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My story on Africa for DTI's coming Defense 2010 issue focuses on Somali piracy, and Galrahn at Information Dissemination has a germane post: EU Looking The Wrong Direction. Here's a significant part:The EU mission spends $736 million to maintain 6 frigates year-around, plus aircraft? Now add NATO, China, Russia, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the US and who wants to guess the total costs?The world is now spending well north of $2 billion in terms of supporting Somali anti-piracy naval and aircraft patrols. The extra insurance costs for 30,000 ships annually is no small number either. Even if the average ransom of every ship hijacked was $2 million, at 44 ships hijacked in 2009 we are only talking about $88 million - less than %5 of the costs being spent to protect shipping.When you run the numbers it makes you think our current efforts are either misguided or mostly political.Then there's the whole separate issue of what to do with pirates when you actually catch them...
The EU mission spends $736 million to maintain 6 frigates year-around, plus aircraft? Now add NATO, China, Russia, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the US and who wants to guess the total costs?The world is now spending well north of $2 billion in terms of supporting Somali anti-piracy naval and aircraft patrols. The extra insurance costs for 30,000 ships annually is no small number either. Even if the average ransom of every ship hijacked was $2 million, at 44 ships hijacked in 2009 we are only talking about $88 million - less than %5 of the costs being spent to protect shipping.
Tags: ar99, piracy