U.S. hits Iraqi radar in northern no-fly zone

From Jamie McIntyre,
CNN Military Affairs Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In the first strikes since last Friday's attacks near Baghdad, a U.S. warplane fired a single missile in northern Iraq Thursday.

The United States said the action was retaliation for Iraqi gunners firing on no-fly zone patrols and for Iraqi radar targeting U.S. planes.

At the same time, Iraqi officials said they increased the death tally from last week's attack to three and defused an unexploded bomb.

The U.S. European Command said in a statement that Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft artillery from sites north of Mosul at planes conducting routine no-fly zone enforcement, and radar had targeted U.S. planes.

Mosul is located in northern Iraq's no-fly zone, created by the United Nations following the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds and other citizens in northern Iraq.

In response, the United States struck what it called "elements of the Iraqi integrated air defense system."

Pentagon sources said that a U.S. Air Force F-16CJ fired a single missile at the Iraqi radar that targeted the planes.

All U.S. planes returned safely to their base in Incirlik, Turkey.

The strike comes nearly a week after U.S. and British warplanes attacked Iraqi anti-aircraft radar control sites around Baghdad and other radar installations in Iraq. The 24-aircraft mission on February 16 was the first against targets outside the southern no-fly zone in two years.

Baghdad officials said Thursday they had defused an unexploded U.S. missile which hit farmland near the Iraqi capital in last Friday's air strike.

Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Shimmari, Iraq's civil defense director, told the Baghdad newspaper al-Zawra his teams were defusing other unexploded bombs. He said three civilians had been killed and 25 wounded in the February 16 attack. Iraqi officials had previously said two people died of their injuries and at least 20 were wounded in the bombing on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Low success rate for high-tech bombs in Iraq

The Defense Department officials acknowledged that fewer than half of the Iraqi radar sites attacked around Baghdad last Friday were disabled or destroyed.

Pentagon officials said all seven command and control sites targeted with other guided weapons were either completely destroyed or severely damaged, but the success rate for radar was remarkably low.

Officials now concede that of the "20 to 22" radars near Baghdad that were selected for destruction, only "about half were damaged ... most of them weren't," according to one official. It is still not clear how many were completely destroyed, if any.

The problem, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has been traced to an error in the technologically advanced bomb known as the AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon or "J-SOW."

After several days of bomb damage assessment by the Pentagon, it is clear that a significant number of the bombs dropped Friday landed consistently "a couple of hundred yards" from radars targeted for destruction, according to an official.

An official familiar with the issue told CNN that there was a "pretty consistent error" and said the Navy is now investigating the matter in an effort to determine whether the problem was with data input, software, hardware or some other component of the complex weapon.

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United Nations
Office of the Iraq Programme
The Iraqi Presidency
Iraqi National Congress
Iraq energy profile, U.S. Dept. of Energy

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