Somali Pirates: Not Much Preventing Them From Going Across the Indian Ocean

As you can see from the following video (compiled from IMB maps found here), despite an increasing number of naval vessels assigned to protect major sea lines of communication across the Indian Ocean, Gulf of Aden, and Arabian Sea, the Somali pirates have expanded their area of operations since 2005:

Recent events point out that the impressive number of warships in the area do not have a handle on putting a halt to the pirate's expansion - or how to prevent the use of captured vessels as "mother ships" by the pirates.

In fact, it is not even clear whether or not the anti-piracy forces even have full awareness of where these larger mother ships are at any given time or that any resources are devoted to "tailing" such mother ships or preempting their use as attack platforms.

Updates to follow.