"You need two things to have a successful piracy attack. You need pirates that are seeking monetary gain and you also need a ship that's able to get pirated," Vice Admiral William Gortney told CNN.

Somali pirates have vowed to retaliate for Sunday's shooting of three men by US Navy snipers, and Gortney said that shipping companies needed to provide a last line of defense against being boarded by pirates.

He said that in addition to armed guards, companies could deploy more passive measures, like barbed wire around the lower parts of the ship.

"Just last week, two vessels were unsuccessfully attacked because the ship had put barbed wire around the ship on the closest avenues of approach," he said.

On NBC, he said the United States was trying to "disincentivize" pirates from attacking US-flagged ships, but added it hopes "that the tribal elders in Somalia would encourage young men to look for other livelihoods, realizing that the lack of opportunity is what drives them to piracy in the first place."

In a dramatic end to a tense standoff, Captain Richard Phillips, who commanded the Maersk Alabama cargo ship, was rescued after snipers shot the pirates Sunday evening, following US President Barack Obama's approval of the use of force to save him, the navy said.

Phillips was in good condition after being held hostage for five days in the lifeboat from the Maersk Alabama, whose American crew had fought off the pirates' attempt to capture it on Wednesday.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said Monday that the problem of piracy off Somalia could not be solved by military force alone.

"This is a complicated and serious international problem and we need to, as a government, look at a broad range of ways in which we might be able to mitigate this activity ... not only as a nation but also with international organizations and with allies in the region too," he said.

The shooting of the pirates could make others "less inclined to engage in that kind of activity," Whitman said, while adding that "this is also not a problem that can be entirely solved through military means."

There are ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring together the international community on the issue, he said.

But key legal aspects need to be addressed if the shipping companies consider arming their crews, Whitman said.

"They are concerned about having to abide by the laws of countries that they take portage in, they also have concerns that if they were armed that could cause escalation" in the conflict with hijackers, he said.

Rather than fight off attacks, some merchant shipping firms have preferred to pay ransoms demanded by pirates for the safe return of their ships and crews, Whitman acknowledged.

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