PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Russian special forces in dawn raid on oil tanker pirates
Old 18th May 2010, 10:25
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barnstormer1968
 
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Onetrack

In response to your quoting of me, and your subsequent response:
Quote:
Another point often glossed over or missed, is that many of the hijacked crew do not put up any resistance. Why could this be?
It is because crews are NOT armed, and deliberately so, by ship owners...and the crews are instructed to offer no resistance to pirates, for fear of antagonising them, and suffering crew fatalities as a result.

The problem of arming merchant ships crews raises a lot of problems, including the racheting-up of pirates weaponry if they know a crew is armed. I consider a better idea is to have heavily armed escorts shadowing vessels, and pouncing on pirates the instant they show signs of piracy-like movements.

I did say I was being coy in my post!!

I am referring to the fact that many ships are said to to be hijacked to order (read: insurance jobs) which is why they are traveling slowly, near to the coast, have crews who may know the pirates and and do not put up resistance. Clearly my mentioning of not including western, Russian or other such ships made no impact

I did not mention the crews of these ships are usually armed, but did think the other points had covered the subject.
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