Iraq: 'Kamikaze' missiles reduce risks: The weapon
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Your support makes all the difference.LAST TIME it was laser-guided bombs from manned aircraft. This time it was unmanned Tomahawk cruise missiles - 30 of them, according to the first reports, fired at a nuclear facility south- east of Baghdad.
With three days to go until Bill Clinton takes over, the last thing President George Bush needed was the death or capture of an allied pilot. It would be
a final humiliation at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Cruise missiles were expected to be used in Wednesday's attack, but were not. Last night, they were the only safe bet.
After Wednesday's raid, all the allied aircraft which attacked targets in southern Iraq returned safely but there is always the risk of death or capture, because of enemy fire, accident or equipment failure. Using unmanned cruise missiles removed that risk.
A second reason why the United States may have launched cruise missiles last night is that the allies had attacked at medium altitude on Wednesday - 15,000 to 20,000 feet - and that is probably where the Iraqis expected them to come from again. A salvo of low- level cruise missiles may have achieved a form of surprise.
The US naval force in the Gulf had Tomahawk cruise missiles on board the cruiser Cowpens and the destroyers Hewitt and Stump. The BGM-109 Sea Launch Cruise Missile has a range of 1,500 miles, it is 21ft long and 20in in diameter with a wingspan of 8ft. It cruises at 550mph.
The initial attack in the 1991 Gulf war included 40 BGM-109s, a figure which had reached 100 by the end of the first day. Billed as the latest technological panacea in the early 1980s, conceived as a nuclear delivery vehicle, the Cruise missile has proved to have particular uses with conventional warheads in limited war because of its accuracy when properly programmed and because it is dispensable.
The term 'cruise missile' refers to any missile powered throughout its flight - the Second World War V-1 was the first - but nowadays usually means a missile such as the Tomahawk with the 'tercom' (terrain comparison) guidance system. Electronic maps programmed into the missile's computer enable the missile to compare the ground with them as it passes overhead. Provided the missile passes over the coast in the right place it should follow its map perfectly and land within a few feet of the target.
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