NATO May Deploy Awacs Plane to Fight Pirates, Di Paola Says
By James G. Neuger

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- NATO may deploy an Awacs radar plane to hunt pirates in the seas off Somalia as attacks on merchant ships spread further into the Indian Ocean, the head of the alliance’s military committee said.

Commanders are seeking to back up a five-ship counterpiracy task force with one of the airborne warning and control system surveillance planes, possibly sharing it with the allied International Security Assistance Force fighting in Afghanistan.

“It would not be inconceivable, for example, having a dual use of Awacs maybe located somewhere in the region and being able to perform missions for ISAF and missions for counterpiracy,” Italian Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, the committee chairman, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Brussels today.

Stalked by warships from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and countries including Russia and China, pirates operating from safe havens in Somalia are ranging as far as 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) out to sea to prey on merchant vessels.

Pirates struck 147 times off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden during the first nine months of 2009, up from 63 attacks in the year-earlier period, the International Maritime Bureau said. A tenth of the world’s trade passes through that sea corridor.

Somalia’s lack of an effective government after almost two decades of civil war has turned it into a base for gangs that seize commercial ships. Pirates often hold them for ransom, as when they extorted $2.8 million for the release of the 24 Ukrainian crew members of a British-owned bulk carrier last week after a seven-month ordeal.

NATO Task Force
Warships from the U.S., Italy, Portugal and Canada make up the current NATO task force, cobbled together from a group that is normally used for routine exercises and port visits.

Known as “eyes in the sky,” the Awacs are modified Boeing 707s topped with a rotating dome housing radar equipment. NATO’s 17-plane Awacs fleet, managed by crews from 15 countries, is based in Geilenkirchen, Germany.

Use of the Awacs in a conflict zone requires unanimous approval by the 28 NATO allies. It took months for NATO last year to approve the deployment of Awacs over Afghanistan to monitor the increasingly crowded airspace there.

The Awacs request for the piracy mission “has just come in so I would feel the discussion will start the beginning of next year,” said Di Paola, whose committee consists of high- ranking officers from all NATO countries.

‘Not for Free’
“Deploying an Awacs costs money, it’s not for free,” Di Paola, 65, said. “There will be some serious discussion up to which point this can be done.”

Di Paola rebutted concerns that there is a lack of coordination between the NATO and EU anti-piracy task forces and solo ships from other countries.

The EU’s six-frigate force may start patrolling further into the Indian Ocean as pirate activity widens, U.K. Rear Admiral Peter Hudson, commander of the EU mission, said in an interview last week.

NATO ships have chased sea bandits as far as the approaches to the Seychelles islands, and the various fleets have working arrangements to divide up their zone of coverage depending on where the pirates are, Di Paola said.

“There is a lot of maritime space over there,” Di Paola said. “The pirates are responding in an intelligent way, moving wherever they think there’s a lack of presence. If NATO forces for a certain period are more concentrated on the Gulf of Aden, this allows the European Union to move away.”

To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net Last Updated: December 16, 2009 07:52 EST