Pirates are running rampant off Somalia. This past June, CNN's David McKenzie embarked with the forces trying to stop them.

David McKenzie | BIO
CNN Correspondent

It’s been called the worst spate of piracy in years.

Three ships were hijacked in one day off the coast of Somalia, in East Africa. The ships are flying German, Japanese and Iranian flags. They were targetted by pirates who now seem to be striking at will.

These are not your Jack Sparrow romantic pirates of yesteryear. They use speedboats that operate from mother ships to take on merchant vessels. The pirates are heavily armed with RPGs and heavy machine guns. Merchant vessels are defenseless.

The attacks today bring the number of vessels currently being held by pirates off Somalia to seven.

Capt. Pottengal Mukudan of the International Maritime Bureau told CNN that the Combined Task Force-150 — a multinational naval force that monitors the region — should “give piracy a much higher priority to bring this under control.”

“Four attacks in two days, ships being hijacked and crews being taken, and large ransoms being demanded is completely unacceptable,” Mukudan said.

I spent time with the CTF-150 warships off Somalia. The multinational force said they would do all they could to stop pirates but that their mandate only allowed them to work in international waters.

That mandate has since changed, allowing them to take on pirates more aggresively. Yet we haven’t seen proactive tactics to meet the threat.

And these latest incidents suggest they might be losing the battle. All the impressive hardware and boarding teams I saw in action aren’t much good if they aren’t used.

Pirates are inadvertently being encouraged by the shipping companies themselves. The pirates are an organized hijack and ransom crew. When ships are hijacked, the pirates negotiate with the companies and walk away with hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars. Very little is being done to stop them, they make a lot of money, so the attacks are bound to continue.

Or even increase. The past few months have shown a marked upswing in pirate attacks.

Security analysts fear that if policing the waters isn’t more effective, piracy profits might even prompt terrorists to find money and new home bases in the failed state of Somalia.