Piracy Around Horn of Africa Has Plunged, U.S. Says

[alp227]

Source: NY TIMES

Acts of piracy in the treacherous waters around the Horn of Africa have fallen sharply in 2012, according to statistics released by the United States Navy. The Navy credits aggressive patrolling by international forces and increased vigilance by the commercial shipping industry for the decrease.

Data released by the Navy last week showed 46 pirate attacks in the area this year, compared with 222 in all of last year and 239 in 2010. Nine of the piracy attempts this year have been successful, according to the data, compared with 34 successful attacks in all of 2011 and 68 in 2010.

Read more: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/world/africa/piracy-around-horn-of-africa-has-plunged-us-says.xml

[ret5hd]

1. Another way of looking at it:

2010: 28.5% of attempted acts of piracy were succesful
2011: 15.3% of attempted acts of piracy were succesful
2012: 19.5% of attempted acts of piracy were succesful

[eggplant]

2. Sure, but that would be a foolish way to look at it...

Since the goal is to reduce the total number of attempts as well as the number of successful attempts. By your reasoning, if there had been only one attempt but it succeeded, the rate would skyrocket to 100%. And that's just silly.

[DallasNE]

3. How Can Republicans Twist This Into A Failure By The Obama Administration

You can be sure they will attempt to devise some kind of Swiftboat strategy to do just that. The progression is remarkable - 68-34-12(est. for full year). It would be interesting to see those numbers going back to about 2005.

[4th law of robotics]

4. Getting shot at by Navy SEALs would tend to discourage such things

[slackmaster]

5. My brother is in Surface Warfare. He's done some pirate intradiction in recent years.

I've seen videos of some amazing things that probably shouldn't be described in such an open forum.

Let's just say that the pirates are severely outgunned by every actual Navy on Earth.

[4th law of robotics]

6. They're definitely punching out of their weight-class here

If I had a job that got US navy SEALs really ticked off at me I'd strongly consider a career change. Maybe accounting . . .

[slackmaster]

7. The reason they got away with so much mayhem in the past was simply lack of an organized effort...

...by properly armed nations to fight them. At the moment there is a small but effective coalition of NATO members that have dedicated really modest resources to anti-piracy efforts.

It doesn't take much, just a little organization and willingness to do some actual shooting.

[CK_John]

8. Just wait until they team up with drug cartels and get hold of subs..

I'd give them 8-12 months.

[cpwm17]

9. Now this is a good use of the US military

[footinmouth]

10. This is good news for me

My son works on a commercial ship and they just sailed around the Horn of Africa. Of course I worried myself sick between that and the hurricane. He's had several voyages where they had a retired Seal team on board for security. That made me feel a whole lot better.