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Air War Over Iraq Heats Up

Is the Air War Over Iraq Worth the Risk?
 
Amidst all the fear and expectation of a severe Israeli military reaction to the terrorist suicide bomb in Jerusalem on Thursday the 9th August, it has largely gone unreported that fresh Allied air strikes were carried out inside Iraq today.
 
Some 20 US Navy F-14 Tomcat and F-18 Hornet, as well as USAF F-16 Falcon and RAF Tornado aircraft from Operation Southern Watch struck at a communications base near An Munaniyah, 115km south east of Baghdad and at an early warning radar station and nearby surface-to-air missile battery at An Nasiriyah some 165km further south east. The damage done by the advanced precision guided weapons used in the raids is still being assessed.
 
These air strikes follow the launch of an Iraqi SAM against a US Navy E-2 Hawkeye reconnaissance aircraft inside Kuwaiti airspace on July 19th and the near miss suffered by an elderly U-2 on a high altitude surveillance mission when a modified V-75 or SA-2 Guideline exploded near enough to cause considerable concern. while towards the end of July the pilot of a USAF AWACS aircraft made an uncorroborated report of an Iraqi missile fired in their direction while still in Saudi airspace. In a further development, US aircraft from the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey had launched an air strike on a multiple missile launcher near Mosul in northern Iraq on the 7th of August ending a three week lull in activity.
 
This highlights the more confident attitude of Saddam Hussein's air defenses following a marked upgrading of it's radar and hardening of much of the command and control systems in the last year. Mobile missile and early warning units have been dispersed throughout both no-fly zones in the last few weeks, apparently in anticipation of an increase in Allied air activity in response to Iraq's far more aggressive tactics.
 
Communist China has played a major role in making Iraq's air defenses far less vulnerable to air attack and has supplied new longer range radar equipment and improved Iraq's tactical air control and command procedures. This has resulted in radars situated within the no-fly zone no longer regularly having to 'illuminate' Allied air patrols, instead the missiles are launched under the control of radar systems as far away as Baghdad and this has markedly reduced the effectiveness of Allied anti radar missiles and counter-measures. There have been over 1,000 separate incidents of Allied aircraft being fired at either by missiles or anti-aircraft artillery since early December 1998, with more than 380 of these have occurred so far this year.
 
With the increasing effectiveness of Iraqs air defences and their highly developed ability to quickly 'lose' high tech equipment in local towns and to protect static sites, it is now far more dangerous to maintain the no-fly zones over Iraq. It can only be a matter of time before Iraq 'gets lucky' and finally shoots down a US or British Fighter.
 
It is a question that has to be asked, are the results achieved by the routine air patrols worth the vast financial cost of maintaining these ten-year old no-fly zones and the increasing threat now posed to the lives of Allied Pilots?
 
Richard M. Bennett

     http://www.milnet.com/milnet/pentagon/centcom/iraq/recent.htm
 
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Richard M Bennett (UK)

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