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- Remember the Asia aerospace and maritime technology exhibition LIMA-2009 and the Club-K system.
- Past events help to understand Operation Spiderweb, and the key word is container.
- Production of the Club-K (now Kalibr-K) began in 2011. Data on the quantity produced is unavailable.
President Putin has remained silent on Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb, but he is surely contemplating a response. Looking at photos of the self-destroyed containers from which the drones were launched, and reconstructions of their original appearance, one can assume what kind of response the commander-in-chief is considering. And that response traces all the way back to 2009, writes Vladimir Jushkin, director of the Baltic Center for Russian Studies.
The world's media is actively covering Ukraine's attacks on Russian strategic bomber bases. William Pomeranz, former director of the Kennan Institute, writes: «Kyiv has once again proven that it is successfully modernizing its army even during wartime, that it has strong intelligence capable of planning and executing large-scale operations deep behind enemy lines, that it effectively uses new types of weapons, that it understands the principles of modern warfare much better than Moscow, and is capable of delivering powerful blows with minimal resources.»
President Putin has remained silent so far, but he is surely contemplating a response.
Looking at photos of the self-destroyed containers from which the drones were launched, and reconstructions of their original appearance, one can assume what kind of response the commander-in-chief is considering.
Those who follow the development of military technology will surely remember the first demonstration of the Club-K container system that took place at the Asia aerospace and maritime technology exhibition LIMA-2009, held from April 19 to 22 of that year on Langkawi Island, Malaysia. At that time, it did not get attention in the global media. But today, these long-ago events deserve special attention in order to understand the technical underpinnings of Operation Spiderweb, and the key word has to be container.
The Club-K (manufactured by JSC Concern Morinformsistema-Agat) was presented as a universal launch module containing four launch units for naval cruise missiles. However, to bring it to combat readiness and launch the missiles, two more identical 40-foot containers are required. These house the combat control module and the power supply and life support module. These two modules ensure the daily maintenance and routine inspection of the missiles, target designation, and the reception of firing commands via satellite, the calculation of initial firing data, the execution of pre-launch preparations, the development of the flight mission, and the launch of the cruise missiles. Clearly, this requires the preparation of combat calculations, the existence of a centralized command center, satellite navigation, and communication.
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In principle, the Club-K does not contain anything superlative in terms of warfare and technology – the complex fires subsonic (Kalibr) missiles with several modifications. However, the Novator design bureau (one of Russia's leading design bureaus and missile technology developers, based in Yekaterinburg) made a revolutionary step – it placed the missiles in a standard container and achieved their autonomous launch. This fundamentally changes the tactics and strategy of missile deployment.
Such compact containers can be placed on ships, truck trailers, or railway flat wagons. In every developed country, 40-foot containers are abundant at ports and railway stations. Additionally, these containers are widely used as temporary storage facilities and worker accommodations, as well as for housing technical installations – for example, oil and gas modular boilers, diesel power plants, tanks for liquids, etc. Civilian transport is well adapted for transloading such cargo. A wide variety of railway flat wagons, river and sea vessels, and even commercial trailers can transport these containers.
One thing is clear: if a ceasefire is achieved on the Ukrainian front, Putin will begin developing containerized combat weapons for their covert deployment in Europe (if he hasn't already).
The essence of the Club-K project lies in designing the system to resemble a standard 40-foot shipping container. This means that the Club-K becomes virtually invisible to any aerial or technical reconnaissance. Thanks to such camouflage, it is almost impossible to detect a Club-K before it is activated.
In addition, this weapon is very inexpensive – about 15 million dollars for the basic complex (three containers, four missiles). True, this data is from 2009.
Credit must be given to Ukraine's military technology designers. First, they placed the most modern combat equipment – drones – inside the container (under its roof). Second, in the lower part of the container they placed the system's power supply and life support section (for daily maintenance and routine checks on the drones, as well as receiving targeting and firing commands via satellite). The execution of the combat mission itself was handled by artificial intelligence.
Production of the Club-K (now Kalibr-K) container-based missile system began in 2011. Data on the quantity produced is unavailable in open sources.
One thing is clear: if a ceasefire is achieved on the Ukrainian front, Putin will begin developing containerized combat weapons for their covert deployment in Europe (if he hasn't already). This means that in addition to controlling underwater communications, NATO must rapidly establish a system for controlling and detecting Russian containerized combat weapons (if such a system hasn't already been created).