NationStates Jolt Archive

I have a question for people who have more of a military background then myself. Is it plausible, in modern times, for a naval vessel to be boarded and taken over in mid-battle? It never seems to happen in descriptions I've read of modern wars, so I'm confused. Big boats are expensive, and take a damn long time and serious experience to build.

Wouldn't capturing them be a solution to this problem, like the Romans did in the Punic wars?

Anyways, if such a thing is plausible, what would be an effective means of getting your soldiers on to the ship? (Assuming that the Roman "corvus" is out.)

it dosen't really happen in mid-battle, it owuld be rediculosly hard


if there was any type of boarding, it wouldn't be ship to ship
it would probably be done by some sort of elite insertion team, probably on small boats or a heli or something

also, the boarding would probably happen at night, when the target ship is by itself, in some sort of isolated area

I'd say it probably might work out 1 in 30 times, provided you took out the engines and most of the turrets you could probably do it but it would cost you quite a bit. Best just to stick with torpedoes.

Hypothetically? Absolutely. Hell, it happens all the time in the Indonesian Islands, but that's against relatively unarmed vessels.

You could have modern-day (or future) pirates, but, again, the cost of human life usually outweighs the rewards. If you loose a couple thousand people in order to grab maybe one Destroyer, then you'd be better off sinking the bloody thing and using those thousand people somewhere else.

And getting soldiers on the ship is just like the old days: get up close, jump/grapple on, then fight to gain controll of the ship/armory.

Ship boarding is done a lot in modern times, but never in a combat situation. Most of the time in combat fleets work with beyond visual range ordnance, so ships don't get close enough. But ship boarding is done in commerce raiding and stopping commerce period - the Americans recently boarded a Chinese ship headed to Palestine with rockets aboard.

Ship boarding is done a lot in modern times, but never in a combat situation. Most of the time in combat fleets work with beyond visual range ordnance, so ships don't get close enough. But ship boarding is done in commerce raiding and stopping commerce period - the Americans recently boarded a Chinese ship headed to Palestine with rockets aboard.

Oh, of course there's coast-guard style operations. Boarding smugglers and stuff. But the range ordnance is a good point. I didn't know that.

And hey, Time-Splitters: are you talking about piracy of commercial vessels? By the way: did you hear about that cruise ship off of Somalia? Chased off boarders with a real, live sonic weapon. Trippy stuff.

If you're having a Corvette fight someone's Frigate or Corvette, yeah, it's possible. But you're not going to take over a Dreadnaught.

Another problem is the fact that most ships wouldn't have enough crew to man both ships. The only situation it seems worthwhile is if you take over a higher quality ship of similar size, without taking heavy casualties. Although, you could board after getting a ship to surrender and take it, i don't think that is what you meant.

Well, normally when you plan on boarding a ship you always have a marine, or naval infantry, contingent on the ship as a compliment to the crew.

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Have you seen U-571? A submarine to submarine boarding action. :D

Well, back in the sixties, the North Koreans took over a US observation ship, the Pueblo, I believe, holding the crew hostage. But that vessel was relatively unarmed, having only a few .50 cal machine guns to defend itself. In theory, in a combat situation, you could try to takeover ships, but large fleets would be pretty hard to crack even if the ships were first disabled. Again most large-scale modern naval battles are done beyond visual range.

In the 70s a Cambodian boarding team took a U.S. patrol vessel and took the crew hostage.

With the Pueblo, it didn't fire any shots before the boarding action occurred, which was supported by subchasers as well as MiG-21s (the DPRKAF utilizes them, and others, extensively in the ground attack role). Taking over ships in any combat situation in NS can only be described as a wild dream, since a) there will likely be CIWS, machine guns, and even larger cannons on the ship; b) the boat/whatever will be intercepted most likely by another vessel before it reaches its target vessel, and; c) sailors are armed with rifles too. Don't forgot about the last point.

The problem is that while Modern naval ships no longer carry compliemnts of marines to board other ships and defend their own ship, Modern sailors are usually trained to fullfil the role of defending their own ship, additionally modern ships are built full of narrow corridors and easily defended passageways in which even lightly armed poorly trained soldiers could hold their own against much larger, better trained troops.

In the Punic wars for example an average ship had a crew of maybe thirty sailors, these sailors were often pressganged, shanghaied or slaves and thier only fighting experience (If any) would be tavern brawls. Ships layout still included narrow passages but the were usually straight and short, opening on large open crew areas and oar docks. The ships defense against boarders might have been as many as 20 marines or as few as six, the marines and the officers would be the only ones with weapons to prevent mutinies.

By contrast the average modern naval ship is crewed by about 300 trained sailors that usually either volunteered for the job or are serving out their legally required time in the military as a sailor. These sailors don't need to be watched for mutiny so there is a gun on board for every sailor and every sailor is trained to use it. Ships layouts are almost entirely long narrow corridors with 90 degree turns and T-junctions where ambushes can lay and wait. Corridors can be sealed of at either end to form dead ends that the sailors who know the layout can easily turn into bloodbaths for the boarders. HUndreds of years of ships being boarded and turned against their builders has resulted in ships and crews well able to hold their own against even the best trained Marines.

Thank you, because my dreadnoughts are about to be boarded by a bunch of crazed rebel Novacom marines.

He doesn't understand the concept of 30mm CICW point defenses and the fact that my 'noughts have about 20 5-inch ETC cannons onboard along with the twelve standard 18 inchers. Not to mention the fact that any hull breach could be contained and any boarders destroyed by the battalion of Marines onboard.

Silly Willy.

Just a quick point, but you do realise that the "sonic weapon" used was a recording of gunfire being played at extremely high volume, right? They just scared the pirates off by tricking them into thinking the boat was heavily armed.

As far as I know, and please correct me if I am wrong (I'm a pilot, not a sailor), the only tactical advantage to a modern-day ship-to-ship boarding would be for sabotage. Mind you, the boarding ship wouldn't be so much as a ship rather than a dinghy, or motorboat, or something of the sorts that would be small enough to be a hard target for a (so say) battleship's cannons or heavy ordanance to hit.

Mind you, small arms fire and other repelling-weaponry would tear the hell out of this boat when it got into range, but, if it survives by some miracle or another, then what? A small Marine strike force is going to take over an entire destroyer or battleship?

Of course not. But who said that the same strike team couldn't gain control of, so say, the bridge? Or engine room? Or possibly a heavy ordanance storage facility? One C4 charge on a Tomahawk Cruise Missile could cause a lot of damage when it goes off.

I can say during the Civil War in Nueve Italia, one destroyer was taken down in this way. But it was in dock. And at night. And the only ship in the harbor.
Not the point, however.

Therefore, I believe that the only advantage to boarding an enemy vessel is to quickly disable it from the inside, sparing your own vessels from using their weaponry. How your Marines would board the ship while remaining undetected, I don't know, but if it is ever apparent, I say try it. The benefits could be worth the risk: What's twenty or so soldiers dead if it takes down a capital ship?

Novas managed to land a whole bunch of marines, around 1,000 of them, onto my carrier deck despite withering CICW and SAM fire from my fleet (keeping in mind, of course, that the fleet is embattled against a force many times it's on size).

The only problem for him is that he landed on the deck, which is surrounded by 10 CICW guns.

My 30mm systems are going to have one hell of a time slaughtering his troops like pigs as they try to find a way into the ship. His goal is to capture and behead my admiral. Silly boy...

The Blood Guard which are Admiral Kukonois forces not mine, are boarding to cause as much havoc as possible, after all things get much harder when your crews are also fighting for their lives.

The General is meant to be evil, he collects the heads of enemy commanders as a hobby, of course though with these guns of yours aiming at the flight deck what will be defending you from attack from above?

Escorts, ofcourse, but anyway, I'd just state that those silly marines of yours would be dead in about six seconds, end of discussion.

To be honest a modern day combat boarding action is hopeless pointless as first you need to approach the target and doing so in a ship of the line would be far far too slow so are down to using either small fast boats, or helicopters, both of which are very very nice targets for CIWS be they guns or missile systems (basically you would be mounting a "boghammer" attack but with transports full of people). Then you soemhow need to gain access to a pretty much sealed vessel (you might get lucky and find the crew of an externally operated weapon still has thier door open i suppose, if not then you either spend a long time with plasma torchs or you have to carry huge piles of big heavy shaped breaching charges).
Now you are inside fighting a foe who knows the ship far better than you do and is likely able to trace where you are, can seal off sections and flood them with water/fire supressant (i hope you brought breathing gear) and has prepared defensive postions...

To be honenst if you can get small craft/helos that close you would better using equivelent weights of weaponary as the boarding crews (1000men would give you the ability to carry at least 100,000lbs of bombs...).

As for guys on your deck, if you aren't worried about lossing anythign not tied down just throw the vessel into a max speed turn and whatch as they all slide off.