Somali pirates seize Singaporean ship

[Rickster]

dont think the navy can do much now as the sailors already held hostage. not sure international maritime law allows the killing of pirates, and so this may impede their rescue mission. i guess in the end, like most piracy cases, end up paying millions to free the cargo and sailors which is worth much much more.

 

True, its not legal to kill pirates unless they directly threaten you or someone else's life.

 

Technically speaking, as long as the pirates did not use guns and board a cargo sticks & beat the hell out of the crews, there is no way in hell that any navy can open fire on them.

[Rickster]

Mine is going to be a totally ignoramus comment but what baffles me is that how come we can send a man to the moon, launch all sorts of Mars probe, take all sorts of wonderful picture from the Hubble space telescope and yet there is no way we can track somali sampans here on our very own planet earth???

 

I mean where has all the space age technology or those hi-tech satellite imagery systems blah..blah...blah.... gone to?

 

1) Does not make economical sense.

 

2) Sending a man to space technology cannot be used to track sampans.

[Rickster]

At least the USA Army have the equipment and means to defend themselves against these terrorists....

 

These commercial vessels are completely defenceless against the pirates... All the have is some water guns to hose the pirates down to "deter" them from boarding the vessel.... I think the pirates take it as a free shower before they hijack the vessel...

 

Actually if they allow the crew to have their own guns, then its a different story... but they will have problem entering all the ports.

[Hiphiphoray]

Actually you ask a very good question. Its just like how USA have such a high tech army but they can't flush out a handful of slipper wearing terrorists hiding in the hills.

 

yalor....struggling in afgan & iraqi too.

[Noobcar]

Really think that they should allow merchant ship to have a few guns to defend themselves. Or at least hire some guards that carry guns.

[Bystander50]

i wonder how our "mighty" armed forces will respond to this..

 

All the exercises you see on TV about how our armed forces defeat terrorists, hijackers ... etc ....

What can you tell? It's a wayang show to show FTs how safe and a effective force we have.

These kind of exercises anyone can also stage, the bad guys are already scripted to lose.

Look at the recent capture of the bomb maker in Indo, these people fight to the end and not surrender, opposed to what you see in the exercises.

 

You think the CO or captain of the ship dare engage the pirates? What if he loses his ship?

Sign 1206 for the ship? *laugh*

 

Anyway, our armed forces are there for the sake of showing face only.

Anyone think they dare to fire or engage the pirates, even in regional area?

SG just cannot handle the reprisals from these groups should they want vengence.

 

Edited October 16, 2009 by Bystander50

[MrFlax]

Should send our team of SOF go in and rescue them, like blackhawk down like that, send an airborne heli assault follow by amphibious assault supported by air airstrike. If not how to know if our doctrine actually works? use this as an excuse and test it on the hijacker mah..

 

 

was thinking of our SOF too...

 

not sure about maritime laws, do we have jurisdiction in those waters? can we send in our military to take out the pirates?

[Boyboy]

Singapore Navy already got a ship standby there. Sure will tackle this problem.

 

If they bother that is.

 

the RSN ship shd be in the gulf.

 

i doubt any country will unilaterally send its ships to rescue another ship from pirates unless it's VVIP on board. in which case they'd be escorted already anyway . and most certainly our gahmen will not want to stick out its head to play hero, so far from singapore.

 

perhaps they will need another international task force to go to these new operating areas to whack the pirates

[Boyboy]

Mine is going to be a totally ignoramus comment but what baffles me is that how come we can send a man to the moon, launch all sorts of Mars probe, take all sorts of wonderful picture from the Hubble space telescope and yet there is no way we can track somali sampans here on our very own planet earth???

 

I mean where has all the space age technology or those hi-tech satellite imagery systems blah..blah...blah.... gone to?

 

u should go to singapore straits one day. just count the sampans floating around. a sampan is like the size of a car (ok lah, narrower, longer abit).

 

i think the issue here is we'd need a very sophisticated software to count and identify all these sampans. i doubt it's possible for a long while.

 

u mention satellite imagery, all well and good. this is for visible light photography in daylight, no cloud cover. at night, it will be a problem, cos these sampans may have no lights. i don't think FLIR can be used from satellite, that's my impression. daytime, may have cloud cover.

 

radar? range is limited for such small sampans lah.. so out in open ocean, abit hard to detect also. but the key here may be to go for the mother ship. sampans will have limited range out in the ocean, from the mother ship

[Haziqko]

my take on this is i think to make it compulsory to have small security force inside big vessels just to deter for a few minutes before main force rescue. i've watched a docu on special armed security coys wre they interview 1 of them. he replied that he is trained to take out at least 5 us marines soldiers. i sat there blank just hearing wat he said. but of cos these guys are expensive. but worth it thinking to have these tough nuts on board cos they will die trying to do their job.

[Boyboy]

Do u hav any idea wat ship we sent there? Its a 141m landing ship... its a naval transport vessel with some small guns and carrying helicopters & special forces on board.

 

Btw, in modern war, all navies are trying to reduce the size of ship.

 

Bigger ship = bigger radar signature = easier to detect. Now is modern warfare, its all about electronics & missiles. Not about the size.

 

still need certain size lah.. there's a limit to how much it can be reduced. big ships definitely have more range, stability and more flexibility when operating far from base.

[Boyboy]

Really think that they should allow merchant ship to have a few guns to defend themselves. Or at least hire some guards that carry guns.

 

u got point, but there's a counter-argument. if merchantmen try to be fierce, pirates will be even fiercer, and try to kill the crew before they even board the ship.

 

but to build on ur point, if ship owners can hire well-trained mercenaries to sail on board and protect their ships, then that may work. but i don;t think just giving weapons to your typical merchant ship crew is gonna be of much use.

[Boyboy]

All the exercises you see on TV about how our armed forces defeat terrorists, hijackers ... etc ....

What can you tell? It's a wayang show to show FTs how safe and a effective force we have.

These kind of exercises anyone can also stage, the bad guys are already scripted to lose.

Look at the recent capture of the bomb maker in Indo, these people fight to the end and not surrender, opposed to what you see in the exercises.

 

You think the CO or captain of the ship dare engage the pirates? What if he loses his ship?

Sign 1206 for the ship? *laugh*

 

Anyway, our armed forces are there for the sake of showing face only.

Anyone think they dare to fire or engage the pirates, even in regional area?

SG just cannot handle the reprisals from these groups should they want vengence.

 

i agree and disagree with u. yes our SAF is for WAYANG. deterrence is part of that wayang, ca u deny that? so exercises... hmmm... hmmm...

 

i believe our SAF when it comes to the crunch, we will dare to whack. esp for navy vs pirates , trust me on this . but if u read wikipedia, u go n see how fast our ships can travel, vs the pirates? (not very fast lah)

 

anyway, i don't recall hearing of ANY pirates besting ANY navy. yes, the pirates can strike, but i'm sure they will not want to risk confrontation with naval vessels. it's pretty much suicide. they are PIRATES, not TERRORISTs. at the end of the day, they want to enjoy the loot they have stolen

[Rickster]

All the exercises you see on TV about how our armed forces defeat terrorists, hijackers ... etc ....

What can you tell? It's a wayang show to show FTs how safe and a effective force we have.

These kind of exercises anyone can also stage, the bad guys are already scripted to lose.

Look at the recent capture of the bomb maker in Indo, these people fight to the end and not surrender, opposed to what you see in the exercises.

 

You think the CO or captain of the ship dare engage the pirates? What if he loses his ship?

Sign 1206 for the ship? *laugh*

 

Anyway, our armed forces are there for the sake of showing face only.

Anyone think they dare to fire or engage the pirates, even in regional area?

SG just cannot handle the reprisals from these groups should they want vengence.

 

What do u expect an advertisement to show? Do u know what is the purpose of advertisements?

 

Brother, I used to serve in an anti infiltration squad several years back and had seen many things the typical NS infantry guys would not even dream about.

 

All I can say is that you really sound like a fool for saying those things.

[Pentium]

All the exercises you see on TV about how our armed forces defeat terrorists, hijackers ... etc ....

What can you tell? It's a wayang show to show FTs how safe and a effective force we have.

These kind of exercises anyone can also stage, the bad guys are already scripted to lose.

Look at the recent capture of the bomb maker in Indo, these people fight to the end and not surrender, opposed to what you see in the exercises.

 

You think the CO or captain of the ship dare engage the pirates? What if he loses his ship?

Sign 1206 for the ship? *laugh*

 

Anyway, our armed forces are there for the sake of showing face only.

Anyone think they dare to fire or engage the pirates, even in regional area?

SG just cannot handle the reprisals from these groups should they want vengence.

 

 

The RSN must write many pages of report for every bullet fired leh. The CO hear already balls shrink with so much paperwork

[Trex101]

What do u expect an advertisement to show? Do u know what is the purpose of advertisements?

 

Brother, I used to serve in an anti infiltration squad several years back and had seen many things the typical NS infantry guys would not even dream about.

 

All I can say is that you really sound like a fool for saying those things.

 

We should take out the hijacker.... ship all those going to expired ammunition and bombs and used it up. Save the expenses on disposal. 1 stone 2 bird.....

[Ahtong]

Is this baby still around? That'll teach the pirates a lesson.

 

[Boyboy]

The RSN must write many pages of report for every bullet fired leh. The CO hear already balls shrink with so much paperwork

 

actually, i don't blame you for not knowing this. But if i were a ship CO and got pirate in the vicinity and i'm on duty...

 

from a purely selfish point of view, it does look good on the record

 

seriously, whacking pirates is a good thing. unless u tell me the pirate have anti-ship missiles then confirm balls shrink liao. but in this region, it's usually guerrilla style with small sampans and small arms. the issue will be to actually catch them cos under international law of the sea, our ship (PCG or navy) can only chase until neighbouring country's territorial water. then the pirates can just do their own thing. unless the neighbouring country navy/PCG also combine powers.

 

but these pirates aren't stupid. i'm sure they just wanna rob the merchant ships and f-off. if enforcement in the vicinity, they will just cabut and come again another day. they fire one .5 round, we can fire 76mm round back at them

 

regarding reports, you do wonderful things or everyday mundane things, still must write report. dun think got very much diff lah.