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Possible Scud missiles in Iraq raise concern among U.S. military
By Kris Osborn
(CNN) -- CNN has recently obtained an intelligence review that indicates Iraqi President Saddam Hussein likely has some two dozen Scud missiles remaining in his arsenal. The review indicates Saddam is not likely to launch the Scuds unless he feels his regime is threatened. This raises questions about what would constitute this threat. In other words, what would cause Hussein to launch his Scud missiles? Would a U.S. military buildup in the region be sufficient to make Saddam feel his regime is threatened? Or would only the beginning of an actual attack lead him to fire his Scuds? Either way, the presence of Scud missiles remains a concern for U.S. military planners considering a possible attack upon Iraq. In particular, experts point out that since the U.N. weapons inspectors left in 1998, Saddam has had time to advance his chemical and biological weapons programs. Christopher Twomey, a national security fellow at Harvard University, believes Saddam has likely developed contingency plans to launch chemical and biological strikes should the U.S. military invade. But Twomey questions Saddam's ability to deliver the weapons effectively. "After the Gulf War, some chemical weapons were found loaded on some Scud missiles," Twomey says. "However, the Scuds were mounted with impact fuses so that the Scuds would have blown up when they hit the ground. In this case the chemical weapons would not have dispersed very well. "Chemical and biological weapons are tough to activate so as to inflict mass casualties," Twomey says. "In order to disperse weapons of this kind, they would need to be released at the right altitude with a strong wind. They would need some kind of altitude-sensitive fuse so that the agents were released several hundred meters above the ground." Nevertheless, Scuds remain a potential threat and are of concern should the U.S. military launch a military strike in Iraq. In fact, CNN has learned that Israeli operatives are searching western Iraq for possible Scud missile launch sites. During the Persian Gulf War, Iraq fired about 90 Scud missiles, many of them into Israel and Saudi Arabia. One of them hit a U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia and killed 28 U.S. soldiers. Scuds are considered extremely inaccurate. Experts say that they have a target accuracy range about 2 kilometers wide. Some of the Scuds launched during the Gulf War were intercepted or stopped by U.S. Patriot missiles. In the years following the Gulf War, however, Patriot missiles were found to be less effective than they were thought to be. One additional concern for the U.S. military is the possibility Saddam might use small planes to deliver chemical or biological weapons, according to experts. In that case, U.S. forces would likely be well prepared, Twomey says. "During the Gulf War, the Iraqis did not fly any planes after the first week of the war," he says. "Their planes were mostly hit while still on the ground. One of the first priorities of the U.S.-led air campaign during the Gulf War was to hit Iraq's air force."
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