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Axis of Evil
Baghdad using new mobile missile launchers
2002-07-02
Iraq is using new mobile missile launchers against British and United States planes that monitor "no-fly" zones in the north and south of Iraq, the specialist Jane's Intelligence Review (JIR) reports in its July edition. According to Jane's, the weapons system comprised two S-125 Neva missiles capable of being fired from a truck. "By mounting the missiles on mobile launchers the Iraqis have complicated US and UK efforts to monitor Iraqi's air defenses," Jane's indicated. The S-125s originally supplied by the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s were static missiles fired from fixed launch pads.
Ofergawdsake! Is this what Sammy was enthusing about the other day? He went down to the Soviet Antique Shoppe and bought some SA-3s, designed to be launched from fixed sites, and got his guys to mount them on trucks and put antimacassars on them. They're still antiques. Putting them on trucks doesn't make them any more fearsome, except to the rubes watching them go by in parades. How do they lug the radars around? On pack mules?
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#3  They're 50's and 60's technology. If I remember correctly, they were for medium-range targets, and the SA-2s were for high-altitude targets. They were definitely made for fixed sites, and the original guidance systems used vacuum tube technology.
Posted by: Fred   2002-07-02 19:44:23  

#2  ...but look how much easier it is to get them to the weddings.
Posted by: Anonymous   2002-07-02 19:25:52  

#1  I'm not a military man, but I wonder whether these things have any reasonable degree of accuracy. Or whether the trucks on which they're mounted will be stable when these missiles are shot from them. Looks like more Mideast trigicomedy in the making.
Posted by: Craig Schamp   2002-07-02 18:37:24  

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