Containerized Missile Systems Without Cranes

Can we ship missiles in shipping crates? And make them cheap and fast to load??

Containerized missiles are the concept of putting missiles (both ballistic and cruise) inside a shipping container. 

This has a lot of benefits from a logistics perspective, as well as from a concealment perspective. 

However, a big issue is that most missiles are much taller than a shipping container. This is true for most cruise missiles, and certainly for most ballistic missiles:

Because of this, the missiles must be laid on their sides (horizontally) to fit into a shipping container, eg:

However, this means that to fire them, they must be put somewhat upright at an angle. This requires a crane-like apparatus, such as:

However, such cranes can be very slow (and sometimes expensive) to erect the missile.

Instead, I propose to use a small “jump jet” like apparatus to lift the missile out of the container ship, turn it slightly upright at an angle, and then fire the missile’s main boost motor. 

This has the following benefits:

1. Higher firing speed/rate

   1. Depending on the crane used, the missile erection time can be a bottleneck, whereas these “jump jets” can be very fast

2. Potentially cheaper

   1. Cranes can similarly be expensive, especially when handling explosive cargo, so these could be cheaper, though I’m less sure on that.

Operating sequence:

Step 1: Jump-jet starts

Step 2: Jump-Jet Clears container region

Step 3: Jump jets angle/erect the missile

Step 4: Once the missile is somewhat upright/angled away, and it’s past the container region, the missile’s main booster rocket motor can fire, carrying it away.

Instead of using tiny rocket thrusters (eg cold gas or hydrazine thrusters), a multicopter variant is also possible, eg: 

Small rocket thrusters have a thrust to weight ratio in the 10-100 range, and a specific impulse in the ~80-100 seconds range. That’s within reason for the extremely short “flight” duration that this would be used for (sub-30 seconds), since it only clears the shipping container by a few feet.

Note that all this work only makes sense if the crane used to erect the missile is either expensive or slow to reload. If that’s not the case, then this probably isn’t all too useful.