Word: costes
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...keeping "mother ships" in good working order. The boats are usually trawlers which are, based on photos, about 100 feet long. One or two of these have been sunk by foreign navies, but they do not have to be replaced often. A large trawler built in the 1970s costs about $1 million. A trawler that is ten years old costs closer to $3 million. Some of the trawlers the pirates use were probably seized during their raids. Most research indicates that one out of three attempts by the pirates to hijack a ship succeeds. Covering enough ground to seize...
...instead of wood. Each of these has to run on two or more turbo diesels which put out 480 HP at 3,000 PRM. These are not engines which are likely to be used on any of the hijacked ships so they are probably one of the largest direct costs the pirates have. If the pirates operate 50 raiding boat it requires 100 engines. These cost as much as $15,000 each, so the cost of these is about $1.5 million. In most cases, they will not need to be replaced every year. The boat themselves are probably less than...
Each mother ship and raider requires high- end GPS, radar and sonar. The best radars available for small ships run about $4,000. High end GSP system cost about $1,500, and sonar systems a little less than $1,000. All of the equipment runs about $400,000 for 12 trawlers and 50 raiders before installation costs. Once again, this is not an annual cost because most of the hardware can be used for several years...
...cost of what are called "extreme weather and marine" satellite phones from one of the two premier global providers, Iridium and GlobalStar, is $1,200 per unit. The cost of calls per minute is $5. Total cost for phones comes to $60,000 based on each team of pirates having two phones, and all of these probably get replaced each year due to damage. Assuming 100 minutes a month per phone and the total cost of airtime...
Weapons are one of the largest single costs that Somali pirates have. According to a book on AK-47s from Amazon, the guns cost about $345. That is a total of $173,000 because each of 500 men is armed. The price for 9MM pistols on the black market runs about $200, for a total of $100,000. Browning 50 caliber machine guns are $14,000 each, with at least one per raider and two per mother ship for a total cost of just over $1 million. Rocket propelled grenades which are used in most raids...