Bring Back The PT Boat
As governments anguish about ways to confront the challenge of Somali piracy, all sorts of solutions are being proposed. One that’s beginning to attract attention involves thinking small and looking to the past.
We’ve learned in recent years that when it comes to modern asymmetrical land warfare, the best way to win is usually to get symmetrical with your opponents—only tougher and better armed in this diminished size range. The same lesson might be applied to confronting the Somali pirate menace.
Specifically, bring back some version of World War II’s PT-boat. Arm these small, very fast, cheap to build vessels with a fifty caliber machine gun and a rapid fire cannon, and add a few Navy Seals to their crews. Have a number of them operate from a few mother ships, thus covering a huge area, and give their captains great discretion about how to deal with suspected pirates.
Pretty soon, far fewer profit-seeking pirates.
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7 Responses to “Bring Back The PT Boat”
I was wondering why something like this wasn't being done myself. I think there's probably other situations we will be finding ourselves in where this type of force would be very useful.
we have those, search for navy SBU, SWCC, MkV boat, MkIV boat
I rather liked the “air marshal” idea floated recently too. When someone pops over the railing with a rocket propelled grenade and sinks an attacking “pirate” ship, the picture gets a whole lot cloudier for would-be pirates.
PT Boats eh? H2O-borne is right, the Navy already has Cyclone-class patrol boats based in Bahrain. What the Navy should do is buy (or license) the Norwegian Skorjd patrol boat– those boats can pack a punch and are FAST– they can make more than 60 knots (versus the Cyclone's 35 knots).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skjold_class_patro…
Another option is patrolling the sealanes with Hellfire-equiped drones. I'm not sure the Navy has ship-launched combat UAVs yet, but UAVs are cheaper and faster than patrol boats (Predators cruises at 80 mph and have a top speed of 135mph).
“Another option is patrolling the sealanes with Hellfire-equiped drones.”
What's politically incorrect in Yemen and Afghanistan when conceived or at least when operated by Bush people will suddenly become discovered as a brilliant politically correct idea against the “new” [rolling eyes] pirate threat by the Obama people.
Next comes shooting and sinking with warning or trial, but shhhhhhhhhhh.
Certainly we should be able to do a better job with these small boats than the Iranians have done for years now.
Pt are built for speed