> People chronically underestimate how difficult it is to get enough conventional explosive on target to sink a major naval vessel, even ignoring the extensive active defenses.
American ships, certainly. Russian ships? Oh boy. The Ukrainians, a country with no navy to speak of, sunk the Russian flagship Moskva to widespread memefied acclaim, a bunch of other Black Sea assets and are now taking potshots at the shadow fleet.
Well, there was that small incident that nearly sunk that ship: https://www.fbi.gov/history/cases-and-criminals/uss-cole-bom...
I'm guessing with a few more tries to get the right positioning and amount of explosives, those terrorists could blow up US ships as well as the Ukrainians do Russian ones.