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Why not just take some of the ships we have in mothballs and put them out to sea? You don’t need an Aegis class cruiser to take out a Somali pirate.

Which ships that we have in mothballs?

Fact is that there are exceedingly few USN ships in the reserve fleet these days. The SpruCans are all gone: except for a couple held as possible museum ships, they've all been sink-exed. The Kidd-class DDGs went to Taiwan years ago. And both those classes were fairly manpower-intensive.

Same is pretty much true with the Knox-class FFs and Perry-class FFGs, except a good number of those classes have been sold or donated to foreign powers.

The USN has actually been sink-exing recently decommissioned ships to get them out of inventory. This includes ships from the Tarawa-class LHAs and the Flight I Ticonderogas.

Nailing pirates would be an ideal mission for the old Pegasus-class hydrofoils. They were expensive, but were a good fit for the mission. It's easy to imagine a good scenario where they operate in conjunction with a Tarawa (as a mothership). But they were cut up years ago. The Cyclone-class patrol boats are ok, but are spread too thin and have actually been used to plug holes in the Coast Guard's capabilities. And there are only two LCS in commission at this point - both of which are being evaluated to determine which class (Freedom vs. Independence) gets built.

Most mothball ships are no longer adequate. Probably the last that will ever be revived were the Iowa-class battleships during the Reagan years. Getting them active was very difficult, as many essential parts were no longer manufactured. Otherwise, most are scheduled to be scrapped.

It would be far cheaper to build new, destroyer sized ships. Unlike our current destroyers, that are of the size of cruisers, these would be the size of traditional destroyers, and a group of them would likely have a destroyer tender ship, to extend their mission range.