Iraqi missile strikes against U.S. forces in Kuwait ineffective
USMC News
Story Identification Number: 2003322214252
Story by Staff Sgt. Bill Lisbon
KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait (March 22, 2003) -- As Day 3 in the war against Saddam Hussein's regime came to an end, one thing seemed to be missing - the regular wailing of alarms warning troops in Kuwait of inbound Iraqi missiles.
Save one false alarm in the early evening March 22, 2003, the sirens were quiet and Iraqi forces launched no missiles against coalition forces in Kuwait. During the first two days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a total of six missiles were fired into Kuwait.
None of the ballistic missiles or their debris caused casualties or damage, nor were they armed with chemical or biological agents.
While the missiles were believed to be aimed at prime military targets in Kuwait such as Camp Doha, Camp Commando and Ali Al-Salem Air Base, the attacks came at seemingly random times.
The strategy behind this approach is to disrupt military operations every few hours and to scare us, as well as for Hussein to start a propaganda campaign among the Iraqi people to feign successes, believes Sgt. 1st Class Richard Petak, an intelligence analyst with the Combined / Joint Task Force - Consequence Management, a U.S.-led nuclear, biological and chemical defense force keeping close watch on the Iraqi missiles that could be armed with weapons of mass destruction.
"His biggest weapon is propaganda," he said.
All six missiles were either shot down by Patriot missiles or were allowed to impact where they wouldn't cause any damage, said Petak.
"His missile systems have no guidance system," Petak said. "They have no precision accuracy like ours."
Being a more or less point-and-shoot weapon, Iraq's long-range ballistic missiles travel along a trajectory that U.S. radar systems can predict, and therefore deploy Patriots to intercept if the inbound missiles pose a threat, said Petak, a Gulf War veteran who remembers the first SCUD vs. Patriot bouts in Operation Desert Storm.
While it is still uncertain the exact missile types, Petak believes they were either SCUDs or Ababil 100 rockets, both restricted by the U.N. resolution prohibiting Iraqi to possess missile systems exceeding a range of 93 miles. Both types can be weaponized with biological or chemical agents.
Of the six Iraqi missiles, three were shot down by U.S. Patriot missile batteries, one was intercepted by Kuwaiti-operated Patriots, one landed in the Persian Gulf and another landed harmlessly in the desert west of the Kuwaiti town of Jahra.
Despite the pause, service members in Kuwait are still watching the skies.
"We don't want to lull anybody into a state of complacency because the threat is still very real," stressed U.S. Marine Maj. Alan Greenwood, the officer-in-charge of the task force's forward command post adjacent to Kuwait's main emergency operations center.
As many as 24 SCUD launchers are currently unaccounted for, each which historically have two to four missiles with it, said Petak. U.S. intelligence officials believe these launchers to be located in the vicinity of Baghdad.
Even though no chemical weapons have been used by Iraq thus far, military planners aren't surprised. They believe Hussein is more likely to use them several days into the war, perhaps even on his own people only to then place the blame on coalition forces.
"If he waits and uses it on his own people, he can use his propaganda tools to blame it on us," Petak said.
Plenty of uncertainty on the road to Baghdad remains and only time will tell as the campaign to liberate Iraq unfolds.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
