Intresting article on private floating armories in the maritime security industry
SOFREP has a neat piece up on the scows used by force protection assets in pirate heavy areas that reads pretty easy. Its not all sunshine and cinnamon out there, from testicle-chewing rats and moody kit to Greek fire bombers disguised as cooks.
It was 2013 when I first set foot on one of the infamous floating armories on the Indian Ocean, and my experience on it was something to remember. It was around that time that maritime security companies started to rely more on floating armories to sidestep local laws and costs that land-based armories and hotels present. They started using these ships/armories to store weapons and as a place for guards to wait for the next transit.
In the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and in Fujairah, the waters are filled with various kinds of ships—from former Coast Guard vessels to tow boats—all packed with semi-auto rifles, level-4 vests, night-vision optics, and a bunch of maritime security guards.
When piracy was at its most prominent, the fears of such a vessel being captured by pirates, thus giving them access to modern weaponry and materials, were not groundless.