Free Republic

Czechs unwittingly marred U.S. secret arms purchase - press Prague - The Czech Foreign Ministry in 2005 unwittingly prevented a secret attempt of the United States at buying Russian air-to-surface missiles via Belarus, the daily Pravo writes today, referring to information that the Wikileaks server provided to the Belarusian Internet daily Naviny.by. According to the document of the U.S. Embassy in Prague, the U.S. Navy wanted to get 23 Kh-31 missiles, known in the anti-radiation and anti-shipping versions, among others. After Moscow blocked a direct attempt of Czech and Ukrainian mediators to buy the missiles, Washington decided to try it...

China has revealed that it has upgraded 200 Russian Kh-31P ARM (anti-radiation missiles) it imported in the 1980s. The Chinese were dissatisfied with the Russian seekers (that detected and homed in on radar transmissions), and developed one of their own. The Chinese seeker detects more radar frequencies (2-18 Ghz) and will hit within 8-10 meters of the radar transmission. The Kh-31 was originally developed as an anti-ship missile. The Russians quickly realized that, with a different seeker, the missile would also work well as an anti-radiation weapon. The anti-ship version has a range of 50 kilometers, while the ARM version...