Word: perring
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...pirates to hijack a ship succeeds. Covering enough ground to seize 120 vessels a year based on 400 attempts means that the pirates are probably running a dozen mother ships at any one time. The costs to "buy" and maintain those ships is about $3 million each per year, because a trawler that is seized for use and not ransomed is $3 million in revenue not taken in. Mother ship costs are at least $30 million, maybe $36 million. These are not annual costs. For each one sunk, the cost of replacement is $3 million. On a pro forma basis...
Most information on hijacked ships is that the ransom paid to get them back is about $2 million per vessel and crew. In some cases, the pirates actually charge an additional fee for the ships which has been estimated as being as high as $5 million...
Based on 24/7 Wall St.'s evaluation of news reports, the Somali pirates are seizing near one ship per day now. This week, on a single day, they took over four vessels. Even though several large national navies including the US are policing the shipping channels to cut down piracy, the rate at which the pirates can grab prey is picked up fairly fast. The Somali pirates could take over between 80 and 120 vessels this year, and the figure is conservative. That would put their gross revenue as high as $200 million...
...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...
...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 run $3,000 and one is used in each of the 400 hijacking attempts for a total of $1.2 million. Total ammunition costs at $1 per...