UPDATED: With Adm. Mullen Saying He is Not a “Proponent” of Arming Merchant Marine; Piracy “Is Not My Priority Right Now.” He says: “I’ve Got A Big Globe.”

The head of the Maritime Administration, who oversees America’s merchant marine, said today that he opposed the arming of US merchant seamen to counter pirates.

“We do not want to arm mariners in any event,” James Caponiti, acting Maritime Administrator, said at today’s Navy League conference in Washington. He said the risks were just too great even though there is training for mariners to be trained in the use of small arms. He added that “we do not recommend arming our mariners with the kinds of weapons you would need for a maritime attack.” The Maritime Administration is part of the Department of Transportation.

Instead, ships should consider carrying qualified private security teams. In addition to concerns that mariners could become targets for pirates if they are armed, Caponiti said many foreign ports do not allow sailors to carry weapons or to bring them into port. These are issues the US will have to address as it considers the role of private security teams on US-flagged ships.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, agreed that arming mariners was not the right approach, adding that piracy was “not my priority right now.” Clearly pushing piracy down on the threat ladder, he said: “I’ve got a big globe.” Mullen also offered the familiar statistic that piracy affects less than 1 percent of ships and the commercial shipping industry is willing to pay ransoms rather than take more costly measures. Finally, Mullen noted that, “in the end it’s a bigger problem. It’s about Somalia…” and what the international community choose to do about it.

Also, the chief of naval operations, Adm. Gary Roughead, said he doubted that the shipping industry would be willing to adopt another tactic that many experts have encouraged: the use of armed convoys to protect ships against pirates. “The merchant fleet serves a global economy and they want to make as much money as possible,” Roughead said, noting that waiting to sail in a convoy might wreak havoc with the tight time lines required by modern industry.

The head of the Coast Guard, Adm. Thad Allen, said a new maritime “code of conduct” should be out “shortly.” He did not disclose any details.

However, Allen did say that one concept that has been much discussed to discourage piracy, the creation of shipping highways, was worthy of consideration and is being implemented in some regions.

WASHINGTON – The global shipping industry should consider placing armed guards on its boats to ward off pirates who have become increasingly violent, the U.S. military commander who oversees the African coastline said Friday.

Gen. David Petraeus told a House committee that just trying to outrun or block pirates from boarding cargo ships isn’t enough to deter sea bandits off Somalia who are becoming more aggressive.

The shipping industry has resisted arming their boats, which would deny them port in some nations.

Petraeus said defensive preparations short of armed guards “can work. You can have water hoses and others that can make it more difficult,” he said. But he added, “It’s tough to be on the end of a water hose if the other guy is on the end of an RPG [a rocket-propelled grenade launcher]. So you’ve got to think your way through that calculation as well.”

By Sylvia Pfeifer, Financial Times

Oceanic action: suspected pirates arrested by French navy commandos in the Gulf of Aden

Tim Spicer, the founder and chief executive of Aegis Defence Services, the private security company whose main market is in Iraq, is preparing to do battle on the high seas by tackling piracy off the coast of Somalia.The company is in talks with several states in the region, including the Yemeni and Djibouti governments, about setting up a command and control centre that would monitor the threat of piracy and act as an information exchange centre for vessels in the area. Somali pirates have stepped up attacks in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean in recent weeks, forcing the issue on to the agenda of Western governments.

It is unclear how successful any project would be, given the scale of piracy attacks and the limited resources of Yemen and Djibouti. The latter, which borders Somalia, hosts a US counterterrorism military base and French forces, but it is tiny with few resources.

Simply putting guards on ships or engaging pirates “was not quite as simple as some people think”, Mr Spicer added. Nevertheless, he said Aegis was comfortable it would be possible “with the agreement of one of the littoral states” to have the ability to put personnel on and off ships and for them to carry firearms with certain control measures imposed on them. Mr Spicer added that Aegis, which first looked at maritime security in response to piracy problems in the Far East several years ago, was primarily interested in acting as a “co-ordinating body” to make it easier for commercial shipping to interact with naval forces. Aegis is also in talks with the US government, as well as insurance and shipping companies.

While helping to combat piracy is one area of potential expansion, Mr Spicer said the biggest opportunity still lay in securing large government contracts.

A former officer in the Scots Guards, he courted controversy in the 1990s when Sandline, a company he was a director of, was embroiled in a row over supplying arms to the disposed president of Sierra Leone.

He founded Aegis in 2002 and the company became one of the leading private security companies in Iraq after clinching a deal with the Pentagon in 2004 to support reconstruction efforts. That first contract has since grown into 11 government contracts, including one with the Italians.

The company saw a big rise in turnover and profits according to its latest accounts for the year end December 2008. Turnover rose from £73.8m in 2007 to £126.3m, while pre-tax profit increased from £1.7m to £11.4m over the same period.

Aegis generates about 80 per cent of its turnover from Iraq.

It also has some small commercial contracts in Afghanistan.

Both Mr Spicer and Jeffrey Day, Aegis’s joint managing director, stress the importance of the company’s reputation, noting the level of oversight the security industry operates under today.

Mr Spicer rejects the term “mercenary” – “it doesn’t apply to us” – noting that Aegis is keen to position itself as something other than just a private security company.

By Jake Allen

In the coming weeks I plan to take a look at 3 of the ways that private security firms can find a productive role to play in the counter-piracy effort off the coast of Somalia. The three areas I will be taking a closer look at are:

1. Security Guards Aboard/Armed with Lethal Weapons
2. Security Guards Aboard/Unarmed or using Less-than-lethal weapons
3. Security Guards Adjacent/ Escort Vessels

Security Guards Aboard/Armed with Lethal Weapons

Benefits: The primary benefit of having armed guards on board is that their visual presence alone can serve as a deterrent to an attack.  Armed vessels represent what is called a ‘hard target’.  In other words, given the choice of attacking a unarmed vessel or an armed vessel the unarmed vessel represents a ‘softer target’ comparatively speaking.  Though is not possible to calculate how many attacks were avoided due to a more defensive posture the hard/soft target is widely accepted in most all other criminal circumstances and there is no reason to believe it would not also apply on the high seas.   However, many experts counter this argument by stating that the number of attacks do not actually drop they are simply diverted to other ships which appear as easier targets.   Yet even if this is so it adds a level of complexity to the pirates planning and execution that he has thus far not needed to account for and over time this can have an effect.

In the event of an attack the armed guards’ presence at the point-of-attack offers considerable tactical advantage and is by far the most likely method for successfully deterring an attack. Especially when compared to an unarmed guard approach or a escort vessel method of security. The physical ’high ground’ afforded by ship’s decks as well as the limited cover and concealment offers significant advantages tactically during a fire fight should one occur.

4 to 6 qualified marksmen armed with weapons that are effective at point-targets out to a distance of 800 meters would be all that is required to successfully repel a coordinated pirate attack. This use of force must be only applied within the framework of Rules of Engagement which are well defined and commonly interpreted.

Challenges/Limitations: The difficulty in executing the ’armed guard’ scenario are a mix of logistics and legal. The area where armed guards may be necessary in relation to the overall distance travelled on most journeys is relatively short. The typical westbound journey which originates Asia bound for a European port could take between 3 and 4 weeks. During that time armed guards may only be necessary for less than 5 days. In the case of the Horn of Africa region the shipping carrier has no need for armed guards prior to reaching the western Indian Ocean and would no longer need the guards once it entered the Red Sea and would most certainly no longer need them as it approached Suez. This leaves the carrier rightfully unwilling to pay for the guards when they are not necessary.

From the security company’s perspective getting their guards onboard when needed and off when not presents a real logistical challenge requiring a footprint somewhere along the northern shore between Oman and Saudi Arabia or on the southern shore between Somalia and the Sudan. A simple map reconnaissance and knowledge of the region can quickly rule out several otherwise ideal geographical locations as being too politically unstable to operate from. The introduction of weapons to the equation adds a level of complexity relative to compliance with laws, regulations, permits, etc, goes up. Notably the pirates are not encumbered by these regulations.

Legally speaking carrying arms aboard a commercial ship can be problematic, especially if the ship wishes to or needs to enter a port with arms onboard. While there is more latitude afforded while steaming in international waters in the case of the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea the proximity to the national waters of Yemen, Somalia, Djibouti, Oman, Eritrea, Sudan and Saudi Arabia add a layer of legal complexity that is difficult for law abiding security companies to overcome.

Perhaps the largest legal challenge to this potential solution are the Rules of Engagement necessary to successfully and defend the ship while protecting unnecessary loss of life. As always it is a challenge to develop and define ROEs that can be commonly interpreted and applied. At the end of the day the final decision to use force is a personal one made a the time by the man on the ground. Some cases are kill or be killed while others leave more room for interpretation and debate. All the more reason why the industry needs a form of certification where by both the company as well as the individual security guards can be vetted, trained and supervised in a way that protects all stakeholders’ perspectives. What the industry cannot afford is a migration of many of the unregulated firms operating in other theatres to quickly find themselves involved in the anti-piracy campaign using the same contractors directly out of Iraq or Afghanistan without undergoing the appropriate training and rehearsals.

Liabilities: The liabilities here are potentially many but they mostly all centre around the assumption that the introduction of armed guard will automatically result an increase in casualties and damage to property. As such the resistance to the armed guards concept is mostly championed by the insurance companies and to a lesser degree the ship owners and financiers. Insurance actuaries crave stability and predictability in order to construct the price of the premiums in relation to the potential payouts. In 2008 ransoms were paid out for 40 ships at an estimated $80 million dollars. While this may seem like a large number, in relation to the premium revenues taken in by the underwriters it remains an operating cost they are comfortable with. In light of the fact that even a single vessel sunk by pirates would trigger the insurance company to incur costs of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Summary: Both the root cause of the piracy problem as well as any eventual solution have their roots in economics. The pirates are active because of the financial benefits relative to the downside for failure. The insurance companies view a few million dollars in ransom payments worth the expense when compared to the catastrophic loss of a ship. The carriers, for their part, remain open to the idea of armed guards but have seen their profits thinned recently due to the slackening demand in the shipping market so they often hesitate to further erode profits by paying private security guards out of what would otherwise be operating profit. Finally the logistical challenges and the web of legal risks involved in conducting security operations in the region mean that the rates for security services are often more than many carriers are able or willing to pay.

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Jake Allen is a security consultant and an expert on corporate security and risk management. He is a regular contributor to the Private Military Herald.