Subcontracting SLOC Security
Can mercenaries defend Western peacetime sea lines of communication?
The 21st century may well be the new age of privateers -- armed commercial sailors fighting pirates, terrorists and cartel criminals threatening offshore oil rigs.
Why hire private naval security? Because national navies and coast guards are stretched thin by a lack of funding or threats of war. Or, in the case of the USA, vexed by short-sighted Pentagon fleet-building and general American military global overcommitment (Red Sea?) exacerbated by the prospect of war with China in the Pacific.
It’s one thing to put weapons and armed security agents authorized to use lethal force on pirates and armed criminal gangs. Even terrorists trying to hijack a ship could be stopped by security detachments unless a seriously major terrorist assault is undertaken.
But what about threats like the Houthi who can use missiles, suicide drones, and mines?
Then you’d need ships capable of projecting power ashore, perhaps ground power but firepower at a minimum. Yet building a private navy is an expensive proposition. I have my doubts that such a naval force could be maintained for very long. Success would reduce the incentive for companies and countries to pay for SLOC protection service. What do you do?
With weapons and systems increasingly put in standard shipping containers, my old proposal to create Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers using modified container ships could come into play.
Although my modified proposal published in Military Review for AFRICOM to use that method to create The AFRICOM Queen power projection platform would be more useful for higher end military operations:
Using an appropriately sized container ship, the modularized auxiliary cruiser would be converted using various containerized mission modules to build mission packages installed on the deck of the ship. Because missions for the modularized auxiliary cruiser would change and evolve, mission packages would be different from one mission to the next. Figure 2 (page 56) provides hypothetical examples of modularized auxiliary cruiser mission packages. Army regionally aligned forces would train with these mission packages on the modularized auxiliary cruiser or on land-based training facilities (or perhaps afloat on larger barges) laid out to simulate deck positioning on the modularized auxiliary cruiser. The military would have the flexibility of training reservists at land-based training facilities before overseas deployment.
The source of ships that could be converted to modularized auxiliary cruisers is the world’s container ship fleet. There are about five thousand in the total world fleet. The top twenty container ship operators controlled over 3,200 of these types of ships, as of 2014. America’s share was small, however, with only sixty-nine in private hands in 2014. Therefore, AFRICOM could not restrict the potential pool to American-flagged container ships.
The cost could be reduced by private military companies leasing an appropriately sized container ship and leasing weapons systems and related systems from countries that already have stockpiles of containerized weapons and systems in case they need to outfit Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers in a war. Wealthier nations might even provide the ship or containerized assets for free, minus the cost of replacing munitions expended and damage to the ship.
The cost of operating the ship would encourage the contracted company to achieve a good-enough victory as quickly as possible. No incentives for mission creep would exist with contracts specifying outcomes and means.
And once the mission is achieved or the contract is canceled for failure, the ship would be demobilized and the search for a means to win would start over. Perhaps countries with actual navies—and ground forces that could fight ashore—would take a greater interest if the private sector could not handle the mission.
Of course, international law would need to be created to legalize and formalize the operation of such forces to prevent the personnel from being hunted down as criminals. And to properly address problems of war crimes by personnel and their hiring companies.
With Western navies struggling to rebuild capabilities to fight for control of the seas against capable enemies at sea and based ashore, the peacetime world that we hope isn’t just a pre-war world could use some help in keeping chaos at sea in check.
NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.