From Sofrep, November 2019:
Every developed nation with a sizeable military is faced with an ongoing challenge: developing ways to maintain an offensive or defensive edge in a world full of rapidly advancing technologies and ever-aware covert intelligence efforts.
While the Cold War was in many ways a battle of economic investment and technological wit, the global arms race going on in today’s digital world is producing new (and sometimes terrifying) weapons aimed at swaying the balance of power on the geopolitical stage at just as fast a rate.
However, not all new weapons leverage cutting edge technology — in fact, some of the most versatile and troubling new systems are based on a combination of tried and true tech, which has been around for some time, and good old fashioned tomfoolery. Such is the case with “containerized” weapon systems.
At their simplest, “containerized” weapon systems are really nothing more than weapons built to carry everything they need to function inside a standard shipping container. At their most complex, they combine state of the art tech with existing weapons to create powerful hidden systems. “Containerized” tech is nothing new — many nations including Russia, Israel, China, and the United States have had various “containerized” weapons in their stockpile for years now. But what’s troubling about these systems isn’t their technology, but rather their use potential.
The most obvious and valuable use for containerized weapon systems would be enhancing the offensive or defensive capabilities of a large vehicle or static location. Ships with large decks like the Marine Corps‘ amphibious assault vessels or the Navy’s massive carriers could see their on-board suite of weapons bolstered by shipping containers delivered easily by using existing infrastructure. Those weapons could then be deployed, used, and redeployed elsewhere when needed.
However, a secondary and more nefarious use for containerized weapons could be the concealment of missile systems in port cities around the world. China, as an example, has such a massive export enterprise and it’s not at all uncommon for countless container ships carrying thousands of containers from China to be parked in American ports each day. It isn’t logistically feasible to visually inspect each and every container immediately, this leaves the opportunity for containers to be mislabeled intentionally, and potentially create an environment ripe for storing offensive weapons right on American shores....
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