17 June 2004
Ukraine's missing missiles
Since March, Ukraine's defence minister, Yevhen Marchuk, has been searching for
missing missiles and other weapons that could have fallen into terrorist hands or been
sold to rogue states. JID investigates why this potentially catastrophic situation is only
now being brought to light.
Marchuk raised a domestic storm when he publicly revealed that the Defence Ministry
had no unified accounting system. Nor has a comprehensive inventory of military
equipment in Ukraine ever been carried out. It is unknown what weapons the Defence
Ministry actually possesses or what it inherited from the former Soviet Union.
When Marchuk became defence minister in June 2003 he ordered two inventories that
indicated US$170m of military stock was probably missing. These results were so
shocking that Marchuk ordered a new team of investigators to conduct an additional
check using different methods. They uncovered that additional equipment, worth $20m,
was missing.
Ukraine's officially declared revenue from the sale of military equipment is $3bn. This,
according to JID's inside sources, only represents a small fraction of the real volume of
Ukraine's military exports. Meanwhile, Marchuk has complained that there is no data
available to him regarding the quantity of military equipment Ukraine inherited after the
disintegration of the Soviet Union.
The sheer scale of what appears to be missing equipment is astounding, as
demonstrated by just one example. In 1990-1991, on the eve of the break up of the
Soviet Union, 1,942 S-185 rockets were delivered to the Zhytomir military base, west of
Kiev. These rockets were to be dismantled.
In fact, only 488 of the 1,942 rockets can actually be accounted for. The missiles could
have been sold to unknown groups or countries. Or their scrap metal, gold, platinum
and silver could have been sold separately with the proceeds being transferred to
offshore accounts.
"We are looking for several hundred missiles. They have already been
decommissioned, but we cannot find them," complained Marchuk.
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http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid040617_1_n.shtml
Iowa Western Community College offers terrorism preparedness courses
(Daily Nonpareil)
As the nation's five-tiered terror alert system hovers at the yellow - or elevated - threat level, courses like Terrorism in Perspective and Planning for Workplace Emergencies have taken their place in the list of Iowa Western Community College course offerings along side more traditional educational fare like English Comp 1, Human Biology and Intro to Sociology.
IWCC is in its second year of offering courses that both train people to be aware of possible terrorist activity and train emergency personnel who will be among the first to arrive at an incident.
Donas Charbonneau and Michell Bose teach the courses, all free offerings that are part of Iowa Western's continuing education program.
The two share concerns that the American public may be suffering from awareness fatigue. They don't want people to let their guard down.
"We need the people to get involved," Charbonneau said. "They're the ones who are going to see it."
The Council Bluffs area doesn't lack for potential terrorist targets. With a nuclear power plant at Fort Calhoun, Neb., and the U.S. Strategic Command at Bellevue., Neb., people need to think about what's around them, she said.