Thursday - May 06, 2010

No Defense Against Jack-In-The-Box Missiles

All that was old is new again, so let’s drag up those Cold War fears and apply them to today’s rogue nation terrorist states. Throw in a little bit of modern technology, and voila! Large scale terrorist attack system, literally in a box. For sale to the highest bidder now, but soon to be on the shelves at your local War-Mart. Unless you build your own out in the back yard. Because, duh, it really is that easy.

The Russian company Concern Morinformsystem-Agat is marketing a deadly new weapon [ called the Club-K system ], one that can allow a rogue state to overcome the technological superiority of Western militaries. The system can even be used to carry out devastating attacks on the U.S. homeland with little means of defense.

The system, as seen in its promotional video, allows a weak nation to strike the land and sea targets of a superior force by placing cruise missiles into any type of 40 foot container. The video uses a ship, truck and train as examples of potential launching platforms. This means that once this weapon is sold, any of these transportation vehicles have to be seen as missile pads.

The West normally relies upon advanced surveillance to detect and monitor such pads so that prior notice of a launch can be achieved, allowing for the site to be destroyed before the missile takes off or the missile to be intercepted. This warning allows for preparations for impact to be undertaken and retaliatory measures to be evaluated. By concealing and launching the missiles from cargo containers, there is absolutely minimal time to react, as effective surveillance would require following every truck, train or ship.

In addition, these vehicles can cross borders, making it more difficult to identify the perpetrator of an attack and impossible to predict where an attack might come from. The missiles might from a shipping vessel off the coast or a truck that crossed via the Mexican border. With a range of 220 kilometers, or about 136 miles, they can either be fired from a safe distance from the border or the distance can be minimized by getting close to the target by being hidden.

It is feared that the covert Club-K missile attack system could prove “game-changing" in fighting wars with small countries, which would gain a remote capacity to mount multiple missiles on boats, trucks or railways.

Iran and Venezuela have already shown an interest in the Club-K Container Missile System which could allow them to carry out pre-emptive strikes from behind an enemy’s missile defences.

Defence experts say the system is designed to be concealed as a standard 40ft shipping container that cannot be identified until it is activated.

Priced at an estimated £10 million, each container is fitted with four cruise anti-ship or land attack missiles. The system represents an affordable “strategic level weapon”.

The general idea is nothing new. The US and the USSR both had ICBMs mounted in railway cars back in the late 50s and 60s. Ours - the Mobile Minuteman and the Peacekeeper Garrison, and theirs - photos here.

But back in the day, these missiles were mounted in special freight cars, and driven around by special trains. Now the entire world runs on shipping containers. They are everywhere. Go for a short drive on the highway - it’s almost a guarantee you’ll see a dozen. Hundreds of thousands of them go in and out of our ports and cross our borders every single day. They can’t all be inspected.

The Club-K design concept can be carried out in a larger and less expensive manner with ease. A standard shipping container can hold 2 old school Chinese and their launchers inside with room to spare. They can carry a half ton warhead and shoot it 300 miles in a 30 minute flight 50 feet off the ground. To low and too quick to react to for all but the best hardened and defended targets. All you’d need to do is to build a clamshell pop top lid on the shipping container.

How about taking it down several steps into the realm of uncaring terrorists? If they can’t get real ones, then build a Qassam style missile with folding fins that uses a standard 120mm or 155mm artillery shells for a warhead. Fits inside an 6” or 8” steel pipe with ease. Mount a whole bunch of them inside the container at a 45° angle and you can make the launch tubes almost 11 feet long. A little math ... stagger them in rows of 11, 10, 11, 10, etc; you can fit nearly 500 inside a single shipping container, ready to fire, mounted on an 18 wheeler. Ok, you have to consider the overall weight, so it would probably be more like 250 instead. That’s still a massive barrage. And for protection against counterbattery, it’s probably possible to light them off while the truck is moving down the highway. Hamas doesn’t care about precision accuracy. Towns are hard to miss. Just drive the truck on a road that’s pointing in the right direction. And this is a bigger Qassam than the ones they use now, so it would have a longer range.

What if each missile tube was sealed with a bit of plastic or something, so that the bomb sniffers at the ports couldn’t smell the missiles inside? The whole thing could be built to go off by remote control. A simple pressure sensor in the bottom of the container, along with a counter would know that the container went on the truck, on the ship, off the ship, on the truck, and off the truck at it’s destination. Set the timer for 12 hours and then start shooting. It would not matter where the missiles went, or even if they hit anything. The mere fact that such a container got into the country and went off would cause mass panic and bring the entire shipping infrastructure to an instant halt.

Yes, mobile missile barrage systems are a scary idea. But to design and build one to modern hi-tech spec, and then put it on the global market, is even scarier.

“What alerted me to this was that the Russians were advertising it at specific international defence event and they have marketed it very squarely at anyone under threat of action from the US.”

Reuben Johnson, a Pentagon defence consultant, said the system would be a “real maritime fear for anyone with a waterfront”.

“This is ballistic missile proliferation on a scale we have not seen before because now you cannot readily identify what’s being used as a launcher because it’s very carefully disguised.

Gee, great.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/06/2010 at 11:22 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous • Terrorists •  
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