On the drones,

The somali coastline is aprox. 3025km in length. The drone with the best endurance that the US have currently (Global Hawk) is 36hrs and a range of 24,985 km!

Now this baby is usually parked at the Edwards Air force Base some 15,541 km from Somalia since its not Carrier Certified (cant land on an aircraft carrier)

Now assuming the drone will fly at an average speed of 725km/h(average of top and cruise speed) it will take it 21 hrs to get there.
Remember, it still needs another 21hrs to get home.

Okay maybe they might have several of them hidden at Diego Garcia (for spying on Afghanistan and Pakistan) which would reduce the distance to 7,106 km making the flight time around 9hrs one way, so 20hrs of flying to somalia, 16hrs of patrolling the coastline.

The somali coastline is 4 hrs flight time one way on this drone which means 2 patrols then fly back home so it is technically feasible

But wait, there is the delicate question of who is paying for it. The drone alone is worth a cool $35M, there is also operational costs per sortie running to the hundreds of thousands of dollars.



On 14 December 2010 16:06, Claire Njoki <clairenjoki@gmail.com> wrote:
lol...

...I hear that the Pirates of The Somalian have very sophisticated
equipment and weapons and they also use very fast boats...I believe
they are rich enough to afford all this:-)

On the other hand, I believe the US can still track them live using
their satellites or they can even send a drone...my question is why
they do not do it...?

On 12/14/10, Steve Muchai <smuchai@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Tech List Kenya
> <techlistkenya@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [....]
>
>>
>> At any one time it is possible to know which legit vessels are on the sea
>
> Actually, the pirates are probably using technology to know what to
> target. I doubt they set out on hit&miss missions covering  thousands
> of square miles of sea. Question is, if you were to get the data in
> realtime, how do you determine what's legit and what's not?
>
>
> http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/faq.aspx?level1=160
>
>
> BR
> S
>
> --
> This message represents the official view of the voices in my head.
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