Does this mean what I think it means...
Scud-C’s can’t reach Israel from Aleppo (in Northern Syria where the missile mishap occured). Scud-C’s are just 300 mile range weapons.
The more reasonable answer is that it was 800 mile range No Dong missiles that cooked off, one way or another (Israel has stealth UCAV’s, for instance).
It’s the shipment(s) of No Dong’s into Syria, badged as Iranian Shaheeb-3’s, that has ramped up tensions in the region.
So be it...
Dog wrote:
But Jane’s Defence, quoting Syrian defence sources, said the blast occurred as Syrian weapons
experts, with Iranian backing, were attempting to activate a 500-km-range (300-mile-range)
“Scud C” missile with a mustard gas warhead.
Does this mean what I think it means...
*****************
No.
The missile described was out of range of any target, it wasn’t being fuelled for offensive launch.
Was it being fuelled at all? The fuels have a shelf life, they don’t sit in the missiles for days or weeks until launch.
If it was being fuelled at all, it would have been for a test launch. That doesn’t square with the presence of multiple chemical and nerve agents.
You find multiple chemical and nerve agents in a research facility, or in an agent stockpile bunker, if they’re binaries, otherwise standard practice requires a just in time production and delivery system, or in a stockpile of completed waheads, or in a Scud storage bunker, with the filled warheads already mounted to the missile.
There’s no place for rocket fuel in any of those places.
There’s no place for rocket fuel more than 300 miles away from a valid military target, except in a test launch situation, and those usually don’t launch from cities, even with dummy warheads.
If we rule out rocket fuel, then things make a lot more sense. The fuel in that case would be dispersion charges for the chemical agent.
Normal ordnance handling procedure installs the least stable components last. If the Syrians decided the payload chemicals were the most dangerous, they could have been assembling finished warheads, but they’d have to store completed warheads close by to get a mix of payload gases.
If they decided the dispersal charges were the most dangerous, they’d be installed last, again, finishing completed warheads.
No matter how you slice this, somebody screwed up basic procedure.
In a lab, assembling the first ever chemical warhead, with multiple agents present, or in a production facility, with multiple complete warheads present, or in a Scud storage facility.
Something is wrong, there is critical information missing or wrong, but nowhere in the chain of logicdo I see evidence to believe that an offensive launch was imminent.
I would, however, assume that Syria has completed Scud missiles with chemical or nerve gas warheads. Since all of the scenarios outlined above don’t fit the story data given, all must be “wrong”, and none then look likely. But more of them involve completed warheads than don’t so planning for the worst assumes the capability.
Keep in mind, no “outrage” from anyone outside Syria, over their screwup and deaths due to negligent WMD handling.
That leads me to believe we know a lot more than what Janes published.
This “datapoint” could even be part of other occurrence threads.