America's North Shore Journal

Today's Blog­gers' Round­table was with Rear Adm. Terry McK­night, Expe­di­tionary Strike Group 2/Commander, Task Force 51÷59÷151. TF 151 is tasked with anti-piracy duties in the Gulf of Aden.

TF 151 cur­rently con­sists of three ships, the USS San Anto­nio, the USS Mahan, and the HMS Port­land. It is pro­tect­ing a safe tran­sit cor­ri­dor in the Gulf of Aden that civil­ian ves­sels are strongly urged to use as an effort to limit access by the pirates to ship­ping. The AOR is about 1.1 mil­lion square miles of sea.

USS San Antonio

This task force has sev­eral heli­copters, the boats car­ried by the San Anto­nio, a Marine con­tin­gent, Coast Guard as well as other per­son­nel trained in board­ing and search duties. A Fleet Sur­gi­cal Team is also embarked.

In total, at this time, there are 20 ships from 14 nations engaged in anti-piracy mis­sions in the region. Admi­ral McK­night has met with the EU task force com­man­der and com­mu­ni­cated with the Chi­nese PLAN com­man­der in the area. The EU task force plans to be in the area until at least Decem­ber 2009.

The Admi­ral talked about the "golden thirty min­utes". If the allies can get a ship or an air­craft to a threat­ened ves­sel within thirty min­utes of notice the pirates can usu­ally be deterred and the attack averted.

TF 151 has not had any pirate con­tacts yet. Other nations have. McK­night told us that most of the other nations are involved with escort duties. TF 151 is involved with detec­tion, dis­patch of assis­tance and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing. It is keep­ing sta­tion in ways that main­tain the safe tran­sit corridor.

USS Mahan

TF 151 is treat­ing this as law enforce­ment. Kenya has agreed to take cap­tured pirates. In an agree­ment signed Jan­u­ary 16, 2009, the Kenyans have agreed to hold and try any pirates cap­tured by TF 151.

The pirates are Somali in ori­gin. They oper­ate using 30–40 foot small craft, and often use a moth­er­ship which tows sev­eral small craft. Yemeni waters are used for shel­ter some­times and the Yemeni Coast Guard has lit­tle capac­ity to affect that situation.

Despite some obvi­ous desire on our part for sur­face action, the Admi­ral is clear that the ROE is self defense only. He stated that piracy has dropped off greatly in the last months, due to weather and due to the increased pres­ence of naval ves­sels in the Gulf.

Admi­ral McK­night believes that he can­not elim­i­nate piracy in the region, only deter it.

HMS Port­land

Tran­script