Iraq working on means of Firing Chemical Weapons
Uncertain Ability to Deliver a Blow
Iraq Cobbles Together Weapons Systems With Mixed Results, Analysts Say
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 5, 2002; Page A01
washingtonpost.com
In the waning hours of Operation Desert Fox in 1998, a British missile sheared off the top of a military hangar in southern Iraq and exposed a closely guarded secret. Plainly visible in the rubble was a new breed of Iraqi drone aircraft -- one that defense analysts now believe was specially modified to spread deadly chemicals and germs.
Up to a dozen of the unmanned airplanes were spotted inside the hangar, each fitted with spray nozzles and wing-mounted tanks that could carry up to 80 gallons of liquid anthrax. If flown at low altitudes under the right conditions, a single drone could unleash a toxic cloud engulfing several city blocks, a top British defense official concluded. He dubbed them "drones of death."
Today, Iraq's drones loom even larger as the Bush administration weighs a possible new strike against Saddam Hussein. The United States and Britain have charged that the Iraqi president is working to obtain chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. A key unanswered question is whether Iraq has the means to deliver such weapons.
According to U.S. and allied intelligence officials and U.N. documents, Iraq has worked with apparently mixed success to diversify a patchwork collection of delivery vehicles that now includes not only Scud missiles, which it launched during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but also a variety of novel machines for spraying pathogens and poisons from aircraft. Iraq deployed but never used chemical and biological weapons in the 1991 war.
The military significance of the threat posed by such an arsenal remains less clear. Drones are easy to shoot down, and it is far from certain that an aircraft-mounted chemical or biological attack would work -- especially against troops, experts familiar with the weapons systems note. Meanwhile, Iraq's missile industry, which struggled to tame the unreliable Scud before the 1991 war, is hobbled by U.N. trade sanctions, which are now in their 12th year.
But at a minimum, the analysts agree, Iraq's expanded capabilities appear to offer new ways to terrorize civilian populations, including the cities of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among others that could bear the brunt of Iraqi retaliation.
"These aircraft are intended to fly below radar so the Israelis can't detect them -- the Iraqis themselves have said so," said a British biowarfare expert who investigated Iraq's experiments with aircraft-mounted biological weapons. "From that altitude, you can do a lot of damage over a very large area."
The delivery systems believed to be available for such an attack include at least some of the dozen drones targeted in the British raid four years ago. The L-29 aircraft, as the drones are known, are one of at least three types of pilotless planes Iraq has tested for use in biological and chemical attacks, according to U.S. intelligence officials and U.N. documents.
In addition, Iraq is known to have converted crop-dusting gear into a germ-spaying device mounted on helicopters, U.N. files show. It also has developed biowarfare "drop tanks" that can be mounted on Iraq's fastest fighter aircraft.
These little-noticed innovations -- many of them discovered by U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq -- supplement an established Iraqi ballistic missile program that Pentagon officials say is slowly being rebuilt after being nearly destroyed in previous U.S.-led attacks.
Both the CIA and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency believe that Iraq's missile arsenal now includes two types of short-range missiles and a small number of medium-range Scuds that Iraq's military managed to hide from U.N. inspectors after the Gulf War. In addition, they say, Iraq probably retains dozens of missile warheads and possibly many more rockets and artillery shells that were filled with biological or chemical weapons years ago.
But large gaps exist in the West's knowledge of each of these programs.
The unknowns are critical, because they bear directly on the central question in the Iraq debate: whether Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose a significant threat to the United States and its allies.
The precise nature of Iraq's arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is also unclear. The CIA maintains that Iraq has residual stocks of biological and chemical weapons it manufactured before the 1991 war. U.S. intelligence officials also believe Iraq is secretly seeking to acquire new weapons, citing accounts by Iraqi defectors and satellite photos showing old weapons factories being rebuilt. Iraq's progress in acquiring nuclear weapons is uncertain. Former U.N. inspectors say Iraq was only months away from making a crude nuclear device when Operation Desert Storm began.
Airborne Threats
Before inspections abruptly ended in 1998, U.N. officials crisscrossed Iraq searching for a rumored new drone that could carry biological and chemical munitions. But not a shred of evidence turned up until Dec. 17 of that year, when British Tornado jets swooped over Iraq's Talil air base southeast of Baghdad and reaped an intelligence bonanza.
Photos of the ruined base revealed rows of the new drones, which Iraq had hidden inside a hangar at the remote base. The aircraft were identified as Czech-made L-29s, a light trainer jet Iraq had purchased years ago and converted to unmanned flight. The tanks for spraying biological and chemical agents appeared to be a unique Iraqi adaptation.
Small and maneuverable, the drones in theory could fly low over troop concentrations or cities and release a deadly mist of toxins. After reviewing the data, then-British Defense Minister George Robertson concluded that the aircraft were intended to inflict massive casualties on civilian populations.
U.S. intelligence officials are more skeptical of the L-29's capability, but they acknowledge that the drones and similar devices have given Iraq a number of options for using whatever biological and chemical resources it still has.
"Their [missile] warheads were not very good," said Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, known as UNSCOM. "Most of the [biological and chemical] agent would incinerate on impact. That's why they became interested in other delivery methods, like remotely piloted vehicles."
UNSCOM discovered that Iraq had experimented with at least two unmanned aircraft before the 1991 war, including a modified version of the Russian-made MiG-21. In interviews with inspectors, Iraqi scientists revealed that Hussein became interested again in drones around 1995 and ordered a crash program to manufacture new ones.
Tests were apparently still underway in 1998 when the Talil hangar was struck. But at least some of the drones survived. Two years later, in 2000, U.S. surveillance aircraft documented what appeared to be a new series of aerial tests involving L-29s, the CIA revealed in a report to Congress released earlier this year.
"These refurbished trainer aircraft are believed to have been modified for delivery of chemical or, more likely, biological warfare agents," the CIA report said.
Besides the drones, two other kinds of airborne delivery systems were developed by Iraq and observed by U.N. officials during the final months of inspections, according to documents and interviews with former inspectors. Both devices appeared to be in the development stage, and U.N. officials were never able to determine how many of them Iraq possessed and what happened to them.
One of the machines, dubbed the "Zubaidy" device after its Iraqi inventor, was an adaptation of an industrial aerosol sprayer used for crop-dusting. The nozzles were modified for spraying bacteria, and the device was prepared for mounting on helicopters for close-range attacks, former inspectors said.
The other device, judged by former UNSCOM inspectors to be the most troubling of all, was a simple aircraft "drop tank," a torpedo-shaped container mounted on the wings of fighter jets as a reserve fuel tank. Iraqi engineers added a British-made electric valve and aerosol sprayer adapted for biological and chemical warfare, U.N. documents show.
UNSCOM found and destroyed four such tanks that had been designed for mounting on Iraq's top-of-the-line fighter, the French-made Mirage F-1. But at least eight other tanks the Iraqis acknowledged making were never found.
"The drop-tank project appears to have been pursued with utmost vigor," UNSCOM concluded in a 2000 report. While internal documents revealed that Iraq had tested the tanks using an anthrax-like bacterial simulant, Iraq's government "flatly refused to acknowledge the plan for this project," the report said.
Former inspectors found the drop-tanks worrisome because they can carry greater payloads -- more than 500 gallons per tank. And, unlike drones and helicopters, the supersonic F-1 would pose a tougher target for antiaircraft batteries.
Still, the potential killing power of the device could be limited by many factors, including wind, sunlight and even the size of the aerosol droplets.
"Droplets that are too large may not be inhalable," said a British biological weapons expert familiar with the tanks. "But if they're too small, they may never fall to the ground."
Scuds and Other Missiles
Iraq has not attempted to hide all of its progress in weapons systems. Last year, at an annual military parade, Iraq displayed two short-range missiles, the Al-Samoud and the Ababil, and mobile launchers, the CIA told Congress.
"We believe that development . . . is maturing, and that a low-level operational capability could be achieved in the near future," the CIA concluded, citing in part images captured on videotape from the parade.
Both the liquid-fuel Al-Samoud -- which was successfully tested by Iraq two years ago -- and the solid-fuel Ababil are technically permitted under U.N. disarmament rules that allow Iraq to develop defensive missiles with a range of less than 150 kilometers, or about 100 miles. But intelligence officials believe Iraq is skirting the U.N. rules and secretly conducting research on missiles capable of reaching more distant targets.
"Baghdad also wants a long-range missile," Robert Walpole, the CIA's strategic and nuclear programs officer, said in testimony before the Senate in March. Even after devastating losses during the Gulf War and Desert Fox, Walpole said, Iraq "has been able to maintain the infrastructure and expertise necessary to develop longer-range systems."
It is relatively simple to extend the range of the Al-Samoud and Ababil by modifying payloads and fuel tanks, according to former U.N. inspectors and experts familiar with the missiles. Although there is no proof, many of the experts believe that Iraq is using its know-how to craft new medium-range missiles from the junked remains of outlawed Scud-B rockets obtained from the Soviet Union more than a decade ago. U.N. inspectors concluded that Iraq could have salvaged the equivalent of up to 25 Scuds from old engines and assemblies that escaped U.N. demolition crews.
"We assess that Iraq has a couple of handfuls" of missiles derived from the Scuds, said a senior Pentagon intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The parts are probably dispersed, but on short notice you could pull them together into a working missile and shoot it."
Iraq has long known how to outfit its missiles with biological and chemical warheads, despite technical problems that persistently plagued such efforts. In a declaration to the United Nations in 1995, Iraq acknowledged filling 25 Scud warheads with biowarfare agents, including anthrax spores and deadly botulinum toxin. But despite seven years of intensive inspections, the warheads were never found or accounted for.
Timothy V. McCarthy, a former UNSCOM deputy chief inspector and one of the agency's top missile experts, scoffs at Iraq's claims that the warheads were unilaterally destroyed, arguing that unconventional weapons are far too valuable to Hussein to be lightly discarded.
"Iraq demonstrated amply its ability to deliver chemical and biological weapons before the war," McCarthy said. "If one assumes Iraq retained its missile system, then that capability is still there."
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