- Iraq has boosted the range of some surface-to-air
missiles as part of its ongoing efforts to shoot down patrolling U.S. and
British warplanes, The Washington Times has learned. Top Stories
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- Iraqi military forces in charge
of air defenses recently were found to have added booster rockets to anti-aircraft
missiles, in a makeshift effort to extend their range by several miles,
defense and intelligence officials said.
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- Meanwhile, an advance party
of U.N. technicians will reach Baghdad on Monday to pave the way for inspection
teams that will search for weapons of mass destruction. It will be the
first round of inspections since 1998.
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- A group headed by chief U.N. arms
inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, will arrive in Iraq for the first inspection in a week or
so, U.N. spokesmen said.
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- U.S. officials continued warning
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein yesterday that he must comply with the latest
U.N. disarmament resolution.
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- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disputed
Iraq's latest claim that it does not have any nuclear, chemical or biological
weapons.
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- "I'll simply say that they do
have weapons of mass destruction, and the purpose of the U.N. resolution,
of course, is for them to agree to allow inspectors in and to allow the
inspectors to make some conclusions," Mr. Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon.
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- Noted Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell during a visit to Canada: "If the Iraqis do not comply, there
will be consequences. Those consequences will involve use of military force
to disarm them, to change the regime."
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- Regarding the missile activity,
the Iraqis used booster rockets from two-stage Russian-made SA-2 missiles
and attached them to SA-3 missiles in an effort to increase the latter's
range, the officials said.
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- Iraq's SA-2 missiles have a maximum range of about
21 miles, and its SA-3s can hit targets up to 15 miles away. Both systems
were first deployed in the late 1950s.
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- "Any time Iraq uses missiles
against us or coalition forces, it's a concern," said Pentagon spokesman
Bryan Whitman. He declined to comment on specific efforts by Iraq to increase
surface-to-air missile (SAM) ranges.
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- A military official said intelligence
on the SAM range increases was reported within the past several weeks.
"There has been no assessment of how effective it has been,"
the official said. "But they are trying to get better range and [adding
boosters] appears to have had that effect."
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- The extended-range missiles do not
appear to be accurate and probably are being fired "ballistically"
by the Iraqis without the full benefit of sensors and related guidance
systems, the official said.
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- A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command,
which is in charge of U.S. forces that patrol the skies over Iraq, declined
to comment.
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- Iraq's air defenses continue
to fire regularly at U.S. and British warplanes that are patrolling large
areas of Iraqi territory over the northern and southern parts of the country.
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- Iraq has about 1,500 surface-to-air
missile launchers, according to military specialist Anthony Cordesman.
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- It is not clear whether last
week's U.N. resolution, which Iraq has said it accepts, will affect Baghdad's
continuous efforts to shoot down patrolling jets.
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- The resolution states that Iraq
cannot threaten or take hostile action against any U.N. representative
or member state "taking action to uphold any Council resolutions."
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- "That could be a trigger"
for U.S. action, if Iraq continues firing at patrolling jets, the military
official said.
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- The patrols have been in place
since the 1991 Persian Gulf war and are designed to prevent Iraq from attacking
opposition forces in those parts of the country.
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- Since the end of the Gulf war, Iraq
has been trying to improve its Soviet-era air-defense forces with new equipment
acquired covertly from outside the country. All military equipment is embargoed
under U.N. resolutions.
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- U.S. officials said a Chinese
high-technology company provided Iraq with a fiber-optic communications
system that was used to enhance the air-defense radar network. The fiber-optic
system was bombed by U.S. aircraft last year.
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- Iraq also has converted commercial
trucks imported under the U.N. oil-for-food humanitarian program for use
as mobile anti-aircraft missile systems, which are more difficult to detect.
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- Any U.S. military operation against Iraq
would begin with massive attacks on all elements of Iraq's air-defense
system, which includes mobile and fixed missile sites, anti-aircraft artillery
and a nationwide command-and-control system for targeting and attacking
jets.
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- In addition to SA-2 and SA-3
missiles, Iraq also has mobile SA-6 missiles.
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- According to the private group Global
Security.org, Iraqi air-defense systems have been improved in recent years.
They have become "amalgams of Western, old East European and Far Eastern
technologies that behave in nonstandard ways."
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- "That makes them less predictable
for the U.S. and British planes that are their targets and increasingly
difficult to counter," the group said in a report posted on its Web
site.
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- U.S. and allied warplanes have
been conducting attacks on Iraqi air-defense sites, both missile batteries
and anti-aircraft artillery sites, on a weekly basis.
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- The last strikes occurred last week,
when U.S. and allied jets bombed two surface-to-air missile sites near
Tallil, southeast of Baghdad.
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- The raid was carried out after
Iraq moved the two missile systems into an area that violated the air-exclusion
zone over southern Iraq.
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- The U.S. Central Command stated
Sunday that the missiles were "deemed a threat" to patrolling
aircraft.
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- On Nov. 7, Iraq fired surface-to-air
missiles and artillery guns at patrolling jets, prompting the bombing of
an air-defense operations center and integrated air-defense site near Al
Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.
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- Mr. Rumsfeld announced in September
that military forces in Iraq several months earlier abandoned a policy
of conducting limited strikes on attacking Iraqi air defenses in favor
of bigger attacks on Iraq's overall air-defense network.
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- "We decided after a great
deal of talk that it really didn't make an awful lot of sense to be flying
patterns that we were getting shot at, if in response we were not doing
any real damage that would make it worth putting our pilots at risk,"
Mr. Rumsfeld said.
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- © 2002 News World Communications, Inc.
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