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A machine gun pops out when the ship gets boarded, sinks the pirate's boat and sails towards the closest naval ship with the captured pirates on board.
I'd have the specially made gun hidden in the mast that would swing out and have a hight vantage point and 360 degree free range of fire. It would
be hardened so shooting back at it wouldn't do anything.
A few dozen of these sailing piraty waters at any given time would be a good reason for pirates to get a job doing something else, like seating people at seafood themed restaurants for example.
Half life jackets
Half_20life_20jackets
Perfect [8th of 7, Feb 23 2011]
Here's the life preserver I'd throw them.
http://vocabmadeeas...s/2011/01/anvil.jpg
[doctorremulac3, Feb 23 2011]
Black Hawk Down 2: The search for Curlys gold.
http://en.wikipedia...of_Mogadishu_(1993)
[rcarty, Feb 24 2011]
automated AA guns kills soldiers 2007
http://www.itweb.co...erospace-technology
[not_morrison_rm, Feb 24 2011]
Homan Projector
http://en.wikipedia...ki/Holman_Projector
Cute little thing ... [8th of 7, Feb 24 2011]
Q Ship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship
Love that "HM Armed Smack" [mouseposture, Feb 25 2011]
1976 Cod war, two NATO countries vessels ramming each other
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V/s_T%C3%BDr
I'm sure it gave the Warsaw Pact a laugh or two at the time [not_morrison_rm, Feb 25 2011]
Here's a pretty big sailboat
http://www.largeyac...hens-sea-angel.html
Note, no crow's nest. [RayfordSteele, Feb 25 2011]
Here's an even bigger one
http://www.largeyac..._id=75177&curr_id=7
Note, still no crow's nest. [RayfordSteele, Feb 25 2011]
Ok, here's a little boat with a crow's nest.
http://www.google.c...79&biw=1280&bih=657
Not that that has anything to do with anything. [doctorremulac3, Feb 25 2011]
And another
http://www.google.c...88&biw=1280&bih=657
[doctorremulac3, Feb 25 2011]
No crow's nest but a man on top of a mast.
http://www.irelandi..._05_01_archive.html
Would this guy firing an AR-15 or even M-249 go "whipping all around"? Of course not. That's way too much mass up there. [doctorremulac3, Feb 25 2011]
Some info about shooting from crows nest
http://www.globalse...p/sail-tactics3.htm
[rcarty, Feb 25 2011]
do they have these outside of vancouver?
http://www.baitcar.com/
[bob, Feb 26 2011]
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Probably one or two pirates go aboard first to see what is up. Then machine gun pops up. Remote operator sees pirates staring back from their boat and does not fire, or does. Pirates aboard ship come up behind gun and clip wires leading to remote control apparatus. Pirates then dismantle remote control apparatus for ship engine. They tie their old boat up to ship and sail away in sweet new ship that has a machine gun. They dance a merry Somali jig in front of camera for remote control operator. |
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//Remote operator sees pirates staring back from their boat and does not fire// |
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//Pirates aboard ship come up behind gun and clip wires leading to remote control apparatus.// |
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Pretty hard to clip the wires on a machine gun while it's blowing your head off. How do you climb up a mast that has a machine gun at the top blazing away at you? And there is no "behind" to a gun that pivots 360 degrees. |
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Not getting the whole "Operator won't fire the machine gun so this won't work" thing. I guess you could say that about any idea. A blender: "What if they don't push the blend button?" A windshield wiper: "What if they don't flip the on switch?" |
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I think it should just have a really gluey deck, and be
equipped for long-term drifting. |
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[+] but I don't see why you'd wait to be boarded... just sink the pirate ship; if you're feeling "humane" then drop some life-vests into the water. |
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Actually I put the "wait to be boarded thing" in to make it seem kinder and gentler. |
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To be honest, if I'm on the trigger I'm shooting the minute they make their intentions clear. |
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Here's the life preserver I'd throw 'em. <link> |
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How do you identify them as pirates. I think they
would just become more sophisticated and pretend
to be well-wishing fellow sailors who hail your vessel
to see if you're ok, then come aboard to check, all
the way up to the point where they receive a
warning from the mast gun operator. Then they leave
and continue their routine until they come across a
real target. |
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...and there was me thinking this was going to be an inflatable full-size container ship.. when the pirates try to board it just deflates.. |
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you could recoup the expense by the selling the video rights to whatever Candid Camera is called these days. |
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on a more pc note, then maybe stop foreign fishing vessels hoovering up their fish and they wouldn't have a plausible sounding excuse for doing it? |
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The Portugese and other Europeans have been overfishing cod etc. from the Grand Banks for decades and Newfies arnt taking hostages. |
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//(pirates) pretend to be well-wishing fellow sailors who
hail your vessel to see if you're ok, then come
aboard to check// |
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Ok, assuming they'd be stupid enough to think
anybody would buy that, ("Hey honey! Those nice
men in the inflatable boat with AK-47s want to
know if we're ok and come aboard to check.") You
announce through a loudspeaker that "We're ok,
stay off our boat." |
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If they come on anyway, and you still think they're
just concerned citizens, you probably wouldn't get
the job of operating this thing like the guy from
the previous anno who wouldn't pull the trigger
for some reason. |
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I'm thinking a machine gun at the top of a mast would
do some serious damage to the mast for the recoil.
Never mind the issues with trying to maintain a
working weapon that's mostly stowed away, in a sea-
salty environment. |
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If a human can hold a machine gun and fire it without being damaged, a mast made out of most any material wouldn't have a problem. |
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If you you wanted to ramp it up and use a 50 cal which would probably be overkill, just use the same material you use to make any other machine gun mount for that particular weapon. |
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Besides, a standard mast is build to take the full weight of the wind blowing a boat that might be several tons in weight, the recoil from even a large maching gun probably wouldn't do more than shake it a bit. |
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Dude, in my most recent position as armored
fighting vehicle engineer I've designed mounts for
50-cals. It's the impulse control that would be the
problem here, not to mention the issue of waves,
and the 30-foot lever arm. |
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Masts are quiet strong, but the tip top doesn't
have to deal with the whole of the wind force.
They're typically aluminum or carbon fibre to avoid
weight problems, which will also be an issue with
having an 80 lb gun and 100 lbs of ammo at the top
of your sailboat. It might make a good keel,
though. Humans have more compliance and
aluminum isn't good under essentially hammer
blows. |
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So you're saying it's impossible to mount a machine gun, no matter how small the caliber, on the top of a 15' tall 8 to 10" wide post no matter what material it's made of and no matter how the boat has been configured to accomodate this? |
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I don't know what a 30' lever arm is so I'd leave that out. This is a fake sail mast made specifically to hold a customized machine gun. It's for shooting, not sailing. |
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Nevertheless, it's still on top of a 30 foot mast,
which
happens to be shaking several feet as the waves
rock
the boat. How are you going to aim it? |
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200 lbs. up on top of that doesn't sound like a
good
idea. |
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If you're not going to sail the boat, then that's
perhaps another thing, because this boat would
not perform hardly at all, if it could stay righted. |
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15' is way short for a mast. My dad's 16 foot Hobie
Cat has a 26'. |
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//happens to be shaking several feet as the waves rock the boat. How are you going to aim it?// |
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Since you're an armored vehicle engineer, I don't need to tell you about actively stabilized gun platforms but I doubt that would be necessary. If the rate of fire caused any problematic deviation, which I seriously doubt, you could adjust the rate of fire as needed. |
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And you're not threading a needle here, you're probably shooting at an 8 foot long inflatable boat 10 or 20 yards away. |
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//200 lbs. up on top of that doesn't sound like a good idea.// |
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Boy, the gun you're proposing that would sink this idea just keeps getting bigger and bigger. An M-249 with a full case of ammo is 50 pounds, but yes, you might not want to put a howitzer up there. |
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//If you're not going to sail the boat, then that's perhaps another thing, because this boat would not perform hardly at all, if it could stay righted. // |
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The 50 pound machine gun, 30 or so pounds of aiming cameras and motors would be offset by additional weight in the keel. And obviously it would have an engine and propellor. |
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Got to respectfully disagree with you Ray, I don't see any insurmountable problem with putting a light machine gun on top of a tall pole. Let me put it this way, if somebody climbed into the crow's nest of a sailboat with a machine gun, would you tell them not to fire it because they'll flip the boat over? |
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Most sailboats don't have crow's nests these days.
For the ones that do, 50 lbs isn't going to matter. |
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It's not the flipping the boat over, it's the
whipping of all that weight on top of a long pole
while the boat bobs around, and consequently
having to beef up everything to deal with it. |
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Yes, I'm aware of gun-stabilization systems, even
some of the classified bits. |
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Have you been sailing on the ocean before? |
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Ok, would you tell somebody climbing into a crow's nest not to fire a machine gun because of the "whipping of all that weight on top of a long pole"? |
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And what's the problem with beefing up everything as necessary? So far you've decided this has to be a tiny, stock sailboat with a 200 pound 50 caliber machine gun on it's completely unmodified mast. At some point if you say the boat and mast is made out of butter with an M-1 tank strapped to the top with velcro, ok, yea it won't work. |
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Have I ever been sailing on the ocean? Yes, I know the ocean moves, I've addressed that. But I hear you, you don't believe this would work, I don't agree. |
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I think the gun maintenance issue is the most relevant towards the idea's shortcomings. Also, the fact that you want the cameras manned (who's gonna sit around and watch that shit all day?). Also, the fact that you think one gun will take care of an entire group of marauding pirates. Also, the fact that you think they won't enslave people and use them for decoys. Also, the fact that you don't consider any legal ramifications of autonomous weaponry. Also, the fact that you didn't use a sticky deck and fake children running around. |
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Presumably the objective is to "dissuade" the pirates from attempting to board. |
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Great success was achieved at a very low cost in equipment during WWII by the Holman Projector <link> |
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With almost no deck thrust, no muzzle flash, requiring little maintainance, and capable of using a wide range of ammunition, the Holman was very useful in short range engagements. |
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Firing illuminants as any unknown vessel approaches the ship is likely to have a higly deterrent effect. A suitable RADAR or LIDAR would not be too difficult to engineer, and illuminants fired on the approach bearing, wile non-lethal, are going to be a little disconcerting. |
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A few rounds of 7.62mm tracer from an L1A1 to follow it up are going to give anyone in an inflatable boat cause to consider. |
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//autonomous weaponry//
See automated AA gun link. |
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//fake children running around.//
Damn, do they have to be fake? |
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You can get one problem with having a recoilless weapon, save a bit of wear and tear on the mast, still gonna be a bit heavy though. Although if you made it propane powered (big tank somewhere below decks) and ran it caseless, you can toss out lots of bits like the extractors. There was one German experimental gun from 1944/45 which didn't use a conventional breech lock, it had a piston in a chamber, the gun was fired, the gas went into the chamber and balanced the push of the gas against the bolt, so it stayed closed, save some weight and a lot of parts. Never, ever say it used anywhere else...which seemed a pity. |
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I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but a single nuclear
warhead would sort Somalia out in no time. Compassion is
all very well and good but enough is, surely, enough. |
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"Kindnes costs nothing, but cruelty is more fun ..." |
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//I think the gun maintenance issue is the most relevant towards the idea's shortcomings.// |
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The gun would be hidden in a weather tight container and pop out when needed. |
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//Also, the fact that you want the cameras manned (who's gonna sit around and watch that shit all day?).// |
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Nobody would need to. Radar and other sensors would detect an approach and set off alarms, at which time the system could be manned. |
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//Also, the fact that you think one gun will take care of an entire group of marauding pirates.// |
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Yes, I think a machine gun would take care of an entire group of marauding pirates. That's the kind of job the machine gun was invented for. |
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//Also, the fact that you think they won't enslave people and use them for decoys.// |
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This is getting into the kind of argument like "What if they had an aircraft carrier and ten nuclear subs?" |
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//Also, the fact that you don't consider any legal ramifications of autonomous weaponry.// |
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It's not autonomous, it's remotely manned. But this thing would work equally well on lawyers. |
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//Also, the fact that you didn't use a sticky deck and fake children running around.// |
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The decks might get a little messy after you machine gunned a half dozen pirates off of it. Nothing a firehose wouldn't make short work of. |
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//It's not autonomous, it's remotely manned. But this thing would work equally well on lawyers.// |
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Just how many cases of marauding lawyers hijacking vessels on the high seas have there been? The public has a right to know! |
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Armed decoys were tried against U-boats in WWII <link>, but
proved
less
effective than the convoy system. |
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//Here's an even bigger one (yacht)
Note, still no crow's nest// |
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Ray, buddy. Wait a second, are you so desperate
to salvage a
victory out of your string of failed arguments that
you're now saying that the debate is somehow
whether or not modern yachts have crow's nests?
Ok, forget the crow's nest that I was using to help
visualize, I should have said "Climb up to the top
of the mast, hang on with one hand and shoot the
machine gun with the other because crow's nests
aren't standard issue equipment on sailboats any
more." Ok? |
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But for whatever it's worth, here's a little tiny ten
foot boat, much smaller
than what I'm proposing with a crow's nest like
structure on the top. If somebody fired the
machine gun from there would it flip the boat
over (link) or make it "whip around"? No, because
if the boat is balanced enough to hold a couple of
hundred pounds up there the addition of a little
recoil from a small machine gun wouldn't be able
to cause the structure to "whip around" any more
than it would cause a man standing on the ground
to "whip around". Any recoil could be easily
absorbed by a simple shock absorbing system. |
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And if you say there are no crows in a boat's crow's
nest and post links proving such I'll ignore you. I
mean, I like a good debate but this is getting a
little off track here. |
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I doubt Somalia has to be nuked, but a return to the days of volunteerism to fight in Africa like during the Boer War would probably solve the issue as well as perpetuate tribalist racist hatred of a kind only known in Africa for years to come. |
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I'd volunteer, but just to continue the old Irish tradition of fighting random wars no matter how foolish the allegiance. |
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doc, I had a much longer post I was going to post
to
describe all of the holes in this thing, but I
decided
to simply let it die, because you're not picking up
on
the issues anyways. So no, I'm not relying on the
crow's nest alone. |
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I'll say this: it's not primarily the gun recoil that I'm
concerned about, it's the weight in combination
with the height and the waves. Everything on a
mast is designed for optimum weight savings,
because the impulse forces in the stay wires are
tremendous under wave rocking loads. |
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Gun-stabilization systems are designed to cancel
terrain movement, some up and down and some
pitch. I'm not certain how they would be able to
compensate for violent fore-aft or side-to-side
motion. |
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You can build this thing, just don't expect to sail
it. |
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No, you've pointed out that YOU can't build this
thing
and sail it. And I'm sure
you're
right. |
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Actually, I'll take that back. I'm sure with a little work you, RayfordSteele COULD make this work. |
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I'll leave it at that instead. It's nicer. |
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//but this is getting a little off track here.// When did that ever stop anyone on here? |
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Anyway It's the crows I feel sorry for, like where are they going to get ear-protectors in their size? |
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// this thing would work equally well on lawyers // |
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We have bait cars in vancouver canada. complete
with a gps tracker, video surveillance, and remote
immobilizer, when they are stolen the car locks up
and the engine dies, so the police may apprehend
them. |
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Love those things. We had a tv show in the U.S.
where they stuck cameras in the cars and filmed
the whole process, from the thieves stealing the
car to the cops dragging them out and arresting
them. Great show but a little predictable. "Hey, I
bet
these guys get arrested too!" |
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I'd make it interesting and have the show's m.c.
come out and say to the perps: "Ok, you're looking
at 2 to 5 for grand theft auto. We're going to offer
you what we call the lightning round. If you can
outrun our cops, you'll get off scott free, but if
they catch you, that's an additional 2 years for
resisting arrest." Then play that music from
Jeopardy while the perps mull it over and the
cops in the background stand there smacking their
billy clubs into the palm of their
hands. "What'll it be guys? Scott free or an extra 2
years?" |
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Presumably, the cops just beat the shit outta them
either way. |
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