[Cachelot]

Then why does the British military use hydrogen for its artillery ballons?

That is seriously weird. You'd think helium would be the way to go for stuff like this. But the BMETS thing talks about hydrogen bottles, although it also mentions Meterological Hydrogen Generators. Those generators appear to be available from Britain, Japan and the US, at least. However, I don't think these are units filling multiple trailers each.

[ijcr]

Height, as the balloon expands the Helium would leak out through the rubber and the optimum height of around 11 kms would not be achieved. For low level, ie blimps and dirigibles Helium is fine but for serious Met work it's good ole Hydrogen.

The Hydrogen generators sold to Iraq with the AMETS were
mounted on a two wheel trailers and were about 12foot long and 6foot high. Manufactured by Johnson and Matthey PLC, London.They were outfitted with four harvesting/storage cylinders mounted horizontally two per side. These cylinders were half the trailer.

The Amets systems employed by the Iraqi Army suffered from the problem of utilising an x-band radar that locked onto
a mesh target suspended from the balloon.Remember to get the wind speeds and directions required, the flight has to get up to a height of at least 5kms and the distance covered by the rig could be as far as 50kms.

During the first Gulf war the result of such a long radar transmission was a beam riding anti radiation missile from a coalition aircraft.In fact the claims of allied airstikes on some anti aircraft radar positions were actually stikes on Met stations.

The most logical question these Gruniad reporters have not asked yet is :- Where are the Artillery Met systems that require the hydrogen?

Let me add an e-mail that I have recieved from the Observer.

As one of the reporters on the story, I thought I'd respond.

What we understand - and we have had this confirmed from very senior sources - is that the mobile labs were almost certainly used for producing hydrogen. It is believed that is highly likely that this hydrogen would have been used for artillery balloons, although there could have been other uses for it.

It is known that Iraq had a system of using such balloons because Marconi
Command & Control sold them one in 1987. This was confirmed by a spokesman from AMS.

The actual trucks and equipment used to produce the hydrogen were not British, but Iraqi.

The point is that while it might be likely that the Iraqis did have some mobile BW facilities, these truck-trailers were probably not part of any such facility.

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Antony Barnett