What Norwegians are learning as they pioneer autonomous ships | Hacker News Reader

What Norwegians are learning as they pioneer autonomous ships

computerweekly.com

47 pointsvitabenes23 comments

How do they deal with pirates?

Presumably easier than regular ships, where, as I understand, the crew are mostly just a convenient source of hostages.

Perhaps they can bring the hostages aboard.

Well, we could presumably fit remotely operated guns; after all Norwegian ships already shoot back.

"Kommunikasjonssjef Ellie Davison i Stolt-Nielsen bekrefter overfor VG at oljetankeren Stolt Apal søndag ble angrepet av pirater i Adengulfen, 75 nautiske mil sør for Jemen.

Hendelsen fant sted like før klokken 14.

– To små båter beveget seg i høy fart mot skipet, med seks bevæpnede pirater om bord. Etter flere varselskudd fra vaktene om bord på skipet, begynte piratene å skyte mot skipet, sier Davison.

Vaktene om bord fortsatte å skyte mot båtene, noe som resulterte i at en av dem ble satt ut av funksjon. Dermed ble angrepet avbrutt.

– Broen fikk mindre skader fra kuler, men det var ingen personskader, ingen forurensning og ingen last om bord ble truffet. Et krigsskip fra anti-pirat-koalisjonen svarte, og Stolt Apal fortsatte sin reise, sier Davison."

Translated (badly) by Google because I'm too lazy to type it all:

"Communications manager Ellie Davison in Stolt-Nielsen confirms to VG that the oil tanker Stolt Apal was attacked on Sunday by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, 75 nautical miles south of Yemen.

The incident took place just before 2 p.m.

- Two small boats moved at high speed towards the ship, with six armed pirates on board. After several warning shots from the guards on board the ship, the pirates started firing at the ship, Davison says.

The guards on board continued to fire at the boats, which resulted in one of them being put out of action. Thus, the attack was interrupted.

- The bridge received minor damage from bullets, but there were no injuries, no pollution and no cargo on board was hit. A warship from the anti-pirate coalition responded, and Proud Apal continued his journey, says Davison."

And don't forget that in value per capita Norway is one of the biggest arms exporters in the world thanks to the Kongsberg Pingvin missile system. Mind you I think that might count as overkill for a reaction to a bunch of Somali pirates with AKs in a rickety speedboat; perhaps a radar controlled light machine gun would have to be developed.

> (...) perhaps a radar controlled light machine gun would have to be developed.

The Phalanx CIWS would fit the bill nicely (except for the 'light' part) [0].

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsf38NYzo5Q

Fun fact: CIWS are not actually that great for shooting at pirate skiffs, since 1. They typically require radar lock before being able to fire in the first place and a fiberglass dinghy has a really low radar cross section and also typically not enough doppler since it doesn't go at anti-ship missile speeds. 2. The manual override for this behavior has "rather poor" UX to say the least, since it is not really a core feature of the system. The whole point of a CIWS is that it's only used in the last few seconds of an engagement at speeds at which humans cannot react. 3. The ammunition used is typically subcaliber armor piercing discarding sabot type rounds. They are optimized at taking down an anti ship missile if they hit by destroying the guidance section of the missile or (if you get a lucky hit) detonating the warhead. They will just go through a pirate skiff and come out the other end. The skiff is lighter than water so it won't sink.

What you want is a 76mm gun or a RWCS like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitrole, preferably firing airburst and/or flechette rounds. They have a much better probability to hit and disable the target than a CIWS.

Source: Used to be a weapons engineering officer for the Royal Netherlands Navy. A ship I was on caught some pirates off the coast of Somalia once and (after the pirates were taken into custody) we tried to sink their vessel with the CIWS, leading to the lessons in the post above. It turns out it is really tough to sink something lighter than water by punching holes into it and the expected "the CIWS will saw the dinghy in half" effect was much less than we hoped.

-Thanks! This is why I love HN. :)

My work takes me offshore on occasion, and twice I've been on vessels in pirate-prone areas; the different approaches taken were quite telling:

a) On a vessel flying the Norwegian flag - 'Oh, we'll just train our fi-fi water cannon on them, end of story, everybody will hail us as humanitarian as f*k for using water rather than lead - except the result is the same.'

b) On a Marshall Islands-registered, US operated vessel - a handful of private security contractors, using .50 guns retrofitted with bayonet mounts compatible with the ones used for the smallest water cannon - so at the first sight of pirates, they'd set up shop and, ah, encourage the pirates to pursue other career paths.

Kongsberg's got ya covered for that too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_(RWS)

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

They might even still make parts for their old explosive harpoons in case your ship is attacked by whales.

The pirate ship will be autonomous, too. The fight between the commercial ship's crew and pirate's ships too, will be a virtual death mach.

Sounds like a William Gibson novel.

The new pirates will have CS degrees and understand buffer overflows.

The new pirates will ssh aboard.

Can't wait for the aband0n_sship 0day

Pirates in a Norwegian fjord?

Don't be daft!

Yes, they prefer to be called Vikings.

Nah they wouldn't be called viking if they stayed in Scandinavia to do their robbing. Viking was the name for men travelling to foreign shores.

A self-destruct mechanism maybe?

if they keep it a CLI only tool pirates wont be able to do anything but sailing towards the end destination where police would be waiting. Quite hard to unload containers on a moving ship too, I guess

This article is not about container ships. But still in that case you destroy the drivetrain and tow the ship.

i am a jackass please ignore me

>There's no crew on board so you don't have to worry about collateral damage.

The article is about passenger ferries.

By draping banners with warnings, of course.

You wouldn't download a ship, would you?

How are they going to protect the different equipment inside the ship?

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