My partner worked in operations for a Malaysian shipping company, bulk carriers. They would routinely hire mercenaries when going through dangerous routes as well as razor wiring the perimeter of the ship.
A mark of how shallow I am is to boast that my girlfriend fights real pirates!!
That’s the kind of thing that only works in movies. Shooting from a moving vehicle, you will never hit anything you intend to. From a boat? Even less likely. To another moving vehicle that is also a boat? Not a chance in hell.
Furthermore even if you hit it, it’s small arms fire on an engine block, which won’t do anything unless you get incredibly lucky and hit the ignition coil or something. Even a fuel line or coolant line wouldn’t necessarily stop them for a long while.
I did mention later that it does seem that at least the US Coast Guard does successfully employ sharpshooters to disable boat engines. I can’t say if other countries do the same but it is still technically doable, is it a good idea? Probably not, would be interesting to know what tactics can be used to stop these ships though.
That’s very interesting! I wonder what circumstances are required for that to work. Even shooting from a car doesn’t work well- it’s near impossible to hit anything, which is part of why cops never do it. From a boat?! Impressive that they can do that.
I got a private tour of the Coast Guard facility at Key West once (long story) and got a ride on one of their newest pursuit boats (longer story). Human traffickers were their target and those guys have very fast boats. The pursuit boat I rode on was… faster. I’ve never seen horsepower like this on anything apart from a locomotive. You had to be strapped in with a five point harness and this thing would do 70 knots without breaking a sweat. Even crazier, it was all directional thrusters, and could stop from 70 knots in twice it’s own length. It must have been 3Gs. It was incredible.
That was a long way of saying that, to your original question, their approach to stopping boats was “be faster”. They can’t run forever and you can harass them until they give up, basically. The Coast Guard always has more fuel.
That’s pretty cool 
must be a hell of an experience being on one of those boats though i know they have a difficult job to do.
Always.
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