Lun-Class Ekranoplan: The Missile-Armed Sea Skimmer
If the Caspian Sea Monster proved the concept, the Lun-class ekranoplan weaponized it. This 380-ton ground-effect vehicle carried six P-270 Moskit (Sunburn) anti-ship cruise missiles mounted in pairs atop the fuselage. Designed to skim across the ocean surface at 500 km/h, too fast for most naval defenses to track and too low for conventional radar to detect, the Lun was conceived as a carrier-killer that would streak toward NATO battle groups at wave-top height and unleash a salvo of supersonic missiles.
Only one Lun was completed in 1987, but its specifications were genuinely terrifying from a naval defense perspective. Flying at 3-5 meters above the waves, it was invisible to ship-based radar until it popped above the horizon at close range. Its eight turbofan engines gave it the speed of a turboprop aircraft but the payload capacity of a small warship. The Soviet Navy classified it as a ship rather than an aircraft, creating bureaucratic confusion that persists to this day. After the Soviet collapse, the sole Lun-class was mothballed and now sits beached on the Caspian coastline in Dagestan, a massive, rusting monument to one of the Cold War's most radical weapons concepts.
