ABSTRACT
Piracy off the coast of Somalia was recently brought to public awareness when pirates held a U.S. merchant captain hostage in a lifeboat after his crew had successfully regained control of their ship, the Maersk Alabama. Reports of rescue efforts revealed a complex system of multinational and interagency teams with a mission to thwart piracy and protect shipping routes within a 1.1 million-square-mile region (Gilmore, 2009). The U.S. Navy, European Union, and NATO coalition forces, devoted to protecting the region, coordinate and support each other to combat piracy (U.S. Second Fleet Public Affairs, 2009). In the case of the merchant captain, the coalition ships synchronized actions to achieve the common objective of neutralizing the pirates. The coalition ships played interference and deterred other pirates from reaching the lifeboat (Mount & Starr, 2009), which supported forces, including Navy SEAL teams, that neutralized the pirates holding the captain. Together these efforts resulted in a successful rescue. In addition, other coalition ships focused on recapturing merchant ships that had been recently hijacked by pirates and on protecting other merchant ships from new hijacking attempts.
