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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   32110 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Piracy is easy to prevent if there really was a desire to stop it. Just start dropping thermobaric bombs willy nilly until you wipe out everyone having the temerity to float a dingy against you. For a less insane aproach just have soldiers with RPGs and Snipers with shoot on sight orders stationed on every ship.

I don't think you understand that you can also do piracy by threatening to sink ships unless you get paid off.

For the record, China could credibly threaten to hit ships halfway across the Pacific without ever leaving home. Houthis have shitty ASBMs given to them by Iran which allow them to do this within 500 km.

https://missilethreat.csis.org/china-launches-antiship-ballistic-missiles-in-test/

How do pirates credibly threaten a specific ship and get them to pay up with a missile 500km away? What's the procedure here? Has this actually happened?

Ships have AIS. They can observe them with drones easily, they can easily get info from people watching the canals and match them against ship registers.

People bribe them to go through the straits unmolested. If you're Israeli or US affiliated you can't though, iirc.

Procedurally, it's relatively simple. As long as you can see / monitor the area you'd shoot in, you just advertise by any means that anyone who goes through that area may / may not be shot. The risk alone is what drives most people away- for insurance reasons if nothing else in the modern era.

From there, you just also communicate that you won't shoot at people who buy your pass. In exchange for money, you give some sort of authentication measure tied to the sale. This could be anything like 'broadcast this code at this time when sailing through this area.'

Then you have your sensor-people look for the authentication measure. If a ship has it and matches the ledgers of who paid, don't shoot. If a ship does not have it, shoot. If a ship tries to broadcast a 'I paid' code, but isn't on the ledgers, shoot.

Fair in theory, but has this happened at least once?

Depends if you believe the UN report last year alleging around €169 million a month.

Though that article does cite more concrete examples of Somali pirates as well, such as paying them by dumping suitcases of cash.

Tbh if true for 169 mil euro a month I'd be fine with The great shiva's reincarnation Trump to rain indiscriminate hellfire on the native population also.

Yemen is an utterly doomed country. They waste 80% of their water on qat or so. Water table in the capital area is already 200 m underground.

Iranians are largely out of water but at least they're not wasting it on qat, but still they might have to leave half their country bc switch to unsustainable water extraction with the advent of diesel powered pumps led to water table dropping..

For a less insane aproach just have soldiers with RPGs and Snipers with shoot on sight orders stationed on every ship.

I'm not convinced. The escalation is to easy for the pirates. Current Somali militias could do it if they cared. Slightly bigger ship, 10 tons of hand mixed concrete to form a ghetto pillbox, soviet artillery piece. Done.

They can't board as easily anymore, but they can threaten to blow up the cargo ship's bridge.

Escalating for the cargo ships is not as easy. They already have to keep most of their hardware and mercenaries in international waters on their floating armory ships, they really don't want to install naval guns every time the mercenaries board a cargo vessel.

How is such an obvious target not immediately blown to pieces via airpower? The only reason the houthis are getting away with their current operations is precisely because they aren't doing stuff that presents an obvious stationary target.

It's not just the ships the pirates face, but the nations that back them.

How is such an obvious target not immediately blown to pieces via airpower?

The Houthis are operating in a much smaller area than the Somali pirates did before them. The oceans are big, the horizon is small. Finding a pirate ship via aircraft hours after a call for help (which is how long it takes until airpower arrives if your navy isn't dominating the seas and your allies are far and few between) is difficult, especially if you try avoiding blowing up random fishing boats.

And both Somalis and Houthis are extremely low tech. Doesn't take much to give a pirate ship thousands of miles of range.

The Somalis are extremely low tech. The Houthis are not; they are getting sophisticated radars, missiles, and drones drones from Iran. Very different opponent.

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