Slashdot Mirror
New Russian Weapon Hides In Shipping Container
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."
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.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The concern isn't that they're weapons as such, but that they're weapons designed to be hidden on merchant vessels. In a tense situation, it would likely make all merchant ships potential threats and would likely end up with a lot of innocent civilians being killed.