The Pirate Situation, Captain Richard Phillips, The Obama Administration

[El Kabong]

Its equally incumbent on all nations effected to ensure proper escorts to avoid some criminals in patched together rafts and AK's from bringing commerce and security to a screethcing halt.

It is a bit more complicated than that...they might not be exceptionally wealthy but they have RPGs, machine guns, fast boats, advanced radar systems....you know everything a mercinary can dream of they can afford because they can either pick off shipments of the stuff or they can buy it at relatively low prices.

It is hard for the bigger ships to out manuver the smaller faster ships....pirates waaay back in the day used dugouts and had rowers and guys with muskets and they would take over big ships, nothing has really changed here. If the navies of Europe and America had smaller vessles equiped like the old PT boats patrolling these trading lanes then the pirates would be overmatched