Finally, Affordable Weapons for the US Military
This is just bizarre. I was reading this article about the Sea Fighter, an aluminum catamaran the size of a football field. It’s a Navy warship designed to fight in shallow water and combat small attack boats like the kind that damaged the USS Cole.
The Sea Fighter was developed by the alarmingly-named Titan Corp (do they sound like the antagonists in a sci-fi movie, or what?). If you’re in the market for such a vessel, and have US $79 million kicking around, you can peruse their brochure (PDF).
Here’s the weird part: the ship has a complement of hundreds of “cruise-like” (not Tom, I assume) missiles, “built entirely with off-the-shelf components and costing about a tenth of the cost of a traditional cruise missile”. And they’re called–I kid you not–Affordable Weapons. Here’s a little video (WMV, and it features the strange phrase “Missile Goes to Loiter”) of one of them in action.
I’m imagining the conversation in enemy territory after a missile strike:
Soldier #1: I heard Marwan got killed.
Soldier #2: Yeah, it’s a bummer.
Soldier #1: How’d it happen?
Soldier #2: Ah, the usual. Killed by an Affordable Weapon.
