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| Iraq |
| UN finds Iraqi missile designed to strew chemical bomblets |
| 2003-03-10 |
| United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq have discovered a new variety of rocket apparently configured to spread bomblets filled with chemical or biological agents over large areas, United States officials say. The reconfigured rocket warheads appear to be cobbled together from Iraq's stockpiles of imported or home-built weapons, some of which Iraq has already used with both conventional and chemical warheads. Iraq insists it has destroyed all its old chemical warheads, a claim the inspectors have not verified. A United States official said that Iraq at first told inspectors the rocket was designed as a conventional cluster bomb, which would scatter explosive submunitions over its target, and not as a chemical weapon. A few days later, he said, the Iraqis conceded some rockets might have been configured as chemical weapons. The distinctive appearance of the rockets' cluster munitions - heavy metal balls with holes in them - suggested their use as a way to disperse chemical or biological weapons, the official said. "If you take the kinds of fuses we know they have, and you screw them in there, when these things come out from the main frame and they explode inward, chemical agents come out," he said. "These can be used for biological weapons, too." US officials said that the discovery, buttressed by information contained in a 173-page report by the inspection team, detailing the history of Iraqi weapons programs and the United Nations' attempts to enforce compliance with its disarmament resolutions over the last 12 years, showed that Iraq could not be trusted to co-operate with the inspectors.The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said on Sunday that the chief inspector for chemical and biological weapons, Hans Blix, should have made more of the evidence in that report when he appeared before the Security Council last week. Blix buried this in the same report that mentioned the drone aircraft. Guess he was hoping that nobody read it. "When you look at page after page of what the Iraqis have done over the years to hide, to deceive, to cheat, to keep information away from the inspectors, to change facts to fit the latest issue, and once they put that set of facts before you, when you find those facts are false, they come up with a new set of facts - it's a constant pattern," he said. You see the same pattern with Blixie's reports. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #8 But could these weapons be delivered by a drone? Would drones flying at 50-100 foot altitude be detected by AWACS or other airborne radar? Could drones carry anthrax and disperse it over a major urban area? |
| Posted by: TJ Jackson 2003-03-11 00:25:33 |
| #7 Good point Steve, although any Iraqi pilot approaching an active fighting front has gotta assume it's a one-way ticket..the Mig 29's should never make it to our guys - bet the Iraqis on the ground will never know what killed them when the Migs are shot from the sky before they can get our forces....sad...but better them than us |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-03-10 21:43:25 |
| #6 Does this explain the appearances of a Mig-29 that recently challenged the southern no-fly zone? Testing to see whether they can get into a position to release these cluster bombs and then get out again? |
| Posted by: Steve White 2003-03-10 16:31:15 |
| #5 There are pictures of these on the Fox News website. They report: But officials told Fox News that the weapons are not rockets, but large bombs that can be dropped from wings of airplanes. Soccer-ball-sized cluster bombs then are released from the larger bombs. When triggered by a fuse, these smaller submunitions can disperse chemical or biological agents. These are the biggest cluster bombs I've ever seen. The only reason I can think of to make one the size of a soccer ball would be for use with chemical or bio material. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-03-10 14:48:23 |
| #4 I think the idea is that the bomblets would have a very tiny charge in the center of the bomblet to propel the agent out of the holes in the bomb. You would have a seal or barrier between the charge and the agent, something like the wadding on a shotgun shell. Bomblet lands or goes off with a time delay in the air and "poof", you get a small cloud of vapor or powder in the air. Cluster bombs would be a good way to dispurse a bio agent or toxin this way. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-03-10 14:09:10 |
| #3 Agree with you Chuck about the fuse, however, biological agents are, as a rule, way more sensitive than chemical agents. Also, to have enough chemical agents to do serious killing you have to have a lot of the chemical. Even mustard gas only kills if you have a lot of it and it isn't dispersed too fast by the wind. |
| Posted by: mhw 2003-03-10 12:14:27 |
| #2 Depends on the fuse, I'd say. A small fuse, spreading the balls out at altitude, probably wouldn't harm the WMD. It's why fireworks work, they don't go off in one big boom, but at timed intervals because the original dispersal explosion isn't very large. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-03-10 11:16:26 |
| #1 Using a cluster bomb to disperse bio agents is pretty iffy. The heat of the blast will neutrallize much of the bio and any left after that will have unpredictable dispersal. Chem could withstand the heat better but it would still be iffy. If the idea of using them is to instill panic in civilian population, it might work, but not much of a military use. |
| Posted by: mhw 2003-03-10 10:32:19 |