I’m not sure how realistic the idea that the hull of a missile frigate would shrug off even a normal fragmentation round from an RPG-7 is.
I don’t know the specs of the Indian frigate in question, but I’d be surprised to hear that the hull plates are any thicker than those we had on my cruiser: one inch steel. I know that we did a number of DC drills based on hull breaches from speedboat launched RPG rounds, some of them HEAT, and some normal HE rounds. I agree if the round detonates out of contact with the hull, the shrapnel should just bounce off. But if even an HE round explodes in contact with the hull, there’s a chance it can blow a hole in the hull.
Similarly, the idea that all the vitals of a Naval vessel are protected deep in the hull is something from another era. I’ve been aboard a couple of GT ships, and they had their power plants right up against the hull. I don’t know how tolerant of damage such a power plant might be - but I can easily imagine situations where some of what I saw with the GT would be damaged.
I am not arguing with the difficulty of getting a hit, at long range, with hand-held weapons on a motor launch platform. Just saying that the threat to the Indian ship seems to me to have been greater than zero.
I don’t know Russian construction methods of the ship in question but modern frigates and the like have the power plant isolated from the hull. The isolation relates to the anti-submarine mission. Whether piston or turbine, there’s still a lot of sound that interferes with searching. Most of the important bit are below waterline for stability as well.
The basic HE RPG warhead won’t do much to steel plate. We did testing with EOD (okay, it wasn’t all that scientific:)) against ordinary boiler plate 3/4" thick and only produced at best small 1" depressions in 18" square sections. Now some of those suckers that look like a Cheech and Chong roach stuck on the end of the launcher could do a fair amount of damage.
Maybe not shrug it off, but it certainly isn’t stopping the ship.
It might punch a fist-sized hole above the waterline (maybe dinner plate if they are really lucky), and the damage will be contained in short order. Even if they hit something important, those systems typically have redundancy built in, for true battle conditions. Consider systems such as main steam (on a steam-powered vessel) or firemain lines, with crossconnect pipes and valves that can be used to isolate the damaged branch. I can only imagine that other critical military systems are also likewise protected.
Likely scenario: some dude shoves a wooden plug in the hole and they fix it the next time they get to port.
In either case though, the Chevy pick-up with the 55 gallon drum pontoons and drive-shaft-mounted propeller that the pirates were using (such an odd thing to say in 2008) was no match for that ship. Hell, the Captain could have made a hard right and run them under if he wanted to.
The ones we keep aboard Revenge are mounted with class 3B sodium vapor lasers which are devastating to the eyes but do not risk accidental digital severance or deaths by otherwise unintentional means.
I missed that line in your orignal action plan. Okay, I will forward a note to HR to dig your resume out of the scut pile. You still have to bring me the head of an Justice Leaguer if you want to move up to permanent status from contractor. (Please note I wrote JUSTICE LEAGUER. Aquaman & Blue Beetle count; Wendy, Marvin, & the Wonder Twins do not. And don’t even think about Gleek or that stupid dog.)
Returning to the thread topic, I overheared one of my co-workers–a woman who is, shall we say, slightly touched–made an incredibly stupid remark about this earlier. With all appearance of seriousness, she wondered whether the Somali pirates might have been encouraged in their descent into banditry by the* Pirates in the Caribbean *movies. The person she was speaking to thought, at first, that she must be kidding, but she insisted she was serious, and, as this woman displays no sense of humor, I think she was.
Would the world even notice if some un-named political entity decided to dump a few tons of “excess-to-needs” radioactive waste all over the Somali coast? Glow-in-the-dark pirates would be so much easier to track.
Atrael - they are still on board the ship awaiting ransom. None have been off-loaded.