How many commerce raiders would be needed to disrupt global trade?
Short answerSeveral must be deployed at key chokepoints, implying roughly nine raiders plus a comparable support force for sustained operations.
NotesThe discussion identifies the Indian Ocean approaches to Suez, the mid-Atlantic, and the South China Sea as strategically significant pressure points. It then distinguishes ships deployed at once from the larger force needed to rotate, sustain, and replace them. Keeping four or five raiders deployed implies a fleet of roughly nine raiders plus a comparable number of support ships. Commerce raiding is framed as a logistics and geography problem, not merely a question of individual ship power.