cincydiesel

Dont let'em get ya down Hoss.. I think they are misunderstanding your comments

patdaly

You know guys, I was half heartedly joking about the drone boat thing, but if they did not want to have explosives, why not have a high speed drone that you could ram the lifeboat with?

Still think it would be very effective.

Redleg

Hey Hoss, how 'bout lining a couple skiffs in concrete and selling them to Somolia? You can tell them they're bullet proof, and rocket proof.

Jeff in TD

The story also has a connection to a cool company from my neck of the woods...

http://www.kgw.com/video/video-index.html?nvid=351879

Hoss

Hey...you might be onto something there. I could make them a deal they couldn't pass up!

"Equipped with the new Stabilizing Interior Non-penetrable Concrete hull liner (SINC), your assault boat is guaranteed to be bullet proof and rocket resistant. In addition, this special hull liner has the added benefit of making you and your boat completely undetectable to Navy snipers."


It's all in the marketing.

Mexstan

In today's Fox news:

Ten High-Tech Weapons to Repel Pirates
Thursday , April 16, 2009

By Paul Wagenseil

How does a small gang of lightly armed Somali pirates hijack a modern cargo ship?

Speed and weaponry, mainly. Modern pirates, whether off the coast of Somalia or in the crowded shipping lanes of southeast Asia, typically use fast speedboats to zoom up to the sterns of slow-moving cargo ships. They then toss grappling hooks up to the rails and climb up ropes to clamber on deck.

Pirates are generally armed with assault rifles and, increasingly, rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Modern ships' crews are usually unarmed for a number of reasons, among them laws that prevent armed vessels from docking in the ports of many countries.

"The maritime unions, shipping companies and the International Maritime Organization all agree that ship's crews should not be armed," says Capt. George Quick, vice president of the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots, based in Linthicum, Md. "It would only escalate the situation The [Somali] pirates are pretty well funded, and they'd just get bigger weapons."

Modern ships also don't need many people to sail them — the 500-foot, 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama has a total of 20 crewmembers, including the captain. Hence it's pretty easy for pirates with AK-47s to boss them around, provided they can find all the crewmembers.

So if the cargo ships can't fire back, how can they defend themselves against pirates? A number of non-lethal solutions have been suggested and tried, some low-tech, some practically science fiction.

Fire hoses. The simplest way to repel boarders is to train high-pressure hoses on them. Spraying them straight down the sides of the ship at bad guys trying to climb aboard usually works. But there's a catch — if there's more baddies standing in the speedboats aiming guns at the crew, then you have to give up.

"Some companies encourage the use of fire hoses, but even that's controversial," says Quick. "When you've got a boatload of guys with AK-47s pointed at your crew, it's not really a fair fight."

Remote-controlled fire hoses. To get around that logistical problem, several companies market high-pressure water cannons that can wash pirates overboard without exposing anyone to enemy fire.

Molotov cocktails. If ships' crews aren't given weapons, they can always make their own. In December, Somali pirates shadowed the Zhenhua 4, a Chinese cargo ship, for days, giving its crew ample time to prepare a stockpile of Molotov cocktails using empty beer bottles.

The baddies got on board, but the crew used the homemade bombs and fire hoses to fend them off for six hours, enough time for Malaysian Navy helicopters to show up and scare the pirates away.

Quick advises against such heroics, however.

"Standard maritime doctrine is that crews should not resist once boarders are on deck," he says. "The [Somali] pirates are really just after the ransom money, so it's best to keep things as calm as possible."

Sonic weapons. In November 2005, the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit in the western Indian Ocean fended off pirate speedboats, partly by blasting them with an long range acoustic device (LRAD), which is designed to cause painful level of sound up to 300 meters away. (The Seabourn Spirit also ran over one of the speedboats.)

That, ahem, sounded great at the time, but a similar use of an LRAD three years later didn't stop a chemical tanker from being seized by more Somali pirates. The bad guys may have figured out that earplugs or blast muffs greatly reduce the LRAD's effectiveness as a weapon.

Slippery foam. Boat decks are wet places. Somali pirates are often barefoot. Hence the need for what the acronym-happy Marine Corps calls its Mobility Denial System (MDS), also known as Non-Lethal Slippery Foam (NLSF) or Anti-Traction Material (ATM).

Basically, it's water, drilling-mud additive (used for boreholes) and a flocculent, an electrically charged suspension of solids that makes liquids even more slippery. No one's actually deployed this stuff yet, but a few serious squirts would send pirates sliding around helplessly like happy penguins on an ice floe.

Rubber bullets. Riot police typically fire non-lethal projectiles from real guns, which wouldn't be allowed on many ships. But high-powered air guns could fire plastic or rubber bullets almost as easily, causing pain if not serious injury to boarders hit in the torso or limbs. Head shots could cause injury or even death, however, and there's always the chance they could be used in a mutiny.

Electric fencing. At least one company sells a high-voltage fence that sticks horizontally outward from a ship's sides, zapping any would-be boarders like so many wayward cattle.

"Only a few [ships have that] so far," says Quick. "I don't know if it's worked or not. In the long run, nothing will against a persistent group of pirates."

Nets. In the same way that police lay out nail strips to stop speeding cars, ships could launch small nets into the water to entangle the propellers of the pirate speedboats. The Coast Guard and the Dept. of Defense are testing these by dropping these from helicopters, but it's possible smaller versions could be launched from the stern of a cargo ship using the sort of catapults that launch clay pigeons in skeet shooting.

Blinding weapons. Airline pilots already deal with jokers who shine laser pointers into the cockpits of landing planes. Pirates might have to face the Dazzle Gun, a futuristic-looking laser rifle designed by the Air Force that temporarily blinds adversaries who get too close to bases and personnel.

The pain ray. The Air Force had fun a couple of year ago bringing reporters to a test facility at Moody Air Force base in Georgia and zapping them with the Active Denial System, a truck-mounted weapon that focuses a tight beam of electromagnetic waves on your skin.

Basically, it's like sticking your hand in a microwave oven. It's nonlethal and very painful. There's a smaller version as well that's effective up to 500 yards, which might work against pirates coming up to a ship.

Quick, however, feels that nothing can really stop the pirates short of a naval engagement.

"It's not really up to the ship owners or crews to solve the pirate problem," he says. "It's a governmental issue. It's why navies were formed in the first place."

Mexstan

Hoss, forget just lining their skiffs. Do the entire boat out of Ferro cement. Anybody remember those?
In fact, why don't you market a new Ferro Cement boat making industry over there. That way you can include built in rocket launchers and other such goodies. Perhaps the Israelis already have similar technology that you can "borrow".

SIXSLUG

Isn't there a lot of surplus napalm out there degrading? Flamethrowers man! short range and effective. Probably not a good idea on a boat though! Good input Mexstan!

Kurt

SoTexRattler

I'm sorry... I still can't get it into my mind why ships on the high seas can NOT be armed for self defense against slimy pirates like these...

OK, if the crew itself can't be armed, why not have a self-sufficient contract team of WELL armed security folk deposited onto ships before they skirt the danger zone and taken off the ships before they reach port?

Several .50cal MG's spraying lead should dissuade any boarding attempt until the Navy helo's could arrive to take out any larger threat.

Redleg

I was thinking of this today. I wonder if I can get Top or somebody to go in with me on designing some sort of CS cannons along the sides of ships? Deploy them like the smoke launchers on the front of armor vehicles, or maybe plump it along like sprinklers?

PistolWhipt

That was the same thought process that brought Blackwater into the limelight .... then the "good people of the world" started getting squirrely when they did what they were contracted to do .

Give the sailors grenade launchers .... fight firepower with firepower. It'd make for some good Youtube fodder if nothing else !!

Cheers,
PISTOL

Mexstan

Pirates Beware: Soon Rifles That Kill from a Mile Away

By Mark Thompson / Washington Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2009A sniper team trains with .50 caliber rifle

The three Navy SEAL snipers who killed the pirates off the coast of Somalia last weekend were lucky the buccaneers were gullible enough to allow their lifeboat to be towed farther out to sea by the U.S.S. Bainbridge. The shortened towline turned what could have been a trio of difficult shots across hundreds of yards of ocean into relatively easy 30-yd. pops. It's a safe bet future pirates won't be so naive. But the Pentagon is drawing up a project to make it easier to hit targets at much longer distances: a super-sniper rifle called the EXACTO, short for EXtreme ACcuracy Tasked Ordnance.

Ten Years After Columbine, It's Easier to Bear Arms
Boom in Gun Sales Fueled by Politics and the Economy
The highly-classified EXACTO program began a year ago, when the U.S. military's band of scientists and engineers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — which played a key role in the creation of both the Internet and GPS — let the military-industrial complex know it was seeking a supergun. "The ability to more accurately prosecute targets at significantly longer range would provide a dramatic new capability to the U.S. military," DARPA'S solicitation for bids said. "The use of an actively controlled bullet will make it possible to counter environmental effects such as crosswinds and air density, and prosecute both stationary and moving targets while enhancing shooter covertness." (See pictures of dramatic pirate-hostage rescues.)

The new .50 caliber gun and improved scope could employ "fire and forget" technologies including "fin-stabilized projectiles, spin-stabilized projectiles, internal and/or external aero-actuation control methods, projectile guidance technologies, tamper proofing, small stable power supplies, and advanced sighting, optical resolution and clarity technologies." In other words, bullets that, once fired at a specific target, fly themselves into it by changing shape. The new gun should be no heavier than the combined 46-lb. weight of the current $11,500 M107 sniper rifle and all its associated gear (including ammo, tripod, scope and slide rules for target calculations). (See pictures of the brazen pirates of Somalia.)

In November, DARPA awarded Lockheed Martin $12.3 million and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging $9.5 million to begin work on the new weapon. If various technical hurdles are cleared, it could be available sometime around 2015.

DARPA says the Pentagon needs the vastly improved rifle because the use of snipers has ballooned from 250 to 800 annually. The sharpshooters require extensive and expensive training — all of which could be reduced with a better gun. Snipers "are unable to take a shot the vast majority of the time" because of wind or other weather factors, and a lack of confidence in their ability to hit the target or flee if detected. Those shortcomings could be greatly reduced by the new longer-range rifle. How much longer range? "Specific system performance objectives (e.g., range, accuracy and target speed) are classified," the solicitation said. (See pictures of America's gun culture.)

Army Captain Keith Bell, former commander of the Army sniper school at Fort Benning, Ga., can't wait to get his hands on the new rifle. "The EXACTO would be revolutionary," he says. "It will more than double our range and probably more than double our accuracy." Current sniper rifles can regularly hit trucks at 2,000 meters, but not bad guys. (The record kill is 2,430 meters, just over 1.5 miles. It was charted by Canadian army corporal Rob Furlong against a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan's Shah-i-kot valley during Operation Anaconda in March 2002 — but his first two shots missed.) "There's no limit as far as I can see so long as the bullet's stable — I think 2,000 or 2,500 meters is very attainable," Bell says.

"Right now, anything past around 800 meters is an extremely tough shot," he added during a satellite telephone interview from Mosul, Iraq. "But this EXACTO will take the effects of wind, elevation and humidity all out of play." Bell spends his days training Iraqis as snipers and for other elements of the martial arts. Did he hear about what the Navy snipers did on Sunday? "Sure did," he said. "I'm jealous as hell."

Hoss

Careful what you quote there, Stan. I got criticized for even suggesting that the shots that killed those pirates might not have been as difficult as some might think.

Just sayin'.

Hoss

I'm a little disappointed none of you folks noticed my funny acronym or the hidden implication that my special liner would sink their boat, thereby making it undetectable to snipers. I thought you people were smart and witty!?!?

Oh well...at least my wife still laughs at me (and I do mean AT me).

jrs_dodge_diesel

It's OK Hoss, I thought it was funny.