Where does a professional soldier go after your government says no more deployments, we are cutting back on our presence in the war? Killing has become your career. The recruiters signed you up for the military when you were 16 years old and in high school. As soon as you were 18 you were sent to learn how to kill and how to survive. For the past 20 years there has been constant war in the Middle East. You were busy. The instability spreading throughout the Middle East is not confined to the land. Some of the world’s most lucrative and dangerous shipping lanes are between dangerous lands. Places like Yemen and Somalia. Piracy is on the rise yet commerce must continue. Who is protecting the large cargo boats from getting stolen?

There is also war at sea in the international waters in the Gulf of Oman. Iran is at one side and Oman is on the other side and in between are some of the most dangerous places cargo boats must go through. 90% per cent of the goods we consume are on these ships. Everything from phones to couches are on a giant ship in containers. The businessmen who own the ships and cargo have created their own Police Department for the sea. There are now floating armories delivering gunmen and ammunitions to cargo ships that need protection. It is illegal for ships to arm themselves at port but they get away with the ruling international waters. It is all in response to the Somali Pirates who still terrorize ships in the region.

The cost over the last 10 years rose to over 10 billion dollars of goods being stolen by Somali Pirates. By 2012 the industry has been engaging in a new way to combat the problem. They are hiring highly paid former soldiers and training them to shoot moving targets on the water. They are called Private Military  Contractors. Many American professional soldiers re doing this type of work now. Piracy has already dropped to almost zero. The business expanded so quickly that in one point there were more than 30 thousand PMC’s on the ground and at sea in Iraq and the surrounding areas. The oceans have become conflict marketplaces. The sea is a dangerous place to be.

The problem in all this is that not any one nation has control over what happens in International waters. It is a free for all. It could be scenes from a Mad Max Movie if set at water. Today there are more than 80,000 commercial ships at sea. There are  2 trillion dollars worth of goods that travel along the Gulf of  Oman. These floating armories should have some regulation. A professional soldier has a good job at sea.  They are seeing that our goods do not end up in a black market marketplace. They don’t rent or sell guns themselves. They have military grade weapons in order to do the job. They are hired by private contractors. Pirates successfully took over 5 cargo ships since 2013. Now the pirates are terrorizing the Mediterranean Sea. The ISIS takeover of the Libyan coast is a threat to Europe.

The 280 mile stretch of sea between Libya and Italy can now become the new most dangerous waters. There is no army or navy to thank but we are grateful to the brave professional soldiers for hire at sea.