CENTCOM: Continuing Scud Hunt Not Limited To Western Iraq

InsideDefense.com | March 27, 2003 | John Liang

[Stand Watch Listen]

The ongoing search by U.S. and allied forces for Saddam Hussein's remaining arsenal of Scud missiles is not limited to western Iraq, a hotbed of missile firings during the 1991 Gulf War, according to a senior U.S. Central Command official.

No Scud firings have been reported in this conflict, but the United States and its allies remain vigilant.

In 1991, Iraq launched 39 Scud missiles against Israel from its western desert -- launches that bedeviled U.S. commanders because a large amount of air and special operations assets had to be diverted to hunt them, in part to assure Israel the United States was doing everything it could to destroy the missiles. Coalition pilots and special forces had a very tough time finding either the missiles or the launchers themselves.

"We're very active in those areas to make sure that it doesn't happen again," Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said today during a CENTCOM briefing at the command's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. Brooks is CENTCOM's deputy director of operations.

According to an analysis released this month by the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a fueled and armed Scud could be launched within 20 minutes of the transporter-erector-launcher's arrival at a launch site.

Allied forces have observed Iraqi missile deployment "patterns in the western desert and we've prepared in tremendous detail for the Scud hunt that's going on" there, Air Force Maj. Gen. Dan Leaf told InsideDefense.com in a recent interview (see separate story). Leaf represents the air element at the ground headquarters in Kuwait. "We believe we've destroyed a number of missiles and transporter-erector-launchers [or] TELs. There haven't been any [Scud] shots," he added.

Brooks, at today's briefing in Qatar, said "the reports that we've given you about the [Scud's] potential extended range makes it possible to move it much further east than where the missiles were fired during Desert Storm, much further east, to be able to range a much larger radius of countries."

According to an October 2002 CIA report on Iraq's WMD programs, Iraq has managed to rebuild and expand its missile development infrastructure under sanctions. "Iraqi intermediaries have sought production technology, machine tools, and raw materials in violation of the arms embargo," the report reads.

One indicator the United States uses as evidence that Iraq's long-range ballistic missile program has continued despite the sanctions is the al Rafah facility about 50 miles southwest of Baghdad. The facility is Iraq's main site for the static testing of liquid-propellant missile engines. CIA contends that Saddam Hussein's regime "has been building a new test stand there that is larger than the test stand associated with al-Samoud engine testing and the defunct Scud engine test stand.

"The only plausible explanation for this test facility is that Iraq intends to test engines for longer-range missiles prohibited under" U.N. resolutions, the CIA report reads.

CENTCOM's Brooks showed a bombing video today of an attack on what was described as an "Iraqi missile support facility" in Baghdad, an attack the general said was meant to "degrade [Iraq's] ability to threaten their neighbors."

Coalition forces destroyed the missile facility today "because it could be potentially used at this point for this operation," Brooks said.

"Even beyond the denial and deception that we all witnessed during the [U.N. weapons inspection] days and years before that, even beyond that, we knew that there were systems inside of there," he added. "Some have not been accounted for at this point in time.

"And so, rather than see them used, we destroy the places where they could be assembled," Brooks said. "And we'll also look for places where they might be used and destroy them there."

-- John Liang