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Powell highlights Iraq's UAV threat
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| 07 February 2003 |
By Craig Hoyle, JDW Aviation Editor, London
US
Secretary of State Colin Powell on 5 February highlighted Iraq's potential
use of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) to deliver illegally held chemical/biological
weapons. During his presentation to the UN Security Council, Powell showed video footage from 1991 of an Iraqi Mirage F1 using a modified 1,200 litre external fuel tank to release a simulated load of anthrax agent. He claimed that an Iraqi source suggested that four such adapted spray tanks were produced for use by unmanned MiG-21s. No evidence has been provided to prove that these systems were destroyed, said Powell. However, he said "Iraq is now concentrating not on these airplanes, but on developing and testing smaller UAVs" and associated ‘spray devices'. Such a step would provide the Iraqi military with a more stealthy means of delivering such weapons, since a fighter-sized platform is much easier to detect than a specialised unmanned system. The latter could also offer an extended range capability.
Evidence of Iraq's covert UAV programme was acquired on 27 June 2002, when the US military tracked an automatically piloted UAV during a flight from its Samarra East air base around 100km north of Baghdad. Powell described this air vehicle as having achieved a range of over 500km during the sortie, which saw it fly in a tight ‘race track' pattern. He said the evidence provided by this flight test clearly contradicts Iraq's 7 December 2002 declaration to the UN that it did not possess UAVs with a range capability greater than 80km.
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| Alleged test release of a simulated biological warfare agent from a modified drop-tank on an Iraqi Mirage F1 in 1991. The tank was said to contain 1,000 litres of Bacillus subtilis - used to simulate B anthracis. The agent was released over Abu Obeydi air base in January 1991. This photo is taken from a videotape supplied by Iraq to UNSCOM (Source: US Department of State) |
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