Friday, April 30, 2010

"Oh! Capitalism!" or "Oh! Crap!"

Russian arms manufacturer, Concern Morinformsystem-Agat, has a new nifty toy they would love to build and sell to you if you are "another state and not [to] any sort of nonstate actor or terrorist group," says Robert Hewson, editor of the arms-industry journal "Jane's Air-Launched Weapons."


This new system, which could be built but appears to not be currently sitting on a shelf, the 'Club-K', fits nicely inside a shipping container. These shipping containers could be put on ordinary cargo ships, trains or pulled by a semi as shown in their video. (Go to about 2:30 to get to the interesting parts)




Why do I not feel any safer knowing that they would not sell them directly to terrorists?
(For the same reason that a lot of Russian hardware already ens up in places it shouldn't? Or because restrictive gun laws in several US states haven't stopped people from reselling to criminals? I guess Pakistan could always report that a Club-K system was stolen, right?)

Why do I not feel any safer knowing that the systems -- as currently specified -- requires a satellite for guidance?
(Since it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to 'upgrade' the system to use more 'self-guiding' missiles)

Why do I see so many Russian mob-types on '24' with 'Jack Bauer' and they always end up in an 'import/export' companies dock facilities loaded up with -- you guessed it -- shipping containers? Or maybe I should say, 'shipping containers'.

Yeah... how could this go wrong? I mean, US arms don't end up in the hands of terrorists (unless you count all the stuff US arms companies have sold over the years, or how the US has given, literally, TONS of weapons to the Iraqi army and police which then turn around and sell them to whoever), right?

I think I see the plotline of the next '24' (if this wasn't to be the last season) or the next action movie...

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