You mean like taking control of a plane in flight and successfully flying it to its target?
Taking over an oil tanker at sea wouldn't be hard for those trained to do it. Like the plane, they don't have to "land" it, just get it near the target.
And how do you stop a loaded oil tanker going into San Francisco bay for example? Sinking it in the bay not knowing what a real threat it really is would be a disaster into itself as well.
And lastly, before the ship goes down, the bomb goes off, wherever it is.
Taking over an oil tanker at sea wouldn't be hard for those trained to do it. Like the plane, they don't have to "land" it, just get it near the target. And how do you stop a loaded oil tanker going into San Francisco bay for example? Sinking it in the bay not knowing what a real threat it really is would be a disaster into itself as well. Au contraire. I have extensive knowledge of ships - spent 6 years in the US Navy.
"Taking over" the oil tanker at sea requires that (a) they find it, (b) they capture it, (c) they hoist a very heavy nuke on board.
Capturing it in the Persian Gulf while it is loading oil is the easiest - easy to find, easier to get aboard, easier to get the nuke on board. Ability to make the the corporation running it and the US Navy to think everything is okay while they do this and
then run it all the way over here - NO WAY!
Okay, so they capture it on the high sea's, preferably only maybe 24 hours before it is scheduled to come into port (e.g. reach target from their perspective.)
Pretty hard. Its actually pretty hard to find any ship out in the ocean without satellite surveillance or a major Navy to be the eyes. Even if they have a couple of crewmen on board (and they would) they are likely to be "deck apes" or cooks. They might be able to get the position information and radio it - but the ship is moving. Takes time to match course and speed. And the closer they get, the oil tanker will see them. The control room sits pretty high up. Then, the capture. The sides of those oil tankers are like cliffs. Very difficult to try to run some Zodiacs along side and then climb those steel cliffs. Then they have to capture the control room and the radio room. You think the security measures for the oil tankers haven't thought of all the scenarios? You think they don't have a coded messages and means to yell "Help Help"? They do. Etcetera.
Like I said - not easy at all. Reaction time to the airliner highjacking was short - and they had the advantage that the US was not thinking it would happen. Reaction time to respond to a hijacked oil tanker is very long - plenty of time to respond. And that is a scenario that the military has trained for.