U.S. military drones join hunt for Somali pirates

Sophisticated U.S. military surveillance drones capable of carrying missiles have begun patrolling waters off Somalia in hopes of stemming rising piracy.

With the monsoon season now ended, there have been a rash of attacks as pirates return to the open seas. More than 130 crew members from seven ships are currently being held, including about 70 from three ships seized in the past week off Africa's eastern coast.

In an effort to stem the surge, unmanned U.S. military surveillance planes called MQ-9 Reapers stationed on the island nation of Seychelles are being deployed to patrol the Indian Ocean in search of pirates, Vice Adm. Robert Moeller, deputy commander for the U.S. Africa Command, said in an interview.

The 11-metre-long Reapers are the size of a jet fighter, can fly about 16 hours and are capable of carrying a dozen guided bombs and missiles. They are outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting.

Military officials said Friday the drones would not immediately be fitted with weaponry, but they didn't rule out doing so in the future.

Analysts said they expected the Reapers would also be used to hunt al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants in Somalia. While Moeller said the aircraft would "primarily" be used against pirates, he acknowledged they could also be used for other missions.

Even the drones and the presence of an international naval armada are unlikely to deter pirates, Moeller said. Pirates are "prepared to take their chances against the warships that are patrolling the area, simply because the potential for big financial gain is significant," he said.

Drones an early warning system

Cyrus Mody, an expert on piracy at the London branch of the International Maritime Bureau, said he expects the drones will help ward off attacks by acting as an early-warning system for tankers and other commercial vessels traversing waters off the Somali coast.

"What we hope will happen is that they will get much earlier warning of suspicious vessels or suspected [pirate] mother ships that can then be targeted by the naval vessels," Mody said. "Or alerts and broadcasts can be sent out indicating the positions of these ships [and] indicating they should keep as clear a distance as possible."

The drone deployment comes as piracy is on the rise in the area. While the bandits targeted 35 vessels in 2007 and 111 in 2008, they have launched 178 attacks so far in 2009, according to International Maritime Bureau figures.

The high-seas hijackings have persisted despite an international armada of warships deployed by the United States, the European Union, NATO, Japan, South Korea and China to patrol the region.

Peter Chalk, an expert on piracy at the Washington-based RAND Corp., said he believes the new drones would be "largely irrelevant" in bringing an end to the piracy because problems with Somalia's government need to be addressed first.

"The risks of being caught are very low (and even lower in terms of being successfully prosecuted) while the potential rewards are enormous at least in a Somali context," Chalk wrote in an email.

Pirates raked in up to $80 million US in ransoms in 2008, according to Roger Middletown of the London-based think-tank Chatham House. Tracing the cash has been difficult in part because of Somalia's chaotic civil war and partly because many Somalis use an informal clan-based money transfer system instead of normal banking channels.

Surveillance gathered by the drones will augment other international investigations into pirate activity and may help trace the cash from ransoms, usually packed in a waterproof container and dropped by parachute into the sea, where the pirates pick it up.