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Comment by starmilk | Hacker News Reader

How would they enforce security? Remember that pirates exist, would the savings on human captains be enough that they could sail around dangerous areas?

I know this is a planned concept, but surely security is a major concern. Can anyone with further shipping industry knowledge chime in?

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I had the same thought. But maybe, it's less of a concern with an automated ship.

If the steering and engine rooms are sufficiently hardened, that is. It's one thing for someone to get onboard, but it's an entirely different thing to stop the boat. Without humans onboard, who will stop it? And, without a crew, there aren't any hostages. If you're remotely controlling the boat, you could just keep going and bring the pirates with you to the nearest maritime/port authority (Coast Guard, etc...). There is still a risk to the cargo, but how are pirates going to unload a container ship that is still moving in the ocean with an uncooperative captain controlling it remotely?

They can just damage the ship. It would be also ridiculous to think that there won't be an onboard manual override for controls.

I'm not saying that they couldn't. I expect that they would. But, for large container ships, isn't the bigger concern hostages? No crew = no hostages.

I mean, pirates aren't going to be able to dock a large container ship at any random port. And even if there is a manual override, why wouldn't it require a key of some kind?

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the threat model changes when you don't have a crew on board that you can threaten. Some parts of piracy (access) may be easier, but others more difficult.

If there's no crew on board then there's no risk to human life or ransom to pay, so the consequences of a pirate attack are lessened.

I doubt unarmed or lightly armed crews are much of a deterrent to piracy anyway.

> If there's no crew on board then there's no risk to human life or ransom to pay, so the consequences of a pirate attack are lessened.

I don't think this is really true. Each container is worth $20k - $1M,

https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/table_...

so the whole ship of ~10k containers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship

would be worth $200M - $1B or more. With 20 or less crew on board, and lives being valued even in the (expensive) US at only ~$10M, it's very likely that the value of the cargo is much higher than the crew. Not to mention the cost of the boat itself, which can exceed $100M.

Those numbers seem to be confirmed by this talk

http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1340097/17625392/13341...

This is more along the lines of what I was thinking. As "we all know", security isn't security, it's merely a case of "how long do we have?". Pirates do go after the contents of ships, that's a fact. I have nothing to cite for the following, but I can't imagine that the pirates actually want people on board. To a business - unfortunately - people are replaceable for much less than what their cargo costs.

360 degree long-range turrets and sticking to international water seem like the best strategy they have here. :^)

> How would they enforce security?

Make them submarines?

Might that also lead to reduced stresses on the vessel, and less chance of something breaking? A failure might mean the whole lot ending up on the bottom of the sea?

You missed the joke. It's obviously not economically viable to build huge cargo submarines.

The Russians were thinking about doing just that with their SSBN sub design. It didn't come to anything, but people have been doing the research in a serious manner.

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