Machine guns and automatic grenade launchers on Western naval platforms for countering asymmetric threats in the 21st Century

摘要

For nearly two decades, the increasingly frequent involvement of many Western (and not only) naval forces with counter-terrorism, counter-piracy, organised crime prosecution (e.g. drug trafficking) and border security missions against new threats such as illegal immigration into the marine environment, brought their warships confronting with a series of asymmetric threats, such as pirate boats, armed speedboats or boats carrying terrorists or piloted by suicide bombers, small boats trapped with explosives for suicide missions (boat-borne IED), etc.Therefore, the corresponding countermeasures had to be found. A turning point for this is considered by many to be the attack on the United States Navy (US Navy) Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Cole (DDG-67) by a speedboat carrying C4 explosives, while she was being refuelled in Yemen's Aden harbour, on the night of October 12,2000.The terrorists' small boat joined a group of harbour ships aiding the moored Cole refuel, and succeeded in reaching the US warship unchallenged.Their boat then exploded in a massive explosion that ripped through the Cole's port side. The suicide attack shocked the US Navy as it caused heavy casualties among the ship's crew (17 dead and 39 injured) and severe property damage on the destroyer that kept it out of action for about a year. One of the main measures taken to prevent such attacks was to install an increased number of medium and heavy machine guns on each warship (combat or auxiliary), to provide close protection from such asymmetric surface threats.