I don’t understand how these shipping companies don’t find it cheaper to just hire armed security than pay these ransoms. It has to be cheaper.
I remember reading an article a few years ago how blackwater was going to get into the pirate protecting business by buying boats, outfighting them with weapons and then charge shipping companies a straight fee to convoy a whole bunch of them through the pirate infested areas. That sounded like a good idea.
Another area of the world that get’s less attention and I know at one time had greater piracy is through the straits of Molaka. When on ship and we went through there to get to the Indian Ocean, I can remember scores of commercial ships that used to tag along our convoy through the straights to get free protection from the U.S. Navy. They would literally wait at the mouth of the straits for Navy convoys.
You can blame governments throughout the world for that. Governments want an exclusive on the ability to effective self defense. Therefore the DON'T want armed ships coming into their ports. My solution would have been to spend the rubles to get about half a dozen of these per large container ship (enough to cover all approaches with at least two) to and train the crew to operate them. But no makes too much sense.
The average ransom is $2.7mm.
If you put two armed security guards on each vessel and you had 50 vessels, and you only paid them $30k a year, you just might break even.
But, realistically you'd have to pay more than that and probably staff more guys than that - and if just one security team failed, you'd be deep in the red on your security program.