Puzzle Boxes
16th April 2019
China has become the third nation to reveal it had developed a system to fire missiles from a standard 40 foot shipping container. The Chinese version is apparently designed to handle the YJ-18C missile. This is the latest version of the YJ-18, which is normally used as an anti-ship missile and is very similar to the Russian Klub. The C version is said to have a longer range and meant mainly for land based targets.
The Chinese containerized missile system is very similar to the one a Morinformsystem-Agat JSC, Russian firm began marketing in 2010. That one fired a version of the 3M54 Klub cruise missile. The Morinformsystem-Agat system was called “Pandora’s Box”, and designed so that missiles were carried in and fired from a 40 foot (12.3 meter) shipping container. The launcher and the missile have to slide out of the container before firing, thus limiting where it can be placed on a ship, particularly your typical container ship. Each container contained a small compartment for the two man firing crew. You could get two or three of these shipping container Klubs on most cargo ships, turning the vessel into warship.