Militants Planned to Target US Ships With Hijacked Pakistani Frigate

originally posted by: crazyewok
a reply to: HardCorps

1 ship? Against the US navy? Plus the British and French Navy too who would have been on top of this too?

I mean really? Al Qaeda really like to dream big don't they?

Your talking about a barely trained skeleton screw trying to operate a ship they likely wont be familiar with.

1 US or allied war plane would turn it into a burning hulk and no way its going to win a ship to ship engagement.

It reads like a skit from South Park.

Terrorists steal ship and celebrate. Pakistan phones the US and before the ship sails half a mile, a missile drops out of the sky and destroys the ship. Idiots.

Remember what they did the the USS Cole with just a couple dinghies?

If they had enough people on board not really sure what the 6 in the dinghy were really needed for.

a reply to: HardCorps
Not a very well thought out plan, imo. No way that ship would have gotten close enough to USN ships.

originally posted by: crazyewok
Soon as the ship was reported seized and it would have been sunk. At WORST a missile may have hit a allied ship or two but damage likely would have been light and that only if they were not alert.

If you read the report, the plan was to let things go on as normal and only seize the ship once they were amongst the Task Force.

They could have easily let lose some of the C-802's on board, causing more than "light damage". Many surface ships these days are simply not armoured in the slightest, the idea being to avoid being hit in the first place. This particular ship in the PN is equipped with 2 x 4 cell SSM launchers, so they could have let loose the whole slew of missiles and probably sank a couple of vessels before the Allied ships even knew what was going on.

I'm all for bigging up our Navy (and other Armed forces) but we know what happens to ships when they're hit - you yourself mentioned the Falklands. After all, HMS Sheffield was sunk by a single Exocet missile which didn't even explode!

a reply to: stumason

Thats even more of a stupid plan.

How can a crew big enough to seize a vessel that size remain hidden?

O wait they cant hence why they got caught!

With ships like that if the Capitan got a whiff of a issue he could have locked the weapon systems down. Plus it would have taken time to seize a vessel that time giving the task force enough time to A) send troops aboard B) Just sink the bloody thing


Its just pie in the sky dreaming from Al Qaeda.

a reply to: crazyewok

Well yeah, it was a daft plan, but all they need to do on a modern warships weapons (if it's setup is anything like a RN warship) is take the Operations room - anything in there can be operated by 1 bloke. All they'd need would be 30-40 seconds and they could let rip with the entire anti-ship arsenal on board.

Of course, the ship would be sunk in response, but they'd have been able to take out 4, 5, 6 or even more Allied ships if they weren't at a high state of readiness - they'd have no chance to engage CIWS and shoot down the missiles.

a reply to: crazyewok

I have to agree with stumason.
These were real Naval officers, in uniform with the proper ID's. those first officers did board the ship with no problems. it was the watch gunner who didn't like the smaller craft coming astern and fired the warning shot.

The plan failed...true...
But the underlying story here that Al Qaeda has managed to recruit members of the Pakistani military. This time it was navy officers trying to take control of a Frigate... Who's to say there are not more officers out there? What wil lthey try for next?

a reply to: crazyewok

Its just pie in the sky dreaming from Al Qaeda.

Looks like someone in a certain organization has watched a few to many Steven Seagal movies.

originally posted by: tsurfer2000h
a reply to: crazyewok

Its just pie in the sky dreaming from Al Qaeda.

Looks like someone in a certain organization has watched a few to many Steven Seagal movies.

beat me to it. lol

But seriously as soon as the Pak's told the US that they lost one of their ships to al qaeda, a tomohawk would be in the air in seconds and bye bye frigate...

a reply to: boomer135

Na my bet would have been India shat a brick and sunk it first

As soon as the US navy got word of the rogue ship they would have gone to GQ and wait for the rogue ship.

The US Navy ships have everything they need to defend themselves from a rogue Pakistani ship.