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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (35550)	7/31/2002 7:50:02 PM
From: BigBull	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Ask and ye shall receive! :o} Looks like this model was the "moon shot" version. :o} I wonder what the source of the "reports" are? Longer Range Systems: Al Abid, Tammouz I and Badr 2000 Saddam's ballistic missile programme was remarkable in that he was able to embark upon multi-stage designs only five years after setting out to acquire a longer-range Scud capability. On 5 December 1989 Iraq launched a 25 meter long rocket that it claimed was the first stage of a multi-stage Space Launch Vehicle (SLV). Known as the Al Abid (or Al Aabed), this first stage used five clustered Al-Hussein motors and reached an altitude of 12,000 metres (40,000 ft) during the test. A video of the launch released by the Iraqis showed a three stage system and although the second and third stages of the system were later revealed to have been dummies, it is believed that the second stage was intended to be a further Al Hussein motor with the third stage derived from a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM). The Al Abid would thus have weighed some 48 tonnes and carried a payload of some 750 kg, sufficient to deliver a chemical or small nuclear warhead, over a range of at least 2,500 km. Although development of the Al Abid was never completed, it used proven booster technologies and clustering techniques and could have been expected to enter service in the mid-to-late 1990s had the Gulf War not intervened. Work on the programme has been terminated by post-war UN efforts, but reports suggest that members of the Al Abid team have moved to Libya to work on a long-range delivery system that may incorporate elements of the Iraqi design.