Attempted post war Iraqi acquisition of Russian missile technology
Russian missile gyroscopes - 1995
cns.miis.edu
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Acting on an intelligence tip, on November 10, 1995 the Jordanian government intercepted a shipment of 240 Russian missile-guidance gyroscopes and accelerometers bound for Iraq. The next month, between December 16 and 30, a team of Iraqi scuba divers were directed by UNSCOM to dredge the Tigris River near Baghdad. They pulled out more than 200 additional missile instruments and components. These parts, many bearing clearly identifiable serial numbers in Cyrillic script, included gas pressure regulators, accelerometers, GIMBAL position indicators, and gyroscopes. (1) These
items, like those recovered earlier in Jordan, had come from dismantled Russian submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SS-N-18s) designed to deliver nuclear warheads to targets more than 4,000 miles away.
The Russian government initially denied that the gyroscopes were Russian, notwithstanding their serial numbers. Moscow also encouraged a rumor that the instruments had been stolen from a Ukrainian manufacturer. But following UNSCOM Chairman Rolf Ekeus's visit to Moscow in early February 1996, Russian authorities grudgingly acknowledged that the equipment might be of Russian origin. Although they denied that the Russian government was involved, they agreed to initiate a criminal investigation, which began on April 9, 1996. |
