried about this and true to their motto they whiz around in their modified speed boats and evade the soldiers radar, which is supposed to be one of the best in the world. Despite tough talk, the guards are unarmed (because most countries do not allow them to bring weapons into port), so they are often forced to confront machine-gun-toting pirates with fire hoses.