Deadly New Russian Weapon Hides In Shipping Container
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
1) I thought "Hmm, the soundtrack here sounds like it could be from a generic Jerry Bruckheimer movie", and then it went to songs that were unambiguously pirated from identifiable Jerry Bruckheimer movies. (I own the Pirates of the Carribean soundtrack. Sue me.) Man, you can't even get the multi-billion dollar weapons conglomerates to respect licensing anymore...
2) Amusingly, the good guys were red and the bad guys were blue. (This is the color convention in Russia and China. Historically, it is the opposite in the US.)
It doesn't really matter if cruise missile is in container or not. If it's for sale, bad or good guys would be happy to buy it without container and use it anyway.
As you can see from this very video, these missiles require satellite guidance system. Surely small counties don't have access to those and large countries have capabilities to suppress them as needed.
Have they in fact done it? There's been a lot of saber-rattling from Russia while Putin's been in power that stinks of "please still consider us a military powerhouse". Bombers flying while they don't have the funds to keep their stockpile in working order, etc.
Let's see something more than CGI.
It wouldn't be much of cold war if both sides didn't have missile navigation systems.
Also China seems to be building their own:
If someone wants to hit a ship with a cruise missile then they need precise real-time targeting data. A box of missiles on a cargo ship doesn't do any good if you don't know where to point it. Reconnaissance satellites are one possible way to get that data, and only a few rich countries have enough good satellites to be useful.
Some people think that guided missiles are magic: just point them in the general direction of a target and the missile will do the rest. In reality they have limited range, limited fuel, and short-range sensors. To have any chance of hitting a ship you have to tell the missile at launch time where the target should be when it finally arrives.
So the only way you let your expensive $Bn carrier fleet near a tiny little 3rd world enemy is once you have comprehensively bombed the *&%$ out of their defenses.
With this you could have finished bombing all their airfields, sunk their fleet and blown up all their tanks - then just as the USS Obama arrives off shore a 40' container in a parking lot opens it's doors and sinks it.
Unless you are going to destroy every container, and every building that could hold a container in a country before approaching it you have a problem.
If I have my facts correct, the Japanese also reminded the Limeys of it when the sunk the Prince of Wales and the Repulse after Sir Tom Phillips overruled suggestions that the fleet not move out of Singapore without air cover.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_Prince_of_Wales_and_...
(While Wikipedia says nothing other than reporting that he was killed, I read elsewhere that Sir Phillips declined to join the sailors abandoning ship.)
Perhaps a swarm attack from several or dozens of such launchers would overwhelm defenses, but suddenly the last-ditch defense isn't looking cheap anymore. If you're that country, you'd better hope the invaders aren't ready to send a second carrier group, or that a neighboring country isn't going to go, "Nice job on that carrier group - now we're rolling tanks and troops over your border, so get cracking on that welcoming ceremony in your capital," now that your defenses are toast.