Why not disguise all warships as commercial vessels?

Somali pirates came unstuck last Wednesday when they made the strategic error of taking on the might of the French navy.

The 18,000 tonne flagship La Somme evidently looked similar enough to the myriad commercial vessels that traverse the Gulf of Aden every day and the pirates consequently deemed it fruitful to launch an offensive with their two fibreglass skiffs.

According to a French navy spokesman, the La Somme’s crew “easily saw off the brazen night-time assault by lightly armed fighters on two lightweight skiffs and captured five pirates”.

You would have thought they would have learned their lesson by now.

On 3 May 2009 pirates, again using two assault boats, made a run at the French warship Nivose, but were promptly dissuaded from pursuing that course of action any further when a helicopter gunship started raining down warning shots.

What conclusion we can draw from this is that pirates tend to stand very little chance when they attack a NATO warship.

So it begs the question: why not disguise all warships as commercial vessels? It evidently would not take much to make a convincing transition. Perhaps merely writing 'oil' on the bow would be enough. Or 'we are not the navy, please let us past'. You get the idea.