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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."
This threat must be contained
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.
Is this a response to yesterday's story about the USA's dick-waving about building new missiles that can reach anywhere on Earth...?
No sig today...
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.
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.
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.
How sure is anyone that this isn't some viral for a computer game?
The graphics are all cg - even the local russians say it's just a concept.
The company doesn't even have press liaison.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
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...
I seem to recall at least one proposal for the 'arsenal ships' aka ships with lots of missiles towed off the coast, to have been made from converting container ships, after someone looked at the costs and decided purpose built ships were too expensive, before the idea was killed. The idea became to be able to use commercial ships for relatively little cost.
A few reasons it was killed (at least as any kind of surface ship):
Put a WHOLE bunch of really expensive munitions on a slow target. With minimal defenses. Defending them requires purpose built navy ships. Meaning that the savings of proposing that, just evaporated.
Even the inefficiencies of Aircraft carriers, are a lot less than using a cruise missile for each target.
Modern naval ships don't have much in the way of armor, compounding the problem of defense.
By the time you fit it with defense to protect the cargo, you might as well go ahead and build a more conventional warship (with extra VLS)
There is one example where the concept more or less did happen though, in the refitted SSBNs to SSGNs, with lots of Tomahawk missiles. They don't suffer from having to have lots of defense of a surface target, and have advantages in stealth.
"The idea that you can hide a missile system in a box and drive it around without anyone knowing is pretty new," said Hewson, who is editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons.
"Nobody's ever done that before."
Most missiles on ships are.
Sure there are some that aren't 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.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
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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This has the potential to disrupt trade worldwide. If you can't trust any random container ship anymore (and there are many of those)... then trade will slowly grind to a halt. Remember that a very significant part of all trade is by container.
That's a much bigger problem to the world than the possibility that one boat owned by the USA is sunk.
This means that you can even have a weapon on a ship that is owned by a company from a friendly country (if they aren't careful and don't know the contents of the container).
I will invest in container scanners immediately...
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.
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?
But this one takes about 2 weeks to go around Alaska, stopping by the scenic routes along the way.
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.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
If I was the US Navy, I'd let my opponents think they were better than they are too. Though since the US hasn't fought any meaningful naval engagements lately, it's difficult to tell.
[FUCK BETA]
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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The choice of music is hilarious!
"Born Free" during the opening beach scene.
"Pirates of the Caribbean" during the missile launch.
And even "Command and Conquer"'s victory music at the very end of the clip.
At least we know the RIAA/MPAA can send take down notices to get this "arms deal commercial" removed =P
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.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
When ever a new type of weapon is developed outside USA it's "a scary new development in the global arms race" but really WHO is the biggest weapon developer with a huge margin ?
You've seen it in the news: when a US company is developing, let's say, a new material, the first possible solution is for military. Like there wasn't any other problems than security in our world.
USA has a supremacy in military power. Today's security related threads USA is facing can not be solved with developing new weapons.
Only the US can Sell weapons to other countries!
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 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.
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 and the like.
>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.
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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?
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.
I'm sure it's a nice conversation starter for the military types around here, but note that even this nearly information free news article is vague on the status of this "in the concept stage" weapon system. Sure, they're marketing it, but that's how corporations raise money and make themselves look worth investing in, or attract attention to their other products, or just try to stave off the bank closing them down.
Essentially this article looks like some marketer dreamed up a cool-sounding product, convinced management to make a sales video, and used it to generate some interest in his/her company. Then a clueless reporter grabbed it, looked up potential effects of "cruise missiles", combined it with an out of context quote from someone at Jane's for expert effect, and spewed it out onto the net with a healthy dose of fear mongering about how it could be sold to terrorists.
Let's review...There's no evidence that such a weapon exists other than marketing drivel. There's no evidence that the company claiming to produce it has the capability to do so. If they do produce it, odds are good it won't meet the "looks good on paper but hard to actually do" marketing goals and be a viable threat to anyone. Once it exists, the Russians are not likely to allow it to be sold any more than most other non US countries with Naval forces.
So, this article should only generate interest if you A) Accept the premise that a relatively unknown company in Russia can suddenly produce an advanced weapon system like this B) Accept that once produced, the weapon will somehow be more of a threat than existing weapon systems, many of which are probably more advanced and C) Are ignorant enough to think that because the Russian government is not made of Americans that they'll sell weapons which could potentially threaten them to terrorist groups just so they can make the small amount of cash that would provide (a few million dollars... most terrorists aren't rich, although OBL is) and in exchange for which they earn the enmity and political consequences of supplying terrorists.
It's specifically targeted at sloppy thinking westerners who have a stereotypical view of other world countries. How plausible would the article be if it talked about a smaller American company in eg. California producing the same product? You'd automatically think that terrorists wouldn't get it because the US Military would buy it, or the US Government would prevent export of it, or you'd choose not to believe the hype about it.. after all, with billions of dollars more in funding larger companies haven't produced a missile system superior to existing Exocet and Harpoon series weapons. Yet if the mythical company is placed in Russia, suddenly people swallow this completely... because everyone knows Russians are genius weapon designers who are all desperately poor and willing to sell their products to everyone regardless of who they threaten, with the support and assistance of the corrupt Russian government, right?
This is NOT NEWS. It's barely even marketing material.
But enjoy the testosterone pumped discussion of weapons and ships.
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.