Russia’s Club-K missile system is touted as the perfect asymmetric warfare vehicle, but is this really useful and accurate?
Russia’s new generation of containerized anti-ship cruise missile systems with the name Club-K is attracting great attention from experts around the world, especially in the US and NATO because it is considered very difficult to detect and intercept.
Even US Department of Defense officials said that Club-K has the ability to change the world military balance, especially when this weapon is being offered by Rosoboronexport to many countries.
It is undeniable that the Club-K system has very unique combat features, but there is also a lot of controversy about the actual effectiveness of the aforementioned weapon.
The most remarkable feature of the Club-K missile system is that it can be disguised in the form of cargo containers and then placed on normal transport ships.
The ship will then secretly move to the combat position and launch a surprise attack from a distance of up to 300 km against the enemy, which will be an unstoppable blow.
At first glance, this can be considered a perfect scenario, but if you look closely, it is easy to see that this plan has many shortcomings.
First of all, the question must be asked why in the sea where there is war, a container ship dares to enter, it cannot be a mere cargo ship but must be a camouflaged military ship.
Such precedent happened during the Malvinas naval war in 1982 when the British Atlantic Conveyor, converted from a container ship to carry Harrier fighter jets, was sunk by an Argentine Exocet missile.
Moreover, if simply placed in a container and then loaded onto a cargo ship, due to the lack of a powerful enough guided radar, the Club-K system will not be able to fight independently, but must require target instructions from another source ( possibly from an airplane) which makes it even more vulnerable.
In addition, if it is assumed that there will be a successful raid with this tactic, will the benefits be offset against the consequences it causes?
The enemy will certainly take advantage of the surprise attack by camouflaged civilian ships to launch a large-scale retaliatory attack against all merchant ships or coastal infrastructure that the receiving side cannot. voiced strong objections.
If Club-K is disguised as normal containers lying in the yard waiting for loading and unloading, it loses its mobility advantage, which is considered the strength of coastal defense missiles.
The enemy will come up with much easier countermeasures than having to fight mobile missile systems.
Similar to the above case, the enemy will certainly have more rationality when conducting unrestricted retaliation under the pretext of intelligence detecting that it is a camouflaged military facility.
With some of the listed characteristics, equipping the Club-K missile system can be said to bring more disadvantages than benefits, perhaps for this reason that until now the weapon on have not received any export orders yet