Visit, board, search and seizure team members pull alongside the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Sterett (DDG-104) to practice ship boarding. US Navy Photo
In a rare bilateral exercise, the U.S. and China conducted anti-piracy training off the pirate-prone Gulf of Aden, the Navy said in a Thursday statement. Read More
2005 Image of a Chinese PLAN Song-class submarine. Via Wikipedia
China has sent a submarine to the Gulf of Aden to help in counter piracy operations — a first for the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) submarine fleet, according to the Chinese Ministry of National Defense. Read More
PLAN ship Type 052C Luyang II destroyer Changchun enters the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on Sept. 20, 2014. Fars News Agency
A Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) guided missile destroyer and frigate have docked in Iran on Saturday ahead of a series of bilateral exercises, according to Iranian and Chinese press reports. Read More
The following is a Government Accountability Office report on African Piracy released on June 19, 2014. The report concludes, “U.S. agencies have not systematically assessed the costs and benefits of their counterpiracy efforts.”
Read More
An undated photo of West African pirates.
West Africa is home to the world’s most violent pirates—who are now capable of overwhelming armed guards. Last month pirates killed a crewmember during an attack on German-owned oil tanker. Instead of fighting off the pirates, the embarked security team retreated to the ship’s citadel safe room. Read More
Morning Glory was seized by Navy SEALs late Sunday evening.
A team of U.S. Navy SEALs took control of a commercial oil tanker that was seized earlier this month by three armed Libyans late Sunday night, according to a Monday release from the Pentagon. Read More
This is the second in a two part series on piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
The first ten weeks of 2014 have witnessed the resurgence of maritime kidnap-for-ransom off the coast of Nigeria’s Niger Delta.
Undated photo of MT Kerala
This is the first of a two-part series on piracy in West Africa.
In the early hours of 18 January 2014 a 75,000-ton tanker, the MT Kerala, vanished off the coast of Angola. A sophisticated pirate gang hijacked the Greek-owned vessel, disabling its identifications system and communication equipment, and painting over its identifying markers.
More than a week later and 1,300 miles away, the hijackers released Kerala off the coast of Nigeria, after offloading 12,270 tons of its diesel cargo to other ships. Read More
A scene from the USS Bataan (LHD 5) on Oct. 25, 2013. US Navy Photo
After four days of intense fighting, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal decided to leave the comforts of his quarters on Adm. R.K. Turner’s flagship, the amphibious force command ship Eldorado, to go ashore and witness firsthand the final stages of the Marine Corps’ success on the island. Read More
C-Escort, owned by Edison Chouest Offshore of Cut Off, La., is a sistership to the C-Retriever. American crew from the C-Retriever were kidnapped by Nigerian pirates on Oct. 23, 2013.
The kidnapping of two American mariners on Oct. 23 does not signal the rise of a new piracy threat off Nigeria, but rather the re-emergence of an old one
U.S. news outlets were quick to proclaim piracy is now “skyrocketing” off the West African nation.
But those types of blanket statements fail to capture the fluid nuances of maritime crime in the region, which has largely decreased in the past few years. Read More
