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- RFE/RL correspondent
Ron Synovitz is embedded with a unit of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division
currently outside Najaf, a city in central Iraq now encircled by U.S. troops
following 36 hours of heavy fighting. He reports that U.S. troops are encountering
an unanticipated, and formidable, weapon in the Iraqi arsenal -- Russian-built
Kornet antitank missiles.
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- Najaf, Central Iraq (RFE/RL) -- U.S. military intelligence
is warning American troops that Iraqi soldiers have begun to use a wire-guided
missile system against American tanks that the U.S. military previously
did not know they possessed...
- It is called the AT-14 Kornet surface-to-surface missile.
It has a range of 3.5 kilometers, and it is emerging as the Iraqis' most
effective direct-fire weapon against U.S. armor in the desert of southern
Iraq.
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- Iraqi commandos traveling in three-man teams dressed
in black civilian robes and riding in Nissan pickup trucks have been moving
against the flanks of columns of armor from the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry
Division and launching broadside attacks from several kilometers away using
the system. Those attacks have already disabled at least two Abrahms tanks
and one Bradley armored troop carrier.
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- U.S. military intelligence officials are extremely interested
in capturing one of the missiles intact. They also are instructing American
soldiers who destroy one of the Kornet launchers to save the remains of
the system for close inspection.
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- The Kornet is a Russian-built missile system developed
by the KBP Instrument Design-Making Bureau in Tula. It is primarily designed
to destroy tanks, but can also be used against fortifications, entrenched
troops, and small-scale targets. It has been used by the Russian Army and
has reportedly been sold to the Syrian Army.
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- The appearance of the Kornet system in Iraq is of particular
interest to U.S. officials because of a recent dispute with Moscow over
its alleged weapons sales to Baghdad. The U.S. State Department has accused
KBP of supplying Iraq with the Kornet missiles, something KBP and Moscow
have vehemently denied.
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- In a phone call on 24 March with U.S. President George
W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the American allegations
of Russian sales of missiles, night-vision goggles, and radio-jamming equipment
were "groundless."
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- The AT-14 Kornet is a wire-guided missile system. In
such a system, the missile literally pulls a thin wire along behind it
as it moves toward its target. Those who fire the Kornet control it by
keeping the sights of their launcher trained on the target. That way, the
missile can be guided at moving targets like tanks and armored troop carriers.
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- As a direct-fire weapon, the missile travels in a straight
line, rather than in an arc, as it would with mortar or howitzer artillery.
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- Direct fire is considered more effective than indirect-fire
weapons like the mortar artillery because the person who is firing the
weapon can see the target himself, rather than relying on forward troops
to spot and provide information on where the target is.
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- But the need to keep a Kornet launcher's sights locked
on the target means that it must remain stationery after it has fired.
After a Kornet missile has traveled 3.5 kilometers, the guidance wire has
completely uncoiled and breaks. The missile then becomes erratic, no longer
able to lock onto the target.
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- Another disadvantage of wire-guided missiles is that
they cannot be fired over trees, power lines, telephone lines, or water.
That's because the wire will snag and break, or will malfunction, disabling
the guidance system. That means the Kornet will lose its effectiveness
against U.S. tanks once the U.S. forces advance near the canals and power
lines around Baghdad.
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- But for now, in the open desert, the Kornet's 3.5-kilometer
range is helping Iraqi forces to equalize the advantage that U.S. weapons
have had in earlier battles in this war because of their superior range.
A U.S. Abrahms tank has an effective range of 3 kilometers and can destroy
targets as far away as 4 kilometers:
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- The range of depleted-uranium ammunition fired from the
25-millimeter chain gun of a Bradley troop carrier is classified information,
but I have seen that weapon fired in battle here in Iraq and it rivals
that of the Kornet.
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