Re:What Norwegians are learning as they pioneer autonomous s...
by lb1lf on Thursday November 11, 2021 @08:08AM
(#29187467)
-Thanks! This is why I love HN. :)
My work takes me offshore on occasion, and twice I've been on vessels in pirate-prone areas; the different approaches taken were quite telling:
a) On a vessel flying the Norwegian flag - 'Oh, we'll just train our fi-fi water cannon on them, end of story, everybody will hail us as humanitarian as f*k for using water rather than lead - except the result is the same.'
b) On a Marshall Islands-registered, US operated vessel - a handful of private security contractors, using .50 guns retrofitted with bayonet mounts compatible with the ones used for the smallest water cannon - so at the first sight of pirates, they'd set up shop and, ah, encourage the pirates to pursue other career paths.
What you want is a 76mm gun or a RWCS like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitrole, preferably firing airburst and/or flechette rounds. They have a much better probability to hit and disable the target than a CIWS.
Source: Used to be a weapons engineering officer for the Royal Netherlands Navy. A ship I was on caught some pirates off the coast of Somalia once and (after the pirates were taken into custody) we tried to sink their vessel with the CIWS, leading to the lessons in the post above. It turns out it is really tough to sink something lighter than water by punching holes into it and the expected "the CIWS will saw the dinghy in half" effect was much less than we hoped.