Russian firm hawks rocket-in-a-box
A Russian company is marketing a cruise missile launcher that can be contained within a standard 40-foot container.
'With the help of Club-K and Club-U Missile Systems almost every type of ship can be turned into missile ship by installing of either 40-foot standard marine container with universal launching module,' goes the pitch on the Web site of Concern Morinformsystem-Agat. The Web site even has a six-minute video showing how the system might be used (see www.AmericanShipper.com/links).
The system appears relatively new, and has gotten some attention in recent weeks. The March 24 edition of the U.S. Naval Institute's blog featured it in a piece entitled, 'The Problem With Proliferation: Cruise Missile Edition.' The piece said the system is being sold by the Russian arms manufacturer Novator, which is also linked to on the Concern Morinformsystem-Agat Web page.
A March 30 poster on the Ares blog of the magazine Aviation Week said the Russian defense industry was 'brazenly promoting a 'concealed carriage' launching system for Club-family land attack cruise missiles' at a defense show in Qatar in March.
The advertising materials show how the container with the missiles is intermodal and can also be carried on trucks and rail cars.
Neither the company nor the U.S. State Department responded to requests for comments.
'Ships engaged in commercial liner shipping are not going to be turned into missile platforms by this,' said Chris Koch, president of the World Shipping Council. Among other things, he noted the animation showed the container could have nothing on top of it, rendering 90 percent of the slots on a ship dysfunctional, and for the container to be entered from front doors and the back of the container to slide out and for a missile platform, requiring significant space, to come out of the box.
'That can't happen on a normal containership used in commercial service,' said Koch, who also wondered if the rocket blast might set a containership on fire.
Charles Vick, a senior analyst at globalsecurity.org, said many cruise missiles can be placed in containers that are smaller than standard 40-foot shipping containers. But he said the system is an 'enabling technology,' allowing missile systems to be placed on non-military vessels, vastly increasing the number of ships that have to be tracked.
The blogger from the Naval Institute, in response to a query from American Shipper, said the system was from a Russian manufacture with a long history in the cruise missile business. The SS-N-27, which the company advertises with the system as having a range of 180 miles, 'is a serious missile ' so while the idea of putting it in a shipping container isn't new, the fact that a top-end manufacturer is offering a compete solution in a box should be troubling,' the blogger added.
'Placing just two such containers onboard a generic containership would give it the equivalent firepower of a Burke-class DDG with eight TLAMs. Pause, let that sink in and then think about what would need to be done by the Navy, Coast Guard, port security, etc. Bad enough if a recognized state obtains and uses this weapons system for its own device ' how about al-Qaeda.' (Chris Dupin)
