Iraq Makes Amazing Military Comeback
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| Washington Times, 1/19/94, P. A19 by Jim Anderson
Deutsche Presse Agentur |
According to US officials, Iraq
still has up to 20 upgraded Scud missiles known as "al-Husayns" hidden
in bunkers. Iraqi officials claim that all remaining missiles have been
destroyed or were turned over to UN officials to be destroyed. UN weapons
inspectors stated that they were unable to substantiate the Iraqi claim.
According to allied intelligence and Iraqi officials, Iraq now has the
world's fourth largest army.
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German Ship Caught With Rocket Fuel Ingredient For Iraq
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| Executive News Service, 1/24/94
Reuter, 1/24/94 |
On 1/24/94, German government spokesman Dieter Vogel announced that
on 12/28/93, German and Saudi inspectors confiscated over 100 barrels of
ammonium perchlorate from a German-registered ship docked in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia, that was bound for Beirut, Lebanon from Hung Fu, China, although
the chemicals were to go on to Iraq
despite UN sanctions. Ammonium perchlorate is used for missile fuel. The
German ship is called the "Asian Senator."
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Spy Data, Diplomacy Net Arms Intercepts
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| Defense News, 1/24/94, pp. 6, 37, by Neil Munro and Barbara
Opall |
| According to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation
Robert Einhorn, the US has not used coercive military action in the interdiction
of weapons supplies, but other US officials said they would not rule out
this option in the future against shipments deemed harmful to US national
security. Einhorn, citing the 8/93 interception of the Chinese ship Yin
He, which was suspected of transporting chemicals to Iran, stated that
"that action was conducted with the consent and cooperation of the Chinese
government." According to the Pentagon, a number of successful interdictions
were conducted in 1993, including a 6/93 shipment of chemicals from India
to Iraq, and a 12/93 shipment of chemicals
from China to Iraq.
On 1/19/93, former congressional staffer and international security
consultant Ken Timmerman cited a number of US intelligence failures in
arms shipment interdiction, including the sale of computerized machine
tools from Germany to Iran, and the 1992 North Korean shipment of ballistic
missiles to Iran.
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Scud Hunting May Drop Under 10-Minute Mark
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| Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2/21/94, p. 90,
by David A. Fulghum |
| On 3/18/94, at Nellis AFB in Nevada, the US will conduct the second
half of "Operation Crossbolt 2," which is designed to demonstrate the US's
ability to successfully hunt mobile ballistic missile launchers. The program
is an attempt to reduce aircraft strike time against mobile launchers to
less than ten minutes after missile launch, but the Air Combat Command
(ACC) did not specify what its ultimate goal was. During the Gulf War,
it took about six minutes for Iraqi
mobile launcher crews to relocate after firing a missile.
The goal of the demonstration is to detect missiles after launch, locate
and correctly identify the launchers, and assign an appropriate weapon
to destroy the launchers; all activity is to be accomplished in the first
pass of the fighter aircraft assigned to attack the launchers. The test
will involve F- 15E and F-16C ground attack aircraft, an E-3 AWACS, an
E-8 JSTARS for moving target information, a U-2R with advanced synthetic
aperture radar, a JTIDS [Joint Tactical Information Distribution System]
equipped RC-135S Cobra Ball with long-range infrared sensors, a modular
control and reporting center (CRC), and ground-based TPS-75 and TPS-59
radars. Two day-missions and one night-mission will be flown; each test
will be against two TELs.
ACC officials would not speculate on how effective the system would
be against mobile launchers, but they did indicate that it might not be
necessary to achieve 80 or 90 percent kill capabilities. The chief of ACC's
theater air defense division, Col. Patrick Garvey, said, "The idea is to
make life miserable for Scud crews." Mobile missile crews would fire fewer
and fewer missiles as losses mounted. Garvey stated that mobile missile
hunting was part of the "offensive counter-air mission to take the battle
to the enemy, versus terminal systems that . . . fight the battle over
enemy territory."
The first half of Operation Crossbolt 2 was completed at White Sands
Missile Range, New Mexico, from 12/13/93 to 12/15/93. The test used a "surrogate
DSP," a Cobra Ball aircraft 80 miles from the target, and ground-based
radars located about 250 miles from the target.
In 1/93, at White Sands, the ACC and Air Warfare Center conducted a
Crossbolt 1 test that detected a Lance missile firing, and, using voice
communication only, guided an F-15E to the launcher in 32 minutes. The
F-15E's target was an SS-21 surrogate vehicle, and the aircraft had to
distinguish the target from a decoy. The test involved an F-15E, a U-2R
with ASAR, a Cobra Ball aircraft, a E-8 JSTARS, a TPS-75 radar and a CRC
at Roswell, New Mexico. Commenting on the test, Garvey stated, "That's
much too long to prosecute that target set."
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'Most Complex' Weapons Inspection Uncovers No Violations
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| UN Chronicle, 3/94, p. 70 |
From 9/30/93 to 10/30/93, 85 UNSCOM inspectors conducted the nineteenth
ballistic missile inspection in Iraq.
Using advanced technology, such as helicopters equipped with ground-penetrating
radar, the team inspected thirty sites in central, northern, and western
Iraq for signs of any prohibited weapons systems. The team also verified
Iraqi declarations concerning its previous weapons programs. On 11/8/93,
UNSCOM reported that no weapons banned under UN Security Council resolution
687 were found.
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Ballistic Missile Team Assesses 14 Iraqi Sites For Future Monitoring
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| United Nations Press Release (IK/166, SC/5802), 3/8/94 |
| On 2/25/94, the twenty-first ballistic missile inspection team concluded
its assessment of the missile production capabilities of 14 sites in the
vicinity of Baghdad. The inspection, which began on 2/17/94, sought to
establish effective monitoring practices at sites identified by UNSCOM
as likely support facilities for Iraq's current missile production program.
Ballistic missiles with a range of more than 150 km (90 miles) have been
banned in Iraq by the UN Security Council
[1]. The acquired data from the inspection will also aid in UNSCOM's operational
planning for current monitoring and verification activities in Iraq. The
team, led by Patrice Palanque of France, was composed of 14 experts from
the UK, Russia, Ukraine, France, and the US. Following high-level talks
in Baghdad, it was announced that similar missions will be conducted in
the future.
Supporting Sources:
[1] Reuter, 2/16/94, "Missile Team Readies For Long-Term Iraq
Monitoring."
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No Longer Fenced In
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| Time, 5/23/94, pp. 36-38, by Thomas Sancton |
| UNSCOM chairman Rolf Ekeus is confident that UN inspectors have found
the 890 Iraqi Scud-B missiles purchased
from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Iraqi scientists
continue to conduct ballistic missile research at sites such as the Saad
16 research and development center, which was destroyed during the war
and rebuilt, and the newly built Ibn al-Haytham lab facility near Baghdad.
Despite a UN resolution which prohibits Iraq from possessing missiles with
a range greater than 93 miles, a UN expert stated that "the same technology
used to make a missile that flies 93 miles can be used on one that flies
400 or 1,200 miles."
On 12/93, Saudi and German officials confiscated two
containers of Chinese-made ammonium perchlorate, a fundamental component
in building solid-fuel rockets, aboard the German registered ship, the
Asian Senator. The Chinese ammonium perchlorate was en route to Beirut,
however, US and UN officials confirmed that the ultimate destination was
the Iraqi long-range ballistic missile program. On 4/94, US authorities
arrested two Jordanian nationals, Al. M. Harb and his wife Rula Saba Harb,
on charges of violating the Iraqi embargo. In the course of three years,
the Harbs made over 100 shipments to Iraq, which included equipment with
possible ballistic missile applications.
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UN Tallies Iraqi Missiles
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| Executive News Service, 6/24/94
Reuter, 6/24/94, by Leon Barkho |
| On 6/24/94, UN arms experts successfully completed a 15-day mission
during which they inspected missile production sites and tagged missiles.
The tenth UN ballistic missile mission leader, Mark Silver, did not say
how many missiles had been tagged, but did say that all of the missiles
tagged had been declared by Iraq and
that it had taken a "while to accomplish that task." The tagged missiles
had ranges of 50-149 km and were tagged to ensure that they were not modified
to a range greater than the maximum 150 km allowable under the terms of
the Gulf War ceasefire. The most dangerous and difficult task was tagging
the operational missiles, which were ready to launch while the UN experts
were touching and cleaning them, applying the tags, and working around
them. All known Iraqi rockets with ranges greater than 150 km have already
been scrapped, according to the UN. Silver also made four scheduled and
three surprise inspections of Iraqi missile production sites near Baghdad.
The coordinating body for Iraqi
inspections, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), is currently preparing
a strict arms monitoring mechanism to verify that Iraq does not revive
any of its dismantled weapons programs. It is not known at this time when
the mechanism will be in place and functioning.
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Missile Parts Sale To Baghdad Lands A German In Jail
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| International Herald Tribune, 7/20/94 |
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On 7/19/94, German businessman Anton Eyerle, owner of Rhein-Bayern
Fahrzeugbau, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years imprisonment because his firm
continued to deliver missile components to Iraq
after the invasion of Kuwait in 8/90;
the firm's shipments violated a UN
embargo and German export laws. The firm supplied more than 1,000 ignition
systems from Iraqi Styx and Scud missiles. Judge Hartmut Klotz, in charge
of sentencing in the German city of Augsburg, where the sentencing took
place, said that the ignition systems could have been used to activate
enough Styx and Scud missiles "to wipe out the entire Middle East." Two
managing directors of the company had already been found guilty, but Eyerle
asserts that he had no knowledge of these illegal activities.
Iraq fired Scud missiles during
the Gulf War in 1990-1991, and threatened to equip the missiles with chemical
warheads and use them against Israel and the other Arab Gulf countries
during that conflict.
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New York Trader Nabbed For Iraq Shipment
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| Export Control News, 12/30/94, p. 14 |
On 12/14/94, the US-based import-export agent Storm Kheem was arrested
for organizing in 1993 an illicit shipment of ammonium perchlorate, a missile
fuel component, from the Chinese Chemical Import-Export Corporation of
Guangdong to Zeid Khorma, an Iraqi
government purchasing agent in Jordan. Kheem works for the New York firm
Bkesco, and is also known by the alias Kim Kyung-il. Two containers of
the chemical, falsely labeled ammonium sulphate, were seized in 12/93 during
a search of the German freighter Asian Senator, and were eventually linked
to Kheem by German, Saudi Arabian, and US Customs agents. Initial speculation
had linked the shipment to origins in Germany or South Korea. US government
officials have noted that the Chinese government willingly participated
in the search of the Asian Senator.
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