DoD News Briefing
Tuesday, September 21, 1999 - 1:30 p.m.
Presenter: Philip J. Crowley, PDASD/PA
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Q: There were airstrikes in southern Iraq today. A Swedish journalist said that he was injured by debris from an airstrike about two kilometers from Ur, the archeological site, the birthplace of Abraham where the Pope's going to be visiting. Were there airstrikes in that...
Mr. Crowley: I can tell you that roughly at 4:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time today four British Royal Air Force GR-1 Tornadoes and two U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornets enforcing the southern no-fly zone used precision-guided munitions to strike military radar sites in southern Iraq near the towns of Talil and Ash-Shu'aybah. This came in response to Iraqi fighter aircraft, I think a flight of two MiG-23s had violated the no-fly zone earlier today.
Q: Were those strikes near the Ur archeological site?
Mr. Crowley: All I have is near Talil and Ash-Shu'aybah.
Q: Two MiG-23s?
Mr. Crowley: Two MiG-23s is my understanding.
Q:...be off limits for attacks? Archaeological sites.
Mr. Crowley: Clearly as we have seen in repeated episodes since DESERT FOX we will do whatever we have to do to reduce the threat to our air crews that are flying the enforcement missions in the north and south. We respond at a time and place of our choosing, and our response is directed at the air defense system of the Iraqis that is threatening our pilots.
So I can't speak to any blast damage that may have occurred to sites near Iraqi air defense systems or air defense sites, but our response was directed at the air defense system that continues to periodically threaten our ability to conduct these missions.
Q: This is the first attack on the southern no-fly zone in awhile. On that press release you're reading from it mentions that there have been 12 incidences I think over the last how many ever days that may have been darting in and out of the no-fly zone. I'm wondering about the policy.
It seems a bit specious now to be connecting attacks on radar sites with these ingresses into the airspace, because if they're not responded to immediately then it's almost a non-response. Why even continue this? I'm really going on my soapbox here. Why even continue this charade of it's a response to provocation when it's just kind of... They keep doing it and we bomb a radar site. Why don't we just keep bombing the radar sites and pretend, you know, be done with pretending that it's a response to their...
Mr. Crowley: First and foremost we are interested in containing Saddam Hussein. The basis of the missions in both north and south is to prevent him from using aircraft and his air defense system to threaten our pilots and also to threaten other countries in the region. So first and foremost these regions, OPERATION NORTHERN WATCH and SOUTHERN WATCH are very successful in terms of preventing him from using his air forces in any militarily significant way.
He continues this pattern, this rope-a-dope that he has done for several months, probably to lure our aircraft into SAM traps because he's looking for an opportunity for a trophy and has offered rewards for his crews to shoot down a coalition aircraft.
So the reason why we conduct these responses to his violations is expressly to do so on our terms, at a time and place of our choosing. But it's directed at the air defense system that continues to inhibit our ability to enforce the no-fly zones.
Q: In the past Saddam Hussein has timed these little darting in and outs with the sort of a changing of the guard of the coalition aircraft. Have we done anything to remove those little loopholes? And secondly, have there been any attempts to engage the MiGs?
Mr. Crowley: Our aircraft have had the opportunity to engage the MiGs. We have done so in the past. We have shot down his aircraft in the past. I can't tell you when the last episode was, but back to DESERT FOX clearly he had at some point put his aircraft up and was sorry he did.
We vary the nature of our operations both north and south expressly so that he can't predict what we're going to do. That's primarily a force protection measure from our standpoint, but we are up there enforcing the no-fly zones on a daily basis, north and south. And we will continue to conduct these operations.
So from Saddam's standpoint if he wants this point/counterpoint to stop all he has to do is stop violating the no-fly zones. He's understood that back to December of last year.
Q: You said the aircraft used precision-guided munitions. Did any of them launch HARMs or any radiation missiles which don't tend to be particularly precise when they don't have an active radar to hone in on?
Mr. Crowley: I'm sure they launched munitions that were appropriate. There were no HARMs fired on this particular operation. We don't discuss the exact type of ordnance used, but HARMs were not a factor. We used whatever munitions were appropriate to these strikes.
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