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."
Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hope a single cruise missile can't take out an aircraft carrier, if they can, then you have far bigger problems that missiles in merchant ships. They or their escorts should have the defenses to evade or destroy most missile types.
The world is being run by a pack of baboons (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this a response to yesterday's story about the USA's dick-waving about building new missiles that can reach anywhere on Earth...?
Makes total sense for certain uses (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually when I read this earlier in today's news paper I thought it makes total sense from a military/strategic point of view. And I was actually wondering why no-one else had thought of this before. Or maybe they are just not advertising it openly.
When it comes to transportation and handling of the equipment, a shipping container is great as it is standardised and fits easily on vessels, trains, trucks, and can be handled with standard lifting equipment.
The down side of course is the disappearance of the civil/military divide, which of course has already happened in many conflicts.
Simple resolution (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a simple resolution to this new weapon: countries known to be in the market for it will have their civilian merchant fleet classified as legitimate military targets.
Depends on the guidance system, I guess (Score:4, Insightful)
Unsophisticated missiles are not THAT hard to get a hold of already, ranging from Palestinian homebrews to enhanced Scuds.
But they don't have a great success rate, especially against military targets, and notably naval ones.
Exocets, on the other hand, do have a good success rate, and can be launched from improvised platforms, as proven by the Argentines during the Falklands conflict.
Whilst a major asset such as carrier is normally well-protected by a screen of other ships, it could be very vulnerable when in confined areas, such as the Straits of Hormuz...
Would the Russian Government be happy to hand-out weapons that could just as easily be used against them? Maybe not.
It's perhaps more likely that the Iranians will develop increasingly sophisticated weapons themselves. They're already quite well advanced...
Re:Makes total sense for certain uses (Score:3, Insightful)
Well if you take into account that part of winning a war is limiting your adversaries access to resources this makes perfect sense. If you go to war with the US you are pretty sure that they will try and dominate the skies, and with their numerical advantage in most conflicts this will soon be the case.
Now you are limited to shipping, and if you can arm your merchants you have a way of potentially protecting your lifelines. In WWII this was what kept Britain alive, being able to protect their merchants against attacks by Germany.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly my first thought.
I can't believe it's possible to get anything bigger than a football close enough to a cruiser, bypassing all anti-missile systems.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hope a single cruise missile can't take out an aircraft carrier, if they can, then you have far bigger problems that missiles in merchant ships. They or their escorts should have the defenses to evade or destroy most missile types.
Precisely.
First of all, carriers are escored by... carrier battle groups [wikipedia.org]!
The container ship would have to have a really good excuse for being anywhere near the group in the first place, and would then have to evade battleships on the way to the centre of the fleet where the carrier is, under the fire the whole way, and then the missile it launches will have to make it past the batteries of anti-missile systems like the Phalanx [wikipedia.org].
Err... no, this won't be taking down aircraft carriers any time soon.
What it could do however is allow the equivalent of guerrilla warfare on the high seas. Container ships could target cruise liners, merchant vessels, etc... and if nobody was around to see the attack, they might even make it away and claim innocence later. Even the survivors wouldn't see much, because it's fairly simple to attack "over the horizon".
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree that the defensive armament of a carrier battle group is intended to defend against precisely this sort of attack, the container ship would not have to be near: this sort of cruise missile typically has ranges of the order of 200 miles. You cannot enforce a 200 mile radius exclusion circle round your battle group. The missile will fly most of this distance at the height of a hundred or sofeet, so it is vulnerable only as it approaches the screening ships - which is why they are there.
Re:Simple resolution (Score:3, Insightful)
More than that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite independently of whether that weapon is vaporware or not, the fact remains that advances in military hardware will end up percolating to the general public, if said public has enough money. What some years away were classified chips nowadays are available off-the-shelf. Guidance software, once leaked, is easy to copy. A disgruntled scientist is all that is needed to transfer loads of tech. Everybody keeps getting better at making things that fly. Look at the advance of the Chinese weaponry in the last years. They simply throw enough money at it, and they got mostly all the tech they needed. In some years, everybody and its dog will have enough firepower to down an aircraft carrier. I've seen posts saying that they should be able to block most missiles. Well, that's all right, except when you are faced with a hundred of them at the same time.
In a similar note, I'm not altogether sure that the recent move to the "non-nuclear ICBM" is a smart one. People are scared of using nuclear weapons, which is a sound attitude. That leads to treaties of non proliferation and generic agreement on not allowing the aforesaid proliferation. But that doesn't apply to other explosives, even if you are equally dead by a bullet than by a H-bomb. So what is now a cutting-edge technology (nnICBMs), will in ten years perhaps be available to mostly anybody in the world, and there is no non-proliferation treaty to pursue anybody for it.
Re:Containment (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say that it would be sufficient to ship the warhead in a container and then detonate it when it arrives at the right port.
A decent sized hydrogen bomb in a container would be able to cause some mess.
Re:Simple resolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that's about as reasonable as classifying every inhabitant of a country that disguises soldiers as civilians as legitimate military targets.
Way to go, Rambo! Keep shooting those goodwill bullets!
Oh, and by the way, if you're an American ... even your own generals now realize that half of winning the war is in winning the trust of people, not shooting them...
Re:Makes total sense for certain uses (Score:2, Insightful)
Furthermore you're assuming countries like Iran would even be interested in protecting their civilian population in the first place (they certainly displayed NO concern whatsoever for Lebanese lives in 2006, using them as human shields).
Furthermore if Iran started a war because their conventional resources are running out, they could make the case that the only way to protect their civilian population is to win the war (this is why some people say Iran is at least as likely to attack Saudi Arabia as it is to attack Israel). In most wars, if the attacking party would have done nothing, that would have had results as bad as losing the war they started (historically most wars were started to conquer resources that were economically necessary).
And then there's the "issue" that this is a war crime. Camouflaging military equipment as civilian. But wait, how many Iranians are in jail for doing just that in 2006 ? How many muslims are in jail for that ? Oh wait ... none. The more liberal media don't even mind the use of human shields anymore.
Of course, the only way to adapt to that attitude is to start firing on civilians as a matter of policy.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. You know what else will never happen any time soon? Taking down a brand new 1.1 Billion dollar guided missile destroyer with a mere rubber dinghy [wikipedia.org]. That is a preposterous idea, isn't it? Perfectly impossible. If it's impossible for a diesel sub to make on your major carrier group [dailymail.co.uk] then what are the odds for that to happen? Impossible, I say.
So, as you see, it's pretty reasonable to assume that a major threat that is capable of rendering one of your main branch of your armed forces completely useless is simply not a thread. Just dig your head into the sand and let's keep mindlessly hammering on the "we are invulnerable" mantra. That does wonders, all right.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even what are classed as short range cruise missiles have a range of 100s of kilometres, long range missiles go up to and above 2500km range. It isn't really feasible to operate a carrier with the restraint of not going within 300km of shore or any commercial vessel.
The containers being on shore is a complete non issue. The whole point is that the missiles are can be loaded on to and launched from any commercial ship that can carry a shipping container. If you were going to use it to blow up a port you wouldn't need a $10,000,000 missile delivery system you could just fill a container full of regular explosives.
The point of these weapons is that they can be transported and positioned for launch without being detected and that they are flexible so you can wither load it on a truck for land operations or on to a ship for a naval strike.
I don't really see a terrorist organisation bothering with something like this for most terrorist attacks a truck filled with explosives would do the same job a hell of a lot cheaper. Precision missile strikes aren't really necessary if you have suicide bomber willing to drive the truck right up to the target.
The danger would come nation states buying up a load of these and launching strikes from commercial ships during a conflict significantly blurring the lines between military and civilian vessels. Which would lead to a significant increase in civilian casualties due to civilian vessels being labeled as threats.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:1, Insightful)
Hate to float a turd but... there has been a cruse missile with these capabilities for sometime now. The military won't generally acknowledge this fact because doing so would kill the budget for big carriers.
Yeah that is a turd because the second sentence seems to be something you pulled out of your ass.
Those might be able to sink a carrier but to even attempt to do so you're going to have launch them from extreme range because if it is wartime and you're hostile you're going to have a hell of a time getting even that close to a carrier battle group before they get twitchy and decide to sink you. You might manage to pull it off in peace time but you'd still probably wind up getting sunk yourself, if not by the carrier then by the escorts.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please update your definitions. To groups like Al Qaeda, anything American owned (whether state or private) is a military target. For Hamas that would be anything Israeli owned. Don't forget that. One man's freedom fighter is the other man's terrorist.
Re:Let's just kill everyone first, then we win (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, because we all know diplomacy works with raving lunatics like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Ahmedinejad...
I supposed the U.N. could have just sat down and had a cup of tea with the bad guys to stop genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, Tibet.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are a lot harder to sink than you might imagine. It's not that easy to sink a ship that displaces 100,000 tons, short of nuclear weapons. The real danger is in having them damaged to the point that they can't conduct air operations. That's as good as sinking them from a mission standpoint and much easier to achieve.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
DDG != CVN. The Sheffield displaced 4,820 tons. A Nimtiz Class Aircraft Carrier displaces around 100,000 tons.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:5, Insightful)
And I want to see a terrorist group that can afford 126 of these systems (not to mention the ship and trained personnel to actually operate the system), or a government that would go to that much effort just to take down a ship when conventional aircraft strikes would be much more efficient and effective.
Seriously, this is much ado about nothing. There are a multitude of powerful weapons that are way more portable than this (like Stringer missiles) that terrorists could potentially use but never have (unless you count the time we GAVE them Stingers [historycommons.org]). Even Iran isn't stupid enough to give these yahoos their top-grade stuff.
Re:Containment (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called ethics, and I know for a fact that not all swedes lack that trait.
Re:Containment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:2, Insightful)
Freedom fighters , terrorists, are not bound by rule of law or order. Hamas will fire rockets from the top schools that their own childern are in.
When people think of 9/11. It is always the trade centers that are talked about. Targeting of the pentagon while devastating was at least a military target.
Very few complain when Hamas bombs the isreali military. They only complain when the target can't fight back. Freedom fighters target militaries and their leadership. Terrorists targetthose who can't fight back or use civilians to shield themselves from militaries.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
One may joke about Russian tech, but they are good at one thing : building missiles that bypass American protections.
Really? You have personal knowledge of tests on this capability? Or perhaps you have visited an alternate world where this actual combat has happened?
You may joke about joking about Russian tech, but you are good at one thing: building posts that bypass mods with no knowledge.
Re:Containment (Score:4, Insightful)
> Why should they not sell them?
One word: Stinger.
It might sound like a nice payday but these things might end up pointed at YOU.
Nevermind the rest of the world, the Russians should be considering their own expanding frontiers here.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realise all press in that war were only allowed to go where Hezbollah took them and that all their reports were vetted right?
You realize that's a little hard to enforce when a country is having the shit bombed out of it, right? And it's not like the IDF doesn't have a track record of blowing the shit out of everything in sight - doctors houses, schools where they just ordered Gazans to take refuge, clearly marked U.N. vehicles...
Re:Containment (Score:5, Insightful)
Against whom? If Al-Queda let of a bomb in New York harbor who would you nuke? Saudi? Afghanistan?
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sat guidance is only good for getting a missile to a particular absolute location on earth. Honestly, you can probably do this well enough with inertial guidance (ICBMs aren't sat-guided, and neither were a lot of earlier cruise missiles used by the US).
Hitting a ship with a missile involves a few problems.
1. Knowing where the ship is.
2. Getting the missile into the vicinity of the ship, close enough for the missile to find the ship with its onboard sensors.
3. Having the missile locate the ship's exact realtime location with its sensors.
4. Evading defenses at every step and actually hitting the thing.
Sat guidance solves #2 really well. A radar jamming system defeats #3.
Sat guidance alone can never eliminate the need to solve #3 in some way - a missile going mach 3 covers a huge space in one second, so unless the sat can give the missile realtime target location with a latency of much less than a second there is no hope of getting a hit. Every foot counts so even the accuracy of GPS might be a concern. Now, the ability to deliver realtime updates with a little more latency might allow the missile to close to a range where it could use IR to detect the ship and defeat radar jamming.
I think that the big problem is #1 - to even take a shot at a ship you need to know where it is in general, and in a serious shooting war between first world powers the first thing that would happen is that any satellite that even looks like a surveillance system would be shot down or at least blinded/jammed, and LEO will probably get so filled with debris that we won't be going into space for a few years except for short-term excursions which the military would be the only ones doing. Without satellites then air superiority or subs are the only way to find a target ship, and the US has a huge lead in both areas.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:1, Insightful)
Unless the Israelis wont let you drive a truck into their country. Which is the case now, and why busses have stopped blowing up. Be able to launch one of these from gaza would be great for certain groups.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, a ship like this would be confiscated the moment it entered the national waters of any nation who is friendly with any of the major superpowers if they were aware of it.
Any ship armed with a weapons system in a state that can be deployed is a warship, almost by definition. Warships cannot enter territorial waters without consent - doing so is a diplomatic incident at the very least, and an act of war at worst. In an actual state of war the ship would be an immediate target, and would likely be defenseless which means that any fighter bomber making a ferry run in its vicinity would probably just be dispatched with an extra anti-ship missile to take care of it.
This is really just USS Cole Mark II. A US capital ship in constrained waters like the Persian Gulf might be at some risk if an adversary armed with these things could get an accurate location on it, and sneak this in with merchant traffic. Still, it would be a gamble, and it would certainly start a full-scale war with the US. A country like Iran would lose such a war under virtually any circumstances - they couldn't take out enough of the US navy to actually prevent an invasion. A country like China could make a much bigger impact, but at least at present they couldn't sustain an all-out war against the US. Even a diminished US military would be on the offensive and China would be fighting on its own shores against a US that would be mostly untouched within its borders. The US would also be able to resupply much more easily (more access to oil and other raw materials).
The reality is that weapons like these just make things really messy for everybody. No sovereign nation would actually fire such a weapon, at most they would use them as bargaining chips. No nation would allow terrorists/etc to actually have weapons like these - it isn't in their interests.
Re:Some clarifications from an American naval offi (Score:3, Insightful)
>Apparently you're uniformed, anti-US, or outright stupid. As you're a European I'll vote "anti-US".
Nope. While I find the US political activity (= warfare) idiotic, I consider the EU politicians to be just as moronic, so I'm not anti-US per se. After all, I did live there for a couple of years, and the people themselves are usually rather friendly.
Seeing that I have excellent genes (50% of my extended family are doctors, the others scientists, with merely one manager) and a high-level job, I dare to believe that my intelligence is at least average - certainly not "outright stupid" ;)
Uninformed, however, is always a possibility.
I see your only argument here is against me saying that anti-missile tests usually failed. You claim that this is not the case with SM-3s, which have a hit-probability of around 80%. Now this 80% is the best test record from the marine - which is known for faking quite a few tests, and simplifying a lot of other tests.
I'd think that a no-warnings test would have a hit percentage of around 50% - pretty darn good for taking down a missile, but certainly not enough (even 80% would be too low). Missiles are rather cheap, compared to aircraft carriers...
If I misunderstood you, I do apologize. Your message seems a little, hm, off-the-cuff, and I am more used to argue with people giving me useful data.
Re:Containment (Score:3, Insightful)
Who ever said the target was a military base. Nuking the trade ports with a nuke in a container would be easy to do and very devastating to the country who now has one less port. With careful timing (and container ships are very coordinated) they could hit more then one port at the same time. Effectively stopping the flow of goods in and out of said country for a while.
Re:Containment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
Having an interest in terminal ballistics, I'd like to see some citation for that. While there may be some difference between 5.56 NATO and, say, 7.62 NATO in terms of lethality, I would be willing to bet that the primary contributing factor is shot placement.
We use small calibers because it allows the soldier to carry more ammunition into battle.
Re:Containment (Score:4, Insightful)
This is analogous to having civilians having concealed weapons. With concealed carry laws in Texas, violent crime has dropped significantly, even as it rises in other populous nations. With a weapon like this, wars are much less likely to break out.
This is sort of like a poor-man's nuke. No nuclear armed nation has ever been invaded (and only one has had a possession invaded--England). Maybe this sort of thing will stop us from invading any more countries using hair-brained justifications.
Re:Some clarifications from an American naval offi (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that F-111s were used against Libya doesn't mean naval aircraft would have proven ineffective. What it does prove is F-111s carry a lot more bombs a much longer distance than carrier aircraft, which isn't exactly earth-shattering.
Because all R&D and military planning stopped in the 80's.
You, and TFA, were specifically talking about CVNs and their surrounding battle group, not all ships. A fishing vessel indeed has no chance, but that's not what you were just talking about.
Intercepting an ICBM (~Mach 20) is a tad more difficult than intercepting even the fastest anti-ship missile (~Mach 4). There's all sorts of tests where that was done successfully, but since that's not as embarrassing as you'd like.
Not if you want to kill a carrier. The range on normal shipping radar isn't terribly long, since you only need it for navigation. You are not going to get your disguised cargo vessel that close to a carrier.
Re:Taking out capital ships? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even Iran isn't stupid enough to give these yahoos their top-grade stuff.
Um, yes, but the entire context here is Russia potentially selling these weapons to Iran. I don't quite get the "ally" comment in the summary, but Russia is willing to trade with Iran.
An Iranian-type asymmetric navy was exactly the kind simulated in the Millennium Challenge where most of a carrier group, carrier included, were sunk. Weapons like this feed directly into the kind of tactics used in that scenario.