buffalo jack – a naval milblog

First, American free speech is a wonderful thing. Second, I’m glad to have read such a wide breadth of posts, articles and comments of the piracy situation which reflect nearly every possible viewpoint.

I’d like to start out by saying that, even though I’m thankful for the outcome of the Maersk Alabama, a long-term policy of these types of dashing rescues shouldn’t be adopted. While this specific instance ended favorably, I postulate that the principles of statistics will eventually yield a scenario where innocent civilians are injured or killed. While many were crying out for blood, a prudent plan was being concocted and it appears that the Navy did what it does best and took advantage of an opportunity when it made the most tactical sense. The summation of my views on civility in an uncivilized world can be found at this WSJ editorial.

To paraphrase a line from Admiral Stavridis’ Destroyer Captain, “Today we were lucky. From now on, we need to be good.”

Here’s how to be good:

Many in milblogland are aching for something like the LCS to come online as it seems to be a perfect modern equivalent of the schooner Enterprise from the Barbary wars. Wired’s Danger Room says that the US Navy is a “Second Class Pirate Fighter” because it lacks these kinds of ships. Similar arguments are being made by Mike Burleson over at New Wars. I think that an anti-piracy patrol would be a great job for the LCS – and apparently it’s necessary these days, much to the chagrin of the naysayers who only envision a naked United States sending a flotilla of Freedom-class ships at the entire Chinese Navy.

It seems like what we need are shallower draft ships with decent speed and range. Cheap ones. No need for Gucci cruise missiles or fancy radars here. Just enough gun to put a hurt on a small skiff outside of RPG range. Maybe 3-inch rounds? Helicopter capability would be great…two would be even better than one.

Oh, and we need them right away…

Well, good thing we already have them – that’s right, the venerable OHP-class frigate. It has all the specs, and just for the tax-dollar watchers out there, I did a rough adjustment of GlobalSecurity.org’s quote for unit price circa 1978 and each ship would cost roughly $630 Million in 2008 dollars…pretty much what LCS will cost (especially taking mission modules into account). Just to underscore how appropriate they are, here’s the standard mission blurb (again, from global security):

Frigates fulfill a Protection of Shipping (POS) mission as…combatants for amphibious expeditionary forces, underway replenishment groups and merchant convoys. PERRY-class frigates are primarily Undersea Warfare ships intended to provide open-ocean escort of amphibious ships and convoys in low to moderate threat environments in a global war with the Soviet Union…The ships are equiped to escort and protect carrier battle groups, amphibious landing groups, underway replenishment groups and convoys.

Hrm…Low to moderate threat environment? Check. Merchant convoys? Possible.

Could it be that 25 years after the fact, frigates could do exactly what they were designed to do?

It strikes me as odd that the sole frigate off the Horn of Africa at the moment is the USS Halyburton. Many FIGs are committed to the narcotics problem around South America and I do feel that taking them away from that mission presents some problems, including potentially worsening the violence across the border in Mexico. But there’s a whole grip of FIGs left and what better way for many of them approaching their end-of-service-life to log a final chapter doing something meaningful than by putting a mess of them in the waters off the Somali coast and actually doing some convoy protection.

If we get it right, pirate skiffs will get the hurt put on them and we won’t have to tempt the law of averages with hostage situations any more. That sounds about right to me…