Modern Piracy

[Winston]

656 passengers, 399 crew, and not a single Texan among them, or they wouldn't even have made the attempt.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Winston
656 passengers, 399 crew, and not a single Texan among them, or this wouldn't have happened.

Nothing did happen...or are you implying the Texan -- being fat -- would slow the boat down enough to get caught?

[Patroklos]

The ships in the waters off Somalia are queueing up for passage thru the Suez canal.

Not quite. That happens many hundreds of miles away at the top of the Red Sea. The BAM does constrict movement at the south end of the Red Sea but in reality the Gulf of Aden really is just that busy with normal traffic.

Other constraints may exist, for example aircraft carriers have relatively slow cruising speeds to facilitate launch and recovery.

A lot of times though, they do 30+kts in order to make wind for launch/recovery activities

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Asher

Nothing did happen...or are you implying the Texan -- being fat -- would slow the boat down enough to get caught?

I'm far from fat.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Asher

Nothing did happen...or are you implying the Texan -- being fat -- would slow the boat down enough to get caught?

[Asher]

Originally posted by SlowwHand


I'm far from fat.

From what I've seen, you're in terrific shape.

[SlowwHand]

Thanks, I appreciate it.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Patroklos


The five inch? Dead on out to the visible horizon (13nm).

The .50 will go several thousand yards, accuracy suffers I am sure. Thats why they are automatic and we have eight of them.

The Phalanx can shoot down supersonic missiles, I am sure a speedboat will not stress it

How many fractions of a second of fire would it take for a Phalanx to vaporize a 20 foot speedboat?

From what I hear the pirates usually travel in packs of 2 or 3 speedboats. They begin circling their prey, then one will come up to the side and the crew will use a boathook to grab ahold of the victim.

I had thought "say, what if when the pirates come up to the side of the ship the captain puts the wheel hard over towards the little craft and crushes it with the hull of his ship?" Obviously that won't work if the pirates work in packs.

You know what the solution is though, don't you?

Blackhawk. They need a chance to redeem themselves. They should hire themselves out to companies sending ships through this area.

[Patroklos]

How many fractions of a second of fire would it take for a Phalanx to vaporize a 20 foot speedboat?

They are 20mm slugs fired at 4500 rounds a minite. With a 1550 round ammo drum that gives you 20 seconds of fire. It would only take one of those slugs to gut a speed boat.

From what I hear the pirates usually travel in packs of 2 or 3 speedboats. They begin circling their prey, then one will come up to the side and the crew will use a boathook to grab ahold of the victim.

From what I heard they either sneak up on the boats and night and board them with the crew not knowing (merchants very rarely have anyone other than a deck officer topside at night) or simply threaten them with gunfire over the radio until they crew lets them on.

I had thought "say, what if when the pirates come up to the side of the ship the captain puts the wheel hard over towards the little craft and crushes it with the hull of his ship?" Obviously that won't work if the pirates work in packs.

Depending on the size of the vessel that would probably shake the pirates on the ladder into the water as well. The freeboard on some of these ships is sometimes several dozen feet. Thats hard enough to climb in a rolling sea let alone with the ship manuevering.

Blackhawk. They need a chance to redeem themselves. They should hire themselves out to companies sending ships through this area.

Blackwater? They have a very hightech boarding simulator at their NC compound that I trained at with several retired/ex Coast Guard anti-drug types. They took down drug smugglers at sea. They were badasses and certainly up to the job.

However, with 600,000 transits of that area a year by vessels and only a couple dozen at most suffering a successful pirate attack, we are nowhere near the point where it makes sense to arm all those merchant ships.