Security

Why the U.S. Navy is a Second-Class Pirate-Fighter

Both the U.S. Navy and the Somali pirates are sending in reinforcements, in their Indian Ocean showdown. And in this particular fight of destroyers vs. life rafts, put your money on the big boats. But in anything much longer than the immediate term, think twice about putting down a bet. Because the American Navy, as […]

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Both the U.S. Navy and the Somali pirates are sending in reinforcements, in their Indian Ocean showdown. And in this particular fight of destroyers vs. life rafts, put your money on the big boats. But in anything much longer than the immediate term, think twice about putting down a bet. Because the American Navy, as currently configured, doesn't have the right gear to clamp down on piracy.

The 9,200-ton destroyer USS Bainbridge has taken the lead in the latest pirate standoff. It's a fearsome ship, armed with heavy guns, the latest radar, and up to 96 missiles. God help the poor frigate who goes up against it -- or the terrorist whose hideout the* Bainbridge *happens to flatten with its Tomahawks.

But as a a pirate-hunter, it's of limited utility. U.S. policy in East Africa isn't to blow up the hijackers' boats or homes. It's to deter them, scare them off, and maybe arrest them. Which means a game of cat-and-mouse, in seas more than 1.1 million square miles big. Having a bigger, sharper-toothed cat in this contest doesn't change the odds very much in this competition. If anything, it's probably a detriment to the more lumbering contestant.

That's why, as Galrahn notes, "the current Obama policy" on piracy "is not aligned well with the U.S. Navy's capabilities at sea. The Obama administration maritime law enforcement policy forces the great United States Navy to operate like an inept
United Nations coast guard against Somali pirates."

For years, military modernizers like the late Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski have been calling instead for the U.S. to build a fleet on smaller, faster, cheaper ships that can patrol shorelines. The idea is to have lots and lots of speedy cats chasing the mice, instead of just a few hulking ones. (Pair the two breeds together, suggests Commander Henry Hendrix, and you've got a naval force that can deal with just about any kind of threat.)

The thinking eventually lead to the Littoral Combat Ship program -- an effort to build 55 quick, reconfigurable, relatively inexpensive ($450-$600 million apiece) coastal fighters. "Its flexibility and its ability to get into tighter places than other ships... [are] capabilit[ies] that we just have to have,"
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Danger Room earlier this week. "You don't need a $5 billion ship to go after pirates." In fact, such a ship might actually undermine those efforts.

The Littoral Combat Ship program is still new. And its start has been very, very rocky. But, if the effort can be smoothed out, it could form the backbone of a new U.S. Navy -- one that actually could be a world-class pirate fighter.

[Photo: U.S. Navy]

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