Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Somali pirates cannot seem to stay out of the news. Whether they are losing their hostages without resistance to a U.S. Navy destroyer or losing their hostages (and their lives) in a U.S. military raid, they have been the January surprise on the conflict beat. This is in some ways unexpected, as, statistically, incidents of piracy off the East African coast have recently been in decline, a result of both an international naval counterpiracy presence in these waters and the wider use among merchant vessels of onboard armed security teams.

The news today, however, provided a jumping-off point from which to examine how the pirates arm themselves. Yesterday, not knowing that the United States Navy Seals were midraid, I posted a teaser on my personal blog, noting that when Tyler Hicks, a Times photographer, and I recently examined a set of pirate weapons on a hijacked vessel in the Gulf of Oman, we had found an unusual assault rifle — a weapon compatible with NATO-standard ammunition. We asked for guesses as to what it might have been. I had a prize handy for anyone who called it right. But the many replies that flooded my inbox did not quite hit the mark. That is not exactly unexpected, and I would have been amazed if someone called it with the little information the teaser post provided. You’ll see why as you read on.

But first, some background. Ordinarily, when the various navies involved in counterpiracy patrols off Africa’s eastern coast confront Somali pirates on skiffs, the pirates toss their weapons over the side before the sailors get close enough to board. In this way, important evidence is gone. And this is what the pirates on the skiff from the fishing vessel Al Mulahi did earlier this month, when Mr. Hicks and I were embarked with the Navy to cover the carrier’s role in the air war over Afghanistan. They dropped their weapons into the brine. When the American helicopter flew near, they put their hands on their heads to signal submission. A boarding team from the U.S.S. Mobile Bay soon came alongside in a small craft, but had no clear legal grounds for detaining anyone.

So how did we get these weapons to look at? Within a few hours of releasing the pirates, a Navy helicopter had followed the skiff back to the Al Mulahi, the hijacked Iranian fishing vessel the pirates used as their mobile base, and where they held the Iranian crew hostage. There were more pirates aboard that vessel. These men remained armed. Another Navy ship — the U.S.S. Kidd — then eased alongside the vessel. Now the pirates had no good options. If they threw away all of their weapons, they would lose their leverage over the hostages. And if they held on to some of their weapons, and the Navy boarded the vessel, then the sailors would have evidence.

The pirates opted to keep several weapons. This worked against them. The Navy boarded. They were detained with their weapons, and now they stand to face prosecution. More on that another time. For now, let’s talk about the rifles, as they gave At War the chance to supplement the blog’s previous Gun Locker posts with a fresh sample — from pirates – that we thought we’d never see. (For previous editions of Gun Locker, go here or here.)

Mr. Hicks and I spent the night on the Al Mulahi, with the detained pirates in the bow and the freed hostages in the stern. The weapons had been stacked on the roof of the wheelhouse. At dawn, when the light would allow photographs, I pulled myself onto the roof and had several minutes to do an inventory. The scene was as you see it below — a mix of rifles, knives and a sole semi-automatic pistol.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

A few feet away, a plastic shopping bag of magazines and ammunition held more enticing clues.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

Time was tight, as I was busy interviewing, but we wanted to take a slice of the available weapons, and see what it might tell us. I took a knee and began to make a photo record for my arms archive. At a glance, the little pile and the shopping bag appeared unremarkable, almost exactly what you would expect — a few rusting Kalashnikov derivatives and several hundred rounds of ammunition. One rifle was a Chinese Type 56, and two others were Yugoslav. All had under-folding stocks – a practical feature for handling a weapon in the confines of a small boat, for embarking and disembarking vessels or for concealing a weapon from passing helicopters and patrols. The preference of the criminal or the irregular fighter for folding-stock Kalashnikovs is something we see again and again. And the ammunition came largely from Wolf, an American firm that sells Russian-made Kalashnikov ammunition, including to the United States military for distribution to Afghan security forces. (We’ve traced Wolf ammo to the Taliban, but that’s another story, too.)

This was what came from a quick look. Nothing special to note. But pulling the pile apart and examining each rifle produced an immediate surprise, below.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

You are looking at a weapon I had not seen before in the field — a SAR 80 — that was underneath the stack, and had evaded view.

SAR 80 is the acronym for the Singapore Assault Rifle introduced in 1980. The rifle is something of a curio from the edges of the cold war. Back then, Washington and Moscow were eager for nations to adopt their respective firearm patterns and cartridges, both for business and so that in the event of war, the arms produced in different quarters of the world might be compatible with one or another superpower. Singapore opted to adopt the Western and NATO-standard 5.56×45 round, and produced its own ammunition and its own line of assault rifles to fire it. Thus the SAR 80, one of the products offered by a defense firm then known as Chartered Industries of Singapore. Like early versions of the M-16, it can be fired a single round at a time, or automatically, as its selector lever shows.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

As assault rifle production goes, the SAR 80 was not a major weapon. It has not been circulated on anything like the scale of the many other systems. So how did one find its way onto a pirate vessel at sea? The answer probably lies in an arms deal from the 1980s, before Somalia fell apart. Back then, the Somali government reportedly purchased SAR 80s for its armed forces. As the government collapsed and lost control of its depots, some of those weapons naturally entered others’ grips, and likely have recirculated since, through the endlessly churning Somali mess.

This served as a reminder of one of this blog’s chords: modern assault rifles tend to last and last, and even lawful exports can lead to consequences decades later. Did anyone in Singapore think, as these rifles were exported, that some might be used by high-seas hostage takers a quarter-century later? No one can predict such things precisely, but time has proven that such outcomes can be predicted generally. Send arms to a weak nation, intending perhaps to make the nation stronger, and you might actually make it weaker over time.

How many more SAR 80s might be out there? To get a rough sense of this, as At War often does, we consulted with the Royal Armouries Museum in Britain, whose gun-spotters keep an eye out for weapons in the news, to ask what they had seen of the SAR 80, and how many they might have on hand. Here is part of the reply, from Jonathan Ferguson, one of the Armouries’ curators.

In terms of official exports, many of the approximately 100,000 SAR 80s built between 1980 and 1989 were exported — up to 50 percent if the intentions expressed here are any guide — //militarynuts.com/ar/t957.htm. Correlating images and claims found online re the SAR 80 with a published source on generic exports from Singapore (Charter Industries of Singapore, now ST Kinetics) in the ’80s (‘Small arms production and transfers in Southeast Asia’, 2002, p.12), we get: Slovenia* Solomon Islands Sri Lanka Thailand Somalia — as the only official recipient of exported SAR 80s, this may well be point of origin for other African finds. Cambodia — I’m picking up a couple of references to approximately 3000 rifles supplied to the Kampuchean rebels in the ’80s. *Croatia has also obtained some examples unofficially, smuggled over the border following Slovenian independence from Yugoslavia in 1990-91 (Osprey’s “The Yugoslav Wars”). Additionally, “Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism & the Balkan Wars” (Hockenos, 2003) states that many of the Slovenian rifles were seized by the then-still Yugoslav authorities. I’ve seen a photo of a Slovenian army unit equipped with them though — so at least some made it! I’ve also read suggestions of South Africa and Nepal, but can’t find any evidence for those.

Further suggestion that the SAR 80 may have come from a former Somali depot could be found in the ammunition. I had enough time to make a set of images of the head stamps on a 5.56-millimeter cartridge, which you can see below.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

The HB shows Singaporean provenance, too. For more on that, go here.

The Navy has not released details on how the Somali pirates the Seals killed overnight were equipped. Maybe they did not gather this kind of data. One hopes they did, as the details that can be gleaned from piles of confiscated weapons can tell something of how armed groups — pirates, terrorists, criminals, revolutionaries, smugglers, you name it – obtain the lethal kit they need to play their roles.

In this case, we were left with much to think on. A naval task force with several billion dollars’ worth of ships and aircraft was used to undo a problem caused by a small group of men equipped with a pair of skiffs and outboard engines, a few cellphones and a pile of aging rifles. We see it over and again. Big-ticket weapons get more attention. But it’s the little items – fertilizer-based bombs, small arms and the like – that routinely cause problems demanding outsize resources to combat. You can pick up whiffs of old arms shipments to standing armies among criminals who today help hold their country back. The total cost of the pirate’s investment might have been less than $30,000, a fraction of which went into the firearms. That’s asymmetry, in bold face.