You've sunk my Pirate Ship or Leave no Survivors

The Somali Pirates are turning into quite the Bugaboo, oh what, oh what are we to do? Come on, it isn’t Rocket Science. It isn’t a difficult question to answer and once again History provides an Answer. I am beginning to wonder what use it is to record History if nobody is going to pay attention to it.

The answer isn’t even that far in our past. It is called a Q Ship. A Q Ship is a trap; it is the poisoned cheese that kills the rat. In this case it is a nice, juicy boat that has hidden weapons. Take a Yacht, a small Tanker, a Cargo ship or anything else these people have attacked and you mount weapons on it that are disguised as deck hardware or that are on elevators and can be raised to the deck level or higher. I have a few ideas about the set up.

My perfect Q Ship would be a Yacht, with a 30mm GAU-8 Avenger in the Bow and Stern, on Elevator Turrets, capable of -10 degrees deflection to +30 degrees and able to rotate up to 120 degrees off center line. I would add in a couple Mk 19 40mm Grenade Launchers or Metal Storms Fire Storm in a 12 Barrel Configuration. Actually the Fire Storms would be perfect for a first strike type set up, in which they reside in an open well amid ships and can fire from the well. They don’t make much noise when they fire and there isn’t much smoke. This would allow you to lock on with radar, feed the Fire Storms the coordinates and select a fire pattern and the number of rounds. Press the initiate button and a second or few later you have any where from1 round to possible a couple hundred in an arcing trajectory about to blanket an area.

If they didn’t give me a GAU-8, I would be just as happy with a Quad Mounted set of M242 Bushmasters. They would give you a bit more range, but a lower rate of fire.

Last but not least, because you are bait, you need a steady crew that can handle small Arms. Since we are dealing with materials destruction, I would mix in some Barrett M98 .50 cal Rifles, some SCAR-H 7.62mm and for the up close and well not quite so close the AA12 Combat Shotgun with mixed Shot and for giggles a supply of FRAG 12 rounds.

The way a Q Ship works, is it picks a series of routes and it passes back and forth through the area. Eventually, it gets spotted and attacked. In this case the Pirates come into board, the Q Ship goes on alert, but doesn’t reveal until the pirates are well inside the kill zone. All weapons unmask and fire sequence begins. It does not stop until the boats are sunk and all the pirates are captured or eliminated.

For a boat that gets away, you have two choices either some kind of chase craft that is easily launched such as a couple of Wave Runners in 2 man configurations with XM307s on a swivel mount or a Combat UAV like the MQ-8B Fire Scout in an Hellfire configuration or the A160 in a combat configuration.

The important thing is never to leave a free survivor. Eventually they will run out of Pirates or they will learn to leave boats alone.