Procurement: February 8, 2005

Archives

Yet another major weapons system was briefly available for sale on eBay. A British man offered a Cold War era Russian ZIL 135 FROG rocket launcher. Normally, eBay prohibits the same of weapons, even replicas, but does allow the sale of deactivated missiles. However, eBays small print forbids the sale of deactivated missiles together with their launcher. So the recent eBay sale only included the launcher (a ZIL truck with a launch rail for a FROG missile launcher tubes mounted on the back). The ZIL 135 launch vehicle is available for about $36,000. The missile can be offered separately. The seller obtained the system from a movie prop company that was going to junk it.