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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."
Mentioning terrorists, Iran and Venezuela. Dude, they missed mentioning children that could buy it over the Internet.
From a pure technical geek point of view, this is a great idea. I am sure that many US weapon makers now will start doing the same thing. Perhaps with a different marketing where they say it is a weapon that can be easily transported to any area where it is needed without the need of specialized transport vehicles, thus reducing the price.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It was done with 1940s technology: the V-1 Buzz Bomb.
Do you know how the V-1 knew it was time to dive down at its target? It had a small propeller at the front, that would spin from the onrushing air. After a certain number of rotations, the engine would be cut off, and it would plummet to the ground to explode.
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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. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-N-22 this is a link to an older type so feel free to correct me(as if /. needs an invite)-;.
I never, ever read about this in the press, nor do I hear anyone talk about it. But it's not any kind of secret - I found it on some US government disarmament website. My guess is that no one talks about it for fear of making things worse.
While they (mostly) don't admit it, the Israelis are known to have a few hundred nuclear weapons. No doubt they have hydrogen bombs. While they don't openly test, there was what was thought to be a nuclear test in the ocean off of South Africa a while back. Even if they don't test, Israel has no shortage of smart people, or computers capable of accurate numerical modeling.
Do you know the song Ninety Nine Red Balloons? The original German was Neun und Neunzig Luft Balon (SP?). I understand it was inspired by a wayward bundle of helium balloons that was mistaken by the Soviets as a missile launch.
Some people say I'm paranoid. Such people just aren't paying attention.
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...is like a cellphone without a charger. It's pretty much useless by itself. You still need the sensors to locate the carrier, which isn't trivial. Especially since carriers don't tend to let just anybody linger in their vicinity. (And I bet 'satellite guided' means nothing more sinister than GPS. Useful for guidance, useless for targeting.)
Even handwaving those into existence, you still need to deal with the carriers defenses. Even if you manage to get one or two through the defenses (a tall order), they aren't going to destroy the carrier short of carrying nuclear weapons. The best you can hope for is to send it back to the yards for a bit of surgery. Depending on where it hits, you might not even slow down flight operations.
If you watch the video linked in the summary, you'll note they downplay the massive cloud of toxic exhaust that will be produced with each launch - something few merchies will be rigged to handle.
Never mind the offensive capability, this system has to be one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard. You never, ever, ever camouflage your military systems to look like civilian infrastructure. If you do, you leave your opponent with no choice but to blow up your privately owned merchant marine, your trucks and every cargo container it can see. Part of the reason Germany started using unrestricted submarine warfare was the my countries use of Q-ships. Part of the reason civilian casualties in Gaza are so high is 'police stations' and 'schools' that are anything but.
Is the idea here to sell this product to countries looking to get their civilians killed for propaganda purposes?
In 1941 a gunship "disguised" as a merchant ship sunk the HMAS Sydney http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs111.aspx
Sure this one's a missile, but anyone who thought merchant ships weren't a threat needs to read history.
Wait! Whats a sig?
It's in the US Constitution and everything: the US Congress has the authority to order civilian merchant ships to do battle.
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Seriously, the arms race combined with galloping technology progress is just the same as a death wish for everyone. There is no chance in hell of controlling it. Increasing miniaturization, lowering costs, easier manufacturing, simpler distribution. Soon, smaller and smaller fiefs of power with more and more intrigues among them, in addition to nations. Corporations, traffickers, pirates, guerrillas, terrorists, private security companies, crazies, military and politicians, anyone hungry for muscle power. I forgot to mention increasing power and capabilities, escalating the complexity of logistics and possibilities for smaller, easier to plan, quicker and deadlier attacks. The advancement of knowledge and progress required communication, trade, and trust. A high tech arms race, such as is now starting, will kill it. China, Japan, Europe, South America, everyone is building up weapons. If we want to continue evolving, and living, we better start talking negotiations. Contrary to wacky political manipulating statements, stockpiling weapons won't work forever, because history evolves, nothing stays the way it is, the future is not predictable, especially today.
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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
I think the bit you're missing is that you can't just simply schedule these to be loaded onto a bunch of container ships at random and then push a button in Tehran and have them automatically take out a carrier. First, it'd have to be loaded with the cooperation of the ship's operator in order to assure that it was on top. No matter how fancy the design, I seriously doubt it could launch with two layers of other containers on top of it. Targeting and firing would require some sort of last-minute interaction, because until someone sees it, I guarantee they don't know where a carrier is going to be. What this means is that any such container ship would have to be Iranian flagged (to use my hypothetical) and would have to military operated. Furthermore, these are so expensive that no one could afford to load them and actually ship them anywhere and have them be essentially out of service while the ship is unloaded in a foreign port. This means that any container ship armed with the Club-K would effectively have to be loaded with decoy containers and kept within the operational area. At that point, it's just a badly designed missile cruiser. No, the whole fantasy of a secret missile launcher has too many holes.
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Hate to float a turd but...
Another related turd is that merchant ships have been used to transfer weapons in recent memory. Israel detained the Karine A in 2002 and at least one other ship recently.
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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.
Actually, exact opposite. Both NATO and Russian sides have pretty near perfect countermeasures for opponent's strengths. The much, MUCH nastier anti-ship missile which is installed on Russian missile cruisers and attack submarines that routinely tail US aircraft carrier task forces is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-700_Granit
NATO gave it a very appropriate name: Shipwreck. Because that's what it does. I recall one of the military buff forums state that folks at NATO estimated the normal 4-missile swarm was expected to disable aircraft carrier and kill at least one of the aegis cruisers with something around 90% likelihood, while disabling the carrier only carried a 95%+ likelihood for a standard task force with three aegis cruisers and air patrols, while a swarm of 8 would literally devastate the task force entirely.. It's essentially unstoppable by any current defense weapon short of having anti-missile ship sitting on top of the sub and killing the missiles as they surface.
One has to understand, no one really wants to KILL a modern aircraft carrier in a first strike. You want to disable it, making sure that nothing can take off or land. For this, one modern cruise missile is more then enough (iirc less then 10% tilt means that nothing lands or takes off from the modern carrier). After this, the main threat for airborne/submarine force are aegis ships for air threats and anti-sub warfare ships for submarines. Those are the things you go for next, rather then finishing the aircraft carrier off. In this regard you are correct, there are few options if you want to kill a ship size of an aircraft carrier outright, and most of them are nuclear. Notably, above missiles can fit a 500kt nuclear warhead for such a task, as did many other cold-war era anti-ship missile weaponry.
Notably, this goes vice versa for NATO forces and Russian military. The main reason NATO utterly obliterated Iraq both times is because NATO forces are specifically designed to counter Russian-style "heavy armor assault" through far more advanced attack craft and helicopters which literally ate tanks alive once air superiority was achieved with tremendous efficiency. It is simply much easier to target the weakest link in the enemy doctrine then to defend it from such attack. Essentially NATO and Russian weapon systems are designed from get-go to be fairly exact and accurate counters for each other. This is something neither side likes to advertise much either - military hardware is expensive and no one likes to publicize that the other side has effective counters for it.
The most important question is - which missile is INSIDE that container. Most of the top-of-the-line anti-ship cruise missiles are not exported from Russia due to legal restrictions and military secrecy which would reduce the efficiency of the system significantly.
I'm not convinced that the day of the carrier has passed.
What has replaced them?
A carrier gives you the opportunity to have air superiority over a given location. So does an airfield. Both can be destroyed. So, are you essentially arguing that air power is obsolete, except maybe for aircraft with short-field capability that can run on moving improvised bases?
Carriers give major powers an ability to wage conventional war, and this is a capability that is in high demand. Without them, what are your options? ICBMs?
For the most part most theoretical attacks against carrier battle groups tend to be manipulations of the conventions of the seas, like arming merchant ships. That just makes it sound like what is really obsolete is the concept of freedom of navigation on the high seas. Perhaps the next logical step is to just have nations set up inspection stations outside every port and make ships check in before being able to go out to sea?