When these pirates take people for ransom, how do they plan on getting away, even if their demands are met? Do they expect us to give them one meeelion dollars and then just watch them putter away in some little boat?
I would think the only way they could gain anything would be to raid a ship and take what they could carry before any armed vessels could intervene.
I agree with your likely scenario.
However, even on a steam plant there are things, and places, where small magnitudes of damage could have devastating effects. Unisolable main lube oil leaks, for example, are guaranteed to shut down the main engine of any naval vessel. For a ship with twin screws, and twinned engineering plants, no real problem - they continue with their max speed reduced by about 15-25%. For a single screw vessel, they’re DIW until they MacGyver a fix. (And, granted, there are a lot of fixes that have been found to work in Naval applications, and cheat sheet versions are kept handy aboard most ships.) And DIW means that pirates can run away. (Whether they’d get out of range of the armaments of the military vessel is another question.)
But all this assumes that no fire breaks out.
I know that HE isn’t normally all that likely to start fires. I also remember being told that 2190 TEP* oil won’t catch fire in any realistic scenario. The USS Dhalgren fire in 1994 made it clear that unrealistic situations can and do happen.
Let me be clear - it’s not that I think that there was a high, or even likely, risk to the frigate, or her crew. Just that the risk was greater than the zero that some people have mentioned. I agree it would take several systemic failures combined with massive luck to allow a motor launch armed with RPGs to disable a modern frigate.
I also should have been more specific about what I meant when I said that the GT I’ve seen were right against the hull - smithsb is completely right: The GT would never been abutting the hull for sound isolation reasons. For that sound isolation all that is needed is that the GT not be in direct contact with the hull - i.e. it may be as close as 30 cm. Or less. Which AIUI puts it into range of the ejecta from a HEAT munition. Again, for this to be effective, it would take near Terminator accuracy to hit a two-to-three meter square spot on the hull, while both shooter and target are in motion through three dimensions.
*2190 TEP is the kind of lube oil used by the US Navy for turbine lubrication. It’s generally very nice to work with: not very flammable, not prone to flash, stands up to high temperature and pressure environments, and lubricates well. Aboard the Dhalgren a series of failures ended up with some of this oil being atomized, and sprayed on an overheating fixture, where it ignited, and lead to a very, very smoky fire.
Production started about 5 seconds after the story hit the wires, so any moment now, I’m sure. Nipple, nipple! I’d love to see you pee on us tonight!
Shucks Inigo, just sneak in there and hot wire one.
See those long tubes in front? Those are snorkels. You can drive it right off the boat into the water and make your escape underwater.
Strike while the iron is hot!
The legal principle is called hostis humani generis, or “enemies of mankind”. I dunno how far it’s applied these days, though: pirates might be fair game in theory, but I suspect most nations these days would be pretty toey about having armed naval ships blowing away motherfuckers at will in their ponds, particularly in the volatile regions of the world which produce pirates.
On the other hand, fuck 'em.
(a) They keep the hostages very, very close to them so we can’t shoot w/o endangering them
(b) We deliver to their middleman the meelion dollars/euros/whatever
© They hand over the keys to the captured ship/hostage cell to the mediator
(d) They high-tail it to melt into the lawless Somali background
(e) They count on that it is already known to the foreign powers that it’s a bitch of a task to take and pacify Somalia, impractical to establish a full blockade down to the last dhow of the Somali coast, and very bad PR to just level Eyl to the ground.
Earlier this year French Special Ops took advantage of an opening to drop in unnanounced between © and (d) and let’s just say it was quite the jour de gloire. But you gotta time it just right.
AFAIK, Somalia is still mostly a nonfunctional state-in-name-only? (As opposed to SomaliLand, which nobody recognizes apparently out of the usual insistence in holding sacrosanct the borders drawn 40 years ago)
About redundant systems… one of the spookiest places I ever went was the secondary bridge of the Nimitz. Some guy gave me a peek once. Buried deep in the bowels of the ship, all of the standard bridge stuff was there. Made the hair stand up on the back of my neck imagining a scenario where they would need to use it.
Cool! The Indians are good guys! That THAT, John Wayne! (I din’t even know the Indians had a navy.)
Now only if the US navy would attack the Pirates of Penzance.
Y’all have been having a good month. First you landed (well, OK, technically “crashed”) a probe on the Moon; now you done bagged yourselves a pirate ship.
The thing is that Somalia doesn’t have a functional government since the 90s, ergo, they, as a nation won’t and can’t complain if someone decides to do some moping along the Somali coast.
Would this actually be true? Sure, the target might be moving, but it’s a 120-meter long ship with a top speed of around 35 mph. Compared to a Humvee or helicopter that’s a big, unmaneuverable target.
Grumman, what’s more important is that the shooter is going to be moving through three dimensions, probably in ways that are impossible to predict.
It’s a closely guarded secret, but a Nimitz-class carrier can actually separate into two pieces, and the island structure just flys away, like thte Enterprise-D on Star Trek.
Very valuable newslinks
Possible Failed State status looming for Yemen, due to pirates.
Details in mothership ops (source uncertain)
http://www.sindhtoday.net/south-asia/37786.htm
The Yemen thing is damn serious.
Sure is! That could basically “block” the exit from the Red Sea, hence giving Egypt less revenue from the Suez Canal, which I doubt is a good thing (it might increase instability there).
This is where true international action is needed, both providing escorts and extirpating the pirates from their lairs. If India, Russia, China and a few others move in and start offensive action, who is really going to complain?
Pirates and black marketeers! 
But who are they going to start offensive actions against? Should they line up outside Eyl and start shore-bombardment, or send in Special Forces in a risky mission to take out the pirates, in both cases risking the lives of innocent civilians and hostages? It’s a shitload of ocean out there and it’s kinda hard to track it all.
The worst part is how pathetic the “pirates” are. There was a story on them I heard, either through BBC, or NPR, which had interviews and someone on location. Basically this guy went to the city to find work for his family, got “seduced into the pirate lifestyle” by seeing the huge party a band of successful pirates throws when they come back from a good raid. Unfortunately the same problems the modern navies have finding pirates apply to pirates finding ships to attack(i.e. the ocean is a big place). Plus if they calculate wrong and can’t get a grapple on the ship, or if the weather or sea conditions thwart them, they come back empty handed. Now they’re out money and time and fuel, and everything else. Basically about 90% of the “pirates” are hoping to get one score or two a year, and then they blow most of the ransom on a big party(with booze and “girls”) immediately after. It’s pretty messed up. The interviewee said his wife had taken a job and was supporting the family back home and that was a source of great shame for him, so he couldn’t go home without being a successful pirate. In the meantime he goes hungry three out of four nights and works hand to mouth whenever they’re not out looking for potential victims.
It’s all messed up.
Enjoy,
Steven