He’s the officer in charge of the USS Bainbridge and the officer in charge of the hostage situation in the Indian ocean.
What a fuck up !
Most of us know the drill in hostage situation management. Communications, negotiation and assault readiness which includes snipers.
After two fucking days, standing 200 yards off the lifeboat and peering inside through the windows to see Captain Richard Phillips and the pirates, they should have been prepared for an escape attempt especially at night when most of the pirates would be sleeping. Had Castellano left a dozen shooters with night vision train on the doorway of the lifeboat, they could have easily covered the escape.
While I agree in theory… I’m not sure Castellano has the right men or equiment for the job.
While I know that a DDG does have a number of small arms which includes the M14 (suitable as a sniper rifle). Does he really have a dozen? And does he have enough trained snipers out of his crew of 270 to have a dozen at all shifts?
Does anybody know, what kind of resources does a DDG captain have in a situation like this?
Well, that’s true about the SEAL team. But they’re trained to be snipers on dry land not on the bridgewing of a ship that is most often moving even to maintain station - and even while anchored is rolling and pitching from the waves and wind.
The higher you go on the ship the more this motion is amplified - and the “sniper” would have to get high to get a good shot.
Now, this can be done, of course, but can it be done while picking between two closely placed people and leaving one safe? Probably not - which is why that SEAL team will likely be used instead for an assault or rescue.
From what I’ve heard, the 5" guns are pretty accurate with today’s computer-controlled aiming. I’d have had the 5" trained on the boat. When the captain escaped and the pirates started shooting, a 5" shell might discourage them. Obviously, there would have to be separation between the escaping hostage and the boat; so actually hitting the boat might not be an option. One overhead might be safe enough. But I think it’s a safe bet that if the pirates saw the DDG opening fire with Naval artillery, they might stop shooting at the hostage and abandon ship so as not to be in it when it explodes.
So, I dunno, once the captive jumped out of the lifeboat, could they just sarted pouring gunfire in through the hatch to keep anyone else from coming out?
Does that seem doable, while they get their own launch ready to go in for a rescue?
“Assault readiness”. What an outlandish and retarded Hollywood-influenced concept.
No, most destroyers don’t have seal teams on board, and “snipers” on boats is just a silly idea. I suppose he should have deployed the mini submarine complete with Ship’s Cook to sneak up and board the other ship. And using a 5 inch gun to cover an escape? These are exploding shells capable of going through a few inches of steel plate. Outlandish at best.
The idea that a bunch of sailors would be posted around the clock to cover “the doorway” is also patently absurd; shooting between two moving platforms 200 yards apart and being on constant watch for an unplanned escape? Maybe in the movies, but in real life it’s not going to happen.
I did say to fire over their heads. And I assume the fuses can be removed so they don’t explode. But the pirates wouldn’t think of that. ‘Outlandish’? Maybe. I prefer ‘audacious’.
You can land a helicopter on a destroyer. How long do you think it would take to fly a SEAL team out? It isn’t far-fetched at all. I know something about hostage situations, and I know that the first thing you do in a hostage situation is call in a SWAT team - or the military equivalent - to contain the area. Why do you assume the U.S. Navy follows a different protocol?
The lifeboat is surrounded by snipers and probably frogmen. How effective they are is another question.
Ok, this is a small enclosed lifeboat. It’s not like a SEAL team can sneak on and pick off the pirates. Secondly, if you recall the French vessel that was taken, here’s a quote:
Here’s the situation:
The lifeboat isn’t going anywhere that the DD can’t follow. No outsiders are going to get past a DD to help the pirates. The situation is under control, and the danger level to the hostage is low. Negotiations are underway.
So, your plan involves SEAL sniper teams and assault elements waiting submerged in the water to kill a bunch of pirates and rescue the hostage, both of whom are in a tiny enclosed space. They are “surrounding” a more or less drifting raft, and somehow staying in the water ready to go despite being based on a moving destroyer at an unknown but probably large distance from the raft and remaining completely unobserved by the pirates?
We have some sort of realism failure here. On one hand, we have soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan because our military is supposedly incompetent and badly led, and we were “defeated” by the Somalis in the battle of Mogadishu. The presumably-GIGN (French and world-class) team just this week lost 20% of the hostages in their assault against pirates.
On the other side, we have our magical snipers and SEAL teams that we learned about from Charlie Sheen and the Punisher, who are shooting from an unknown distance (or while invisibly treading water), and are in the water for hours at a time.
I think your ideas about what the tactical situation is are a little bit off. 200 yards at sea is likely way too close – the most the Navy will say is “within visual distance” (up to 10km or so); and to ease the pirates’ nerves, I am betting they don’t want the ship to loom menacingly. There’s also no easy way to “sneak up”. If you’ve got some knowledge about hostage situations, then you would know that the general approach in the U.S. is to talk them down. SWAT doesn’t bust in unless things to shit. They talk. And talk. And talk more. Sure they might be ready to go, but generally SWAT teams can be right outside the building instead of being in the water, presumably submerged, breathing canned air.
If this were Call of Duty, then yes, we could snipe out the pirates (and incidentally make the next batch much less willing to negotiate). But this is real life, and it’s a huge ocean, and we don’t have magic commandos, and we have expert negotiators from the FBI doing their best (and apparently succeeding) to resolve the situation peacefully.
It’s problematic that we believe our military should be so incredibly capable and effective and safe, because we expect surgical bomb strikes that always hit their targets and snipers that can shoot the gun out of a bad guy’s hand, when reality is always more messy. So when the SEALS go in and mess up and the hostage dies “Military fuckup”. Of course, if they bow to the rules of the real world, they are incompetent.
When you say “most of us know the drill,” what sort of experience do you personally have in this area? How did you learn “the drill?”
In my view, ivn1188’s analysis is spot-on. I’m curious what training or experience you have, though; I admit my knowledge is limited to once helping a colleague prep a cross-examination of a police officer who was in charge of response to a domestic violence hostage situation – not exactly years of field training, in other words, and nothing at all to do with the open sea.
