New Russian Weapon Hides In Shipping Container 618
shmG writes "A Russian company is marketing a devastating new cruise missile system that can be hidden inside a shipping container, giving any merchant vessel the capability to wipe out an aircraft carrier. Potential customers for the formidable 'Club-K' system include Kremlin allies Iran and Venezuela, say defense experts. They worry that countries could pass on the satellite-guided missiles, which are very hard to detect, to terrorist groups. This is a scary new development in the global arms race that allows for the proliferation of cruise missiles to anyone who will pay for them — even terrorists. This could be the next big thing in strategic weapons, as they can appear anywhere there is a container ship. The company even made a commercial and posted it onto the Internet." The article notes that a Russian defense expert said that "as far as he understood, the Club-K was still at the concept stage."
this is news? (Score:1, Informative)
the Soviets had mobile *ICBMS* for decades, namely the RT-2UTTH Topol M. No fancy container, but really, with an ICBM who gives a shit?
Janes is slipping (Score:5, Informative)
"Nobody's ever done that before."
Most [wikipedia.org] missiles [wikipedia.org] on [wikipedia.org] ships [wikipedia.org] are [wikipedia.org].
Sure there are some that aren't [wikipedia.org] but most of those are land based where conditions are a little more friendly.
Sure making it look like a shiping conatiner maybe new, but missiles in boxes is hardly cutting edge stuff.
Re:Nice headline, but not the main issue (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Informative)
Remember back a few years ago, an IED did some damage to the USS Cole (Arleigh Class Destroyer).
As for taking out a capital ship, such as a carrier, would require some planning, some skill and a damn good bit of coordination... good luck with that.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Informative)
Something further to point out, if enough dollars were thrown at this, how many such 4 missile containers could you fit in a single height on a typical container ship?
Lets see, the biggest ships, emma maersk, can have (if they load a little light) 506 40' containers with open top, these suckers look like the longer 80' type tho, and would likely need some extra room for the hinge system on the end.... lets say 126 launch containers with 4 cruise missiles each. I want to see the carrier battle group that can stop that many incoming missiles :)
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:4, Informative)
You never, ever, ever camouflage your military systems to look like civilian infrastructure.
What, pray tell, was the main tactic employed by Iran against Israel in 2006 ? It wouldn't by any chance be ... camouflaging weapons as civilian housing blocks ?
We're talking here about people who use kindergartens to camouflage launch sites. Is there really any serious doubt that they'll use container ships ? Especially knowing that western media have for dozens of years always blamed the people taking out the missile launch site, and not the bastards using human shields ?
Get real.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you read the Geneva Conventions? You'll find something about combatants being required to wear distinctive badges, signs or uniforms. At first it might appear that those are there to protect soldiers from being shot by "franc tireurs". Nothing could be further from the truth.
As to gaining the trust of the population, you've got to be joking. They don't even trust the people from the next valley. The whole "me and my brother against my cousin" kind of thing.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Informative)
***I can't believe it's possible to get anything bigger than a football close enough to a cruiser, bypassing all anti-missile systems.***
Believe it. You may be correct about the open ocean under wartime conditions against an unsophisticated opponent. But major vessels have been taken out by clever opponents in training exercises. Here's a quote from the Guardian's story on Operation Millenium Challenge -- a major war game conducted in 2002.
***In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a halt.***
And here's a link to the Guardian story. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/06/usa.iraq [guardian.co.uk]
And, of course, islamic fundamentalists did put a pretty big hole in the USS Cole in 2000 using half their navy (one small boat -- their other boat sank when they overloaded it with explosives). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing [wikipedia.org]
And NPR told me the other day the US Navy is lugging some Somali pirates back to the US for trial after the pirates attempted to board and loot not one, but two, US destroyers. These may not be the smartest pirates in the Red Sea. But they did apparently manage to get into close proximity to the ships.
Some clarifications from an American naval officer (Score:5, Informative)
A few good points have been made (but need a few editions), and some dumb points have been made. Let's run through them:
1. The SS-N-22 is a hush-hush subject because it basically reduces our carriers to floating targets
Not the case. Details about the SS-N-22 (commonly called the Sunburn) are unclassified. Every ship in the US navy has tactics to defeat it, though obviously some classes of ships are better at it than others. Actually, the missile in the video behaves nothing like a Sunburn; it appears to have satellite guidance, Over the Horizon (OTH) targeting capability, and a terminal sprint vehicle. Thus, it's closer to an advanced Sizzler missile (SS-N-27) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-N-27 [wikipedia.org] than a Sunburn.
2. Somebody mentioned Exocet missiles and their relative effectiveness. Exocet missiles, to the US navy, are kids' stuff. My ship (an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer) is basically armed to the teeth and can shoot one own without so much as a second thought, but even ships built with self-defense as a third priority are in no real danger. Exocet was a threat when they made the movie Top Gun, but not today.
3. Someone mentioned targeting requirements. This is a good point. If a ship expects to use this in an anti-ship role, it will either have onboard radars for detection and missile control (US is the only navy that has a radar which does both), or receive targeting information from another ship/sub/satellite. In any of these cases, the targeted ship can detect the radar, and any missile control radar it detects is considered a hostile act under international law and triggers the captain's right of self defense (read: he can shoot at you if you point missile control radar at his ship). Also, any merchant ship leaving port with a bunch of innocent container boxes PLUS high-powered missile control radar is, to say the least, suspicious.
4. Several people mentioned the Phalanx Close In Weapon System (CIWS, pronounced See-Whiz). This is the last resort for most classes of ships. It can only shoot out a few miles, but it's very effective when it does fire. If this system is firing, by the way, then the missile has somehow made it past your three to four other layers of defense, not even counting soft kill options like jamming whatever active radar or semi-active/passive sensor is guiding the missile.
5. A few people mentioned the ethical issue of arming merchant ships. This is always considered in warplans, from low to very high scale. Bottom line is that it's a dumb idea that will get you one free shot and then cost you your whole merchant fleet.
6. Ignoring all of that, no matter how effective any weapon system is, at least in a shipboard environment, you only get one free shot. After that free shot it becomes a hot war scenario and every ship captain will change from "ask first, ask again, check three times and only fire when fired upon" to "ask once and if you think he's hostile, shoot." It can even go further to "Check to see if your'e sure he's a friend, and if you can't tell, shoot." At that point the name of the game is ship detection, not missile technology.
This weapon system doesn't revolutionize warfare at all. Business as usual.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:4, Informative)
Umm, weren't Q-ships used precisely because of Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare? Chicken or the egg?
Re:Containment (Score:4, Informative)
Citation needed maybe?
Worlds largest arms exporters (in 2007, Source [wikipedia.org]):
(Damn but the UK is fucked, they used to be a contender).
(why is it so fucking hard to do a table in slashcode?).
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:2, Informative)
In order for such a blockade to work, you'd need the cooperation of China and Russia, though (it's very hard for progressives to count borders it seems. Or at least no-one ever blames Egypt for a certain very unpopular blockade). This is probably a lot harder to get than you seem to think.
Re:Some clarifications from an American naval offi (Score:2, Informative)
Apparently you're uniformed, anti-US, or outright stupid. As you're a European I'll vote "anti-US".
Don't confuse the land-based ABM debacles with the SM-3 [wikipedia.org] and the like.
Re:Some clarifications from an American naval offi (Score:3, Informative)
I'm also thinking of that nasty little book in the 80s (I do apologize for not remembering the title right now) which took a long, hard look at the US and USSR weapon efficiency; the last combined NATO maneuver in the north sea showed all (all!) carriers being (simulated to be) sunk on the very first day.
Well, you're talking about a war between equals in that case. The US carriers would obviously be vulnerable to the USSR back in the 80s, just like every other US or USSR capability of the day. All you're suggesting is that it is uncertain who would win WWIII, and I think most US military planners would agree with that. The only matchup that really comes close to US-vs-USSR today would be US-vs-the-world, and why would anybody want to even try that?
An aircraft carrier these days is a major waste of space, and primarily used for top-class idio^H^H^H^Hpeople to brag^H^H^H^Hprotect our freedom.
Carriers get lots of use today. Clearly you don't agree with how they're used, and many would agree with you. However, from a military perspective they clearly do get things done. Even if the only thing they were good at was bombing 3rd world nations without the consent of adjacent countries, that would be a capability that has some value.
Ah, I see. Of course, you certainly need super-special radar to detect a target, right? Normal shipping radar is certainly not sufficient, right? And we cannot possibly hook up a new system to an existing radar - would be too cheap to build...
Ordinary shipping radar is fine for locating a ship, if you can get in range (carrier groups of course wouldn't let you do that). In reality you'd need airborne or submarine radar to actually get close enough to spot a capital ship that is screened. Both of those would be considered threatening. You also need communications between the detection platform and the launch platform. Fire control radar isn't needed for a GPS-guided missile, although a working GPS system is (which of course the US and allies would disable in an actual shooting war). Inertial guidance actually works pretty well if you know the relative position of the launch platform and the target (which actually isn't easy to do without GPS if the target is located by a different platform).
Which already is more or less how civilians are treated by the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That's pretty-much how civilians have been treated by every army in every war in history. That's why the term "martial law" doesn't generally engender warm fuzzy feelings. To the army there is your squad, your chain of command, and everybody else...
I'm not the biggest fan of every US policy in the last decade, but if you're concerned about dead civilians then that's something you think about BEFORE you go to war. The US army by any standard is at least as caring about non-combatants as any I'm aware of in history.