News You Can Use

A few links worth a browse.

Note to Pirates: Don’t Mess with Egyptian Fishermen from Wired's Danger Room links to several locations discussing the Egyptian fisherman who killed two pirates fighting back during a recent pirate attack. Pirates attacking from these fast speedboats do not seem to fair well when the ship fires back, and it makes sense. They have very limited protection in those small, fast boats and attackers generally have an advantage firing down on top of the pirates. Pirates really are badly exposed in those small fishing style boats, but must use fishing boats to blend in with the population at sea. Authority to shoot back, due to the terrible protection of pirate boats, may be all that is required to make this problem go away based on the tactical elements of piracy itself. That is something worth adding to the protection debate I think.

Anti-terror gun stops boats dead by the BBC has video and text of a new non-lethal weapon system under evaluation in the UK for the 2012 Olympic games. Something like this mounted on a H-60 with good range and accuracy would be ideal for taking on small boats, particularly if it can be rearmed in flight or carry multiple devices to stop multiple boats. Useful for Coast Guard operations against drug runners as well, beats the hell out of having a sniper shoot out the engine.

Russian military exercises off Canada coast cause tension by the St. Petersburg Times is noting some tension by our northern neighbors regarding Russian military exercises, including paratroopers at the North Pole in a coming exercise. I expect more of this as Russia's military continues to reorganize and as the Arctic region continues to be a major focus of Russian military activity. It is only a matter of time before Canada makes the Arctic region a serious public issue with NATO.

Tropical Storm Ana forms in Atlantic Ocean by the South Beach Community Examiner notes the first Atlantic tropical storm of the season is on its way. In the Northeast, we have broken records for rain and if I might add, it has been cooler than usual. In other words, the weather has been abnormal. An abnormal hurricane season, either better or worse, wouldn't surprise me at all this season. Speaking for myself, I will be watching the social software services of the Coast Guard as the hurricane season approaches, something tells me that before it is said and done, the Coast Guards big impact on the weather season will likely come from Twitter. That tool seems made for rapid information distribution in real time during emergencies, and the Coast Guard has a rather large Twitter presence already established to make it work. Integrated through the official Coast Guard blog, it could be both very useful and very interesting.

In fact, if I has one complaint of the USCG blog, it would be that they don't list all the official district Twitter accounts. I have found them very useful to follow in the past, and think that as storm season approaches they have real potential to distribute local information very quickly, particularly since Twitter is widely available from cell phones.