DoD News Briefing
Thursday, August 19, 1999 - 1:40 p.m.
Presenter: Mr. Kenneth H. Bacon, ASD PA
.............
Q: Ken, have there been any more strikes in Iraq either inside or outside of the no-fly zone?
Mr. Bacon: The most recent development is that Iraqi planes violated the Southern no-fly zone yesterday. Two F-1 Mirage's flew briefly 20 miles or so into the no-fly zone, as allied planes were leaving the no-fly zone. So they appeared briefly to try to chase them out. But they were pretty far apart. That's the most recent development.
There have been no more attacks since Tuesday outside of the no-fly zone. That is with coalition aircraft striking beyond the boundaries of the no-fly zones.
Q: What is the significance of hitting outside of the no-fly zones? Is this a change of policy?
Mr. Bacon: No, it's not a change of policy at all. What happened here was allied planes were illuminated by radar. The radar was in the vicinity of a place called Quyyarah West, just south of the 36th Parallel, that is south of the northern no-fly zone. And they responded both with HARMs and with AGM-130s -- one AGM-130 and several HARMs -- against the site that they believed was illuminating them. There is an SA-2 site with SA-2 radars...they were illuminated by SA-2 radars at Quyyarah West.
I don't regard this as a change of policy at all. Our planes do have the ability to return fire against threatening installations.
Q: Have they done that before previously?
Mr. Bacon: No, not in this case.
Q: What do you make of the Iraqi intentions? Do you have any sense of what they're up to, that for the first time since Desert Fox they would have pinged on us from outside the no-fly zone?
Mr. Bacon: I think you'll have to ask Iraq what's in their head. What Iraq has said publicly is that they want to shoot down a coalition aircraft and they've posted a reward of a million dinars to do that. So they are carrying out a series of steps designed to bring down an allied aircraft. But as I've said before, they have adopted a fairly low-risk strategy in that they generally do not turn on their radars. They frequently fire missiles ballistically without radar guidance. On Tuesday, the 17th, they did turn on radars and track our planes, and our planes responded aggressively to that.
Q: Do you specifically see this, then, as something tied to trying to step up an effort to shoot down a U.S. or allied aircraft? Or did this just sort of happen, and it just happened?
Mr. Bacon: I think the amount of energy that Iraq puts into trying to shoot down allied planes is episodic. It sort of ebbs and flows. We've seen periods of stepped-up efforts in the past and then they've fallen back. So I think it's hard to turn this into a trend right now.
Clearly their level of effort is in many respects less than it was back in January right after Desert Fox, but it does tend to go through peaks and valleys. I don't know what is in their heads except that they have clearly a general desire to shoot down a plane, but they do seem to change their strategy from time to time and that involves differing levels of effort.
Q: Was Tuesday's strike intended to send a message to Iraq that even behind the line these facilities are not safe? Since December they have illuminated U.S. and British planes from behind the line many, many times, and the response has been an asymmetric one of hitting something else but in the no-fly zone.
You mentioned the extended range SA-2s in your last briefing, I think. Is this perhaps because of a change in their tactics, designed to send a message of some kind to them that no place is safe? That they're not going to be able to play this game from behind the line any more?
Mr. Bacon: No. It was designed to protect allied aircraft. This was well within...
Q: But your response has been, since December--I mean this is unique.
Mr. Bacon: These missiles are just below the 36th Parallel. This is a staging area and they have SA-2s there and they move them out into other parts of the Northern no-fly zone, and then they come back. Generally, the threats have been from missiles they've had forward deployed to the extent they've used their radars to threaten our planes, and not from the Quyyarah West area.
What was unusual here was that they were getting pinged right from this area, the pilots believed, so they responded. They make these decisions quickly. They responded by shooting back at this SAM-2 site.
Q: But guidance to the pilots previously had been that if they're illuminated from behind the line that they would retaliate against a different target.
Mr. Bacon: I'm not going to talk about the guidance to the pilots. All I can tell you is that this is well within their operating rules of engagement.
Q: The AGM-130 gives you usually a good BDA. What did the AGM-130 and what did the HARMs hit?
Mr. Bacon: It gave us good BDA.
Q: What did it hit?
Mr. Bacon: They hit part of an SA-2 installation. Yes.
Q: Can we get that video?
Q: What's the United States' reaction to Korea's statement...
Q: Can I ask one more question on the SAMs before you go off of it?
Q: Sure.
Q: Can you go back and talk a little bit about the F-1s? You said that two Iraqi F-1s went in. Were they chasing the U.S. planes? Were the U.S. planes chasing them? And what's the significance?
Mr. Bacon: No. They penetrated the no-fly zone as the U.S. planes were leaving. I don't know the distance between the U.S. planes and the F-1s, but this fit well into the standard "cheat and retreat" pattern that Iraq has used so unsuccessfully in the past. That is that when our planes are some distance away, they nip into the no-fly zone and then nip out again before our planes have a chance to respond. This was the classic "cheat and retreat" policy except they did it while our planes were on the way out.
Why did they do it? I think it's hard to speculate, but they may have--maybe they hoped that our planes would turn around and chase them, and therefore expose themselves to a SAM trap or to some dangerous ambush that they had set up. But our pilots are disciplined and they did not do that. As I said, they just nipped across the no-fly zone about 20 miles, then turned around and went back.
Q: It wasn't that much different than some of the previous instances?
Mr. Bacon: No. I mean, as I said, this "cheat and retreat" policy is very common. And also the no-fly zone violations tend to be bunched. We hadn't seen a no-fly zone violation since August 1st. It's no telling whether they intend more violations or not.
Q: Are targets on the other side of the lines now more likely to be struck in situations like this?
Mr. Bacon: Iraq should expect that our pilots will continue to protect themselves on their patrols.
Q: In those Tuesday attacks, both in the North and the South, the Iraqis said that civilians were killed. At least in the South, reporters saw, talked to residents and saw evidence of damage.
Do you have any indication that any ordnance went astray in those attacks?
Mr. Bacon: We have no indication that civilians were killed and we have no indication that ordnance went astray.
.................
Press: Thank you.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug1999/t08191999_t0819asd.html
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
