A couple of weeks ago I read the US Navy advised an Iranian flagged ship to evacuate the engine room so they could blow it up. I thought that was sweet of them. I sure hope there were a competent mate on watch who didn’t hold any animosity towards the E.R crew & he actually called the engine room. I’ve also read of the US Navy shooting the rudder off of merchant ships & today about them blowing up a stack of a ship. The stack seems the most careless if you want to destroy a ship peacefully because it’s most times close to the living quarters & stack fires can be the most dangerous. Stacks usually don’t have a fixed CO2 system, they are hard to isolate & if it falls into the engineroom then you have an engine room fire. It got me thinking about the most humane way to disable a ship? Shoot up the engine room, blow the stack, blow off the rudder or other? Any thoughts from the forum? Maybe we could pass the info along to the US Navy? I suggest paying the crew $250k each to jump in the life boat so that a salvager can rescue the abandoned ship with a “Notice of Salvage and Intent to Claim Title” letter.
Perhaps promise a double issue of virgins in paradise … collected after martyrdom as usual so they die happy?
Blast the anchor windlass. One or both anchors should freefall. It would take hours to cut the chain. Just enough time to board them. Cheaper to repair than a rudder or stack too.
I’ve read too many biographies & history books to remember them all so I know this would be true for many of the non-educated goat herders but probably not for professional mariners. If Muslim mariners could be fooled so easily my current & previous employers would have found a way for them to work for free in lieu of a promissory note for virgins & mansions in the afterlife. Every 4 weeks of work for so many extra virgins after death has never motivated any of my QMED’s at least
For years I have read ideas & conspiracy theories about mini electro magnetic pulse bombs. If true, or if a defense contractor wants to experiment with it, what better place than an enemy ship at sea? About boarding, so far I think the US administration wants to pretend to take a hands-off approach with zero-to-minimal US casualties. The less American flag draped caskets coming back to the states the better imo.
Ultimately, the best way is from helicopter fast rope insertion of an armed boarding party which aims to rapidly control bridge and machinery control rooms and aggressively force compliance if it is not forthcoming. Nobody dies.
Boarding from boat is much more fraught but is fine if the ship has cooperated and stopped or slowed.
Firing at the ship itself should only be a last resort for an uncomplying ship. Remember, a shot across the bows is an internationally recognised signal (not a warlike act) from a warship to another ship to stop. We started with rifle shots, but they don’t signal much to big ships, so main gunfire sounds and looks more assertive.
Thankfully, most of my actual boarding of ships was on cooperative smaller craft eg fishing boats, but our navy became much more aggressively skilful in fast roping etc against uncooperative, but not shooting back, operations in this same area. Some ships prepared defensively with barbed wire, access doors welded shut and suchlike.
If ships are expected to aggressively oppose boarding, don’t bother boarding unless by special forces and several helicopters riding shotgun in close contact.
True enough but not generally available to your average warship on patrol. US special ops forces used such things in the Venezuelan raid where reports from Cuban guards said that their weapons didn’t work, they became sick and disoriented and ultimately were totally suppressed but not by gunfire and could not inflict a single casualty on the raiders.
Crowd control devices certainly exist eg LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Devices) which can be focussed on individuals or groups and were used against protesters in Canberra a few years ago who became sick, burnt and damaged skin, and mentally disoriented. Not sure they can penetrate into a ship.
Cool. Use em! I mean, call me materialistic but frying all the navtronics would be high dollar to replace! Just take the windlass out and then call China to send all new shit lol
Sugar in the bunker tanks.
We see only another IR-camera sequence of a non-military ship being bombed. We have not yet got much detail of the circumstances - before or after. An unidentified non-combatant tanker & crew meet a laser-guided bomb. Everybody cheers at the fireworks!
US has gone from extra-judicial murder-by-airstrike of non-combatant S.American fishermen - to civilian oil tanker seafarers from ???
Desired consequence of the first is to disrupt global illegal drug trade.
This latest policy will have what global consequences?
That’s the most pathetic excuse for murder I’ve heard. When they catch a smuggler with tons of dope in a truck do they blow him and the truck up? Do they shoot planes out of the sky because they think they my have drugs the US public wants and is willing to pay for? Hegspath would have done well with the Gestapo if he wasn’t such a moron. But what did people expect out of a former Fox commentator who couldn’t rise above Major in the National Guard? With 23 former Fox employees appointed by Trump you can almost hear Putin and Xi laughing.
Fast roping in broad daylight? Very exposed soldiers. You are hoping the ship doesn’t have an armed security team. Plus, after years of dealing with Somali pirates, any reasonable ship will have steel gates and steel W/T doors (locked from the inside) to prevent access to the superstructure.
The decision to board is very much dependent on whether the boarding is anticipated to be opposed, unopposed, or passively encumbered.
I was talking there about unopposed boardings. If a merchant ship decides to fight a warship, you can guess the outcome.
If a merchant ship has an armed security team versus a warship, that master has to think very carefully about the consequences of fighting back. Anti-pirate measures are sensible and can be expected against pirates. Boardings from warships are not pirates (the difference is obvious) and are generally recognised to be operating under international law as it has been for centuries.
As I said previously, opposed boardings are fraught but can be done but by specialist forces of a much more advanced close combat skill than typically well trained sailors (not soldiers) who conduct boardings, backed up by helicopter gunships.
Any reasonable ship will comply with an order to stop by a warship and assist any boarding and inspection.
Larger profits for oil companies and defense contractors which trickle down to larger Republican campaign contributions.
An Arleigh Burke class of guided-missile destroyer has two helicopters. One rides shotgun while the other fast ropes the boarding party. The steel of a merchant ships superstructure is no defense against a 0.5 machine gun if the ship’s crew being boarded comes out to play.
A display of force usually ensures complete cooperation without casualties.
I’ve been on ships with fried electronics due to nearby lightening strikes. If a defense contractor could find a way to produce the same amount of energy to disable a ship that could be useful.
Even better, I work(ed) on research vessels that would drop a weight connected to a tiny copper filament wire overboard to get water temperature at great depths. If a big drone could fly in a thunderstorm cloud & another smaller kamakazi drone could drop onto a ship dragging the tiny wire, prehaps we could control where lightening struck? I think our president would love it if he could control lightening like Thor.
Controlling lightning has been the dream weapon of despots for millennia but results are variable. You might actually send the ship out of control.
Warfare has one simple aim and that is to change your enemy’s mind. This technology already exists with voice to skull as used against Iraqi soldiers whereby they would hear a voice which is not audible but electronically transmitted directly to the brain. An authoritative voice directs the soldier to surrender or, as in this case, directs the master to stop the ship and comply … or directs the cook to hold a meat cleaver to his throat. I’m not sure if the target discrimination is quite that precise.
No doubt this has been refined somewhat since that war.
It’s been done…
See EMP - ElectroMagnetic Pulse - and also TREE - Transient Radiation Effects on Electronics - but the "transmitter" is a bit drastic! 
Maybe try “directed energy weapon”?
back in the days of prohibition, the treasury would just shoot out the rudder ie transom then they could board and seize the cargo. this SOP is still used by the USCG today. doesn’t take a lot of fire power to disable a vessel