Posted on 01/05/2002 4:14:44 PM PST by knak
UNITED STATES defence chiefs may have to review their strategy for phase 2 of the war after it emerged that Baghdad could have acquired a radar system capable of detecting America's multi-billion-pound fleet of stealth bombers.
The radar is believed to be the same Czech-built type used by Serb forces to shoot down a US F117 Nighthawk stealth bomber and seriously damage another during the war in Kosovo in 1999.
US intelligence chiefs believe that Iraqi generals attempted to buy a system for £176 million from the Czech Republic in 1997 but the deal collapsed after it was exposed by the CIA.
The Telegraph, however, has learnt that after the closure of the Czech defence company Tesla-Pardubice in 1998, two of its Tamara radar systems, which Iraq wanted to acquire, "disappeared", and might have been acquired by rogue arms traders working for Baghdad.
A former employee of the company said last night: "Tesla-Pardubice closed in 1998. It had two radar systems that had not been sold but they have disappeared. Nobody knows where they are."
Rob Hewson, the editor of Jane's Air Launched Weapons, said the weight of circumstantial evidence indicated that Iraq had probably acquired a radar system capable of "seeing" stealth bombers.
He said: "The Pentagon is faced with the prospect that Iraq may have a system that can see stealth bombers and they are very, very worried."
The disclosure is likely to affect the next stages of the war against terrorism and influence whether the US decides to carry out a full-scale attack against Saddam Hussein's regime.
Last week it emerged that stocks of US air-launched cruise missiles had been virtually exhausted after attacks on Kosovo and Sudan, further hampering Pentagon plans for an attack against Iraq.
The B2 stealth bomber and the F117 stealth fighter both played vital roles in the Kosovan and Afghan wars and, together with the mass use of cruise missiles, they are part of a crucial first phase of US attack plans.
Such is the sensitivity surrounding stealth aircraft that even the mere suggestion that an enemy power may have the capability to detect or shoot one down is enough to ground the 20-strong fleet.
A spokesman for the US Department of Defence, said: "It stands to reason that Iraq would want to get its hands on a radar system capable of detecting stealth bombers.
" In the Gulf war, it was the early F117 attacks that put most of their air defence systems out of commission. But we don't know whether they have such a system at the moment."
The Czech radar system uses passive detection to pick up electronic emissions from stealth aircraft.
A spokesman for the Czech Embassy confirmed that when the company went bankrupt in 1998 it still had at least two Tamara systems, but he refused to comment on whether they had disappeared.
The B2 stealth aircraft is painted with a substance that absorbs radar waves, producing an image on a radar screen the size of a large marble. The Serb forces, however, demonstrated what can be achieved by being able to detect stealth aircraft.
During the Kosovo conflict, the Serbs are believed to have plugged powerful computers into their air-defence radar system that help to reveal the flight paths from the faint stealth radar signatures.
When a stealth bomber was suspected to be flying through their area they saturated the sky with missile and heavy machine-gun fire and managed to shoot one down.
Osama bin Laden has been named Iraq's Man of The Year, according to the official Iraqi press, because of the way in which he has "raised the image of Islam and defied the might of the USA".
When a stealth bomber was suspected to be flying through their area they saturated the sky with missile and heavy machine-gun fire and managed to shoot one down.
Really? When was a B-2 shot down?
And, I would be very careful of the source of this report.
They had taken shots at F-117's flying the same pattern the previous night and missed, instead of changing tactics we continued flying the same route...the next night they got lucky.
Iraq can spend all the money they want...no radar is going to give them a fix on a F-1117.
Man of the year.... They got his picture from the wanted dead or alive posters, because they could not find him in the Afgan caves either.
Sounds like it is past time to RAZE Iraq.
Particularly in Iraq.
I thought a Frenchman assigned to the allied command was found to have been leaking our battle plans to the Serbs.
Frigging brilliant! Who's the Rocket Scientist responsible for that brain fart?
I wouldnt be surprised.
That is the only way you can bring one down.
You have to know ahead of time the flight path and then load up triple A in the surrounding countryside...especially on different hillsides, that way when and if the plane jinks the chances are he will be moving into the path of an incoming missile or ground fire.
(Disregard the source, it's the best link I could find.)
Pierre-Henri Bunel, a former French intelligence officer, is appearing before a military tribunal charged with treason. Bunel is accused of handing over to Serbian intelligence secret plans for the Alliance’s air strikes on Yugoslavia, one year before the bombing campaign commenced in spring 1999.
Bunel is no minor figure in French military circles. He received the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest military decoration, for his intelligence work in Bosnia in 1995. He was attached to the French NATO delegation in Brussels in mid-1996, serving as head of staff to the delegation’s senior military adviser, General Pierre Wiroth. He had access to most of NATO’s classified information.
They were never destroyed by the US, from what I remember. Folks?
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