Wonderful: Russian Arms Maker Now Advertising For Planned Terrorist Missile System

It's a terrorist missile system, because it is hidden in a run-of-the-mill shipping container, the sort that burdens 80% of the ships at sea. And that's a terrorist weapon, then, because a lawful military force displays its military nature openly. This is expressly designed to hide in plain sight on an ostensibly civilian ship, one our Navy would be very reluctant to fire upon... until it itself has fired first.

A ship armed with one of these could ignore warnings from an aircraft carrier and keep inching closer until it's in range -- while our boys hold fire, not wishing to attack what appears to be a civilian transport -- and then hit us.

And, of course, it could fire on an American city before being inspected at port.

The NYT:

A Russian company is marketing a devastating new cruise missile system which 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.

"At a stroke, the Club-K gives a long-range precision strike capability to ordinary vehicles that can be moved to almost any place on earth without attracting attention," said Robert Hewson of Jane's Defense Weekly, who first disclosed its existence.

A promotional video for the Club-K on the website of Moscow-based makers Kontsern-Morinformsistema-Agat shows an imaginary tropical country facing a land, sea and air attack from a hostile neighbor.

It fights back by loading three shipping containers concealing Club-Ks onto a truck, a train and a ship, disperses them, and then launches a devastating strike on its enemy, destroying its warships, tanks and airfields.

"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."

Thanks to Dave @ Garfield Ridge, who gives it his It's Not Old Seal of Freshness. He thinks it's cute the promotional video features the cruise missile taking out identifiably-American war-vehicles, just in case Iran and North Korea and Al Qaeda were thinking, "Gee, looks neat, but I can't think of a single thing I could do with that."

Because that's so alarming, here's a cute picture of bear cubs to smooth everyone over:

Bears thanks to Dr. Spank.

posted by Ace at 04:10 PM

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