Possible Terrorist attack on French tanker!

[Admiral Piett]

You think France should nuke countries if a terrorist strike occurs? Don;t you think france and the EU would be better off with an inbetween option?

I do not know,you want always to use maximum firepower.

When I said a cigarette I was not serious(tankers burn from time to time in anyway).
BTW,mr Sea Skimmer,merchants crews are not large enough to man all those weapons.

[Sea Skimmer]

You think France should nuke countries if a terrorist strike occurs? Don;t you think france and the EU would be better off with an inbetween option?

I do not know,you want always to use maximum firepower.

When I said a cigarette I was not serious(tankers burn from time to time in anyway).
BTW,mr Sea Skimmer,merchants crews are not large enough to man all those weapons.

Did you happen to miss the part where I mentioned hiring former Pakistani army personal to man them? I guess so.

[Admiral Piett]

You think France should nuke countries if a terrorist strike occurs? Don;t you think france and the EU would be better off with an inbetween option?

I do not know,you want always to use maximum firepower.

When I said a cigarette I was not serious(tankers burn from time to time in anyway).
BTW,mr Sea Skimmer,merchants crews are not large enough to man all those weapons.

Did you happen to miss the part where I mentioned hiring former Pakistani army personal to man them? I guess so.

Yes,excuse me.I have read only the first line and I have skipped the rest.

[TrailerParkJawa]

The company's could randomly arm the ships from time to time, or hire a security firm to protect and patrol areas around the ships.

Not sure what the rules are on private companies arming their ships. Are they allowed to protect themselves ? I mean you could make the case that terrorists are essential pirates, right?

Ive always wondered if you could just plop a Hummver Avenger or a
Marine LAV-AD on a platform bolted to the deck. That would provide limited anti-air and anti-boat protection. However, its probably easier to just mount 25 mm and man them with cheap labor, like Skimmer was saying.

Also, just one Avenger or LAV at the bow would not protect the rest of the ship.

[weemadando]

It looks like its been pretty much comfirmed as a terrorist attack.

Not yet, but it is looking likely.

So this leaves whats europes response to this. Now I hear that this rapid reaction force is supposedly ready by now (its not). If it gets into Europes head that these people just want to kill anyone who isn;t a muslim, what will they do? Negotiate or condemn the US for causing this...somehow? Maybe the US will veto Euro unilateralism in responding to this act through the UN. bahaha.

And maybe the US will get a UN mandate to attack Iraq... Or maybe they will invade without a UN mandate and open themselves up to legitimate attacks from other UN nations defending the sovereignity of a nation from an agressor. (ref: Kuwait, circa 1990)

Boy euroland wasted all that good will after 9/11, I don;t think americans givbe 2 shits whether europe gets overrun by muslims and they institute the sharia on them. oh well, don;t have a decent military guess what happens.

all the might of the American military didn't stop September 11, or these current shootings, or Oklahoma City... Do you see a pattern?

And do you think the rest of the world gives a single shit if the US is over run by fanatical christians demanding the overthrow of every other religion and political power? Shit - Sorry, too late.

Guess no need to visit europe since the religous police will be beating all the good looking chicks and stuffing them into burkas. have fun living in an islamic republic!!! I will send you postcards reminding you how bad it is living in facist america with john aschroft!!

Have fun when Falwell gets elected.

[Stormbringer]

But the terrorists are insane. Do they really want the E.U more commited in the war? That's what going to happen..

They're nutso fundamentalists who'll strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up to kill their enemies. How much more insane does it get?

[Master of Ossus]

France will figure out some way that they can avoid responsibility for it, and decide it's not worth hurting the people of Iraq. I once read a study suggesting that as much as a third of their oil is illegal, so I don't think they'll be willing to do anything to protect their citizens.

[Enlightenment]

Latest news on this incident is that the hull is blown outward rather than inward, which would tend to indicate an on-board explosion rather than an Islam boat. The master of the ship is also saying that he had a fire on board before the blast.

The absolute worst case scenario here would be if the incident turned out to be al Qiada trial-run designed to test the feasibility of planting GPS or INS fuzed bombs inside tankers. This is a problem for the obvious reason that the only kind of bomb large enough for such crude geographic fuzing to be useful is the kind of bomb that generates a mushroom cloud.

[Edi]

All it takes is gas fumes and and a flame, and since it's an oil/petrol tanker, not an unreasonable occurrence given there was a fire on board...

Edi

[TrailerParkJawa]

Crude oil does not ignite easy.


As to the latest reports, I read a reuters report that the blast was inward.

So I guess we will have to wait and see.

[Azeron]

Yo would need a significant detonation to cause crude oil to ignite.

Tankers like these are double hauled, if the craft detonated on it, and cuased a secondary explosion on the inside, it would also have outward shards as well.

Lets face facts, it was a terrorist attack.

[Sea Skimmer]

Tankers have quite thin skins. It possible that a bomb could have penetrated part way through and then gone off. That’s what happens when torpedoes hit thin-skinned ships.

A rocket on the back would do it. They could have used a modified cratering charge; the hole size is about right. It's very unlikely that a large blast would be caused by the bomb blast anyway. Crude just doesn't go up very easily without prolonged heating. Even hits with Exocets and Silkworms didn't cause the oil the explode when they hit tankers. They caused fires.

Very likely a small bomb blew a hole in the ship, after which the oil spread out, vaporized from the fire and then exploded.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yo would need a significant detonation to cause crude oil to ignite.

Tankers like these are double hauled, if the craft detonated on it, and cuased a secondary explosion on the inside, it would also have outward shards as well.

Also the hit was into a ballast tank. I'd suspect the charge sent fragments into the inboard oil tanks. Oil flowed into the ballast tank and then exploded once it had space to vaporize into.

[TrailerParkJawa]

I still wonder why they hit a French tanker. I wonder if they were just "testing" to see what kind of damage a small boat can do to a tanker.

[Azeron]

It doesn't matter really. They just want to hurt commerce, not posin thier people for th next 100 years. Just damage it enough to put it out of commission for a year or so, and force the navy to put boats closer to the shore where they are more vulnerable.

I think the tankers were just a lore.

[Sea Skimmer]

I still wonder why they hit a French tanker. I wonder if they were just "testing" to see what kind of damage a small boat can do to a tanker.

As its been pointed out, for the end effect it doesnt matter. Chances are it was the first tanker which presented its self as such an easy target, stopped and three miles from shore. If they wiated they increased there chances of being cought so they struck fast.

I don't think many US flagged tankers enter Yemens ports anyway, less then 80 are in service in the world world, most US owned companies reflagged to Panama or Liberia decades ago.