Actually, the eleven operators are mostly outside Europe: Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Iraq, Nigeria, Qatar, Spain, and Venezuela. Oil money features heavily in this selection... Interestingly, both Iraq and Argentina had a chance to use the systems against the RAF, without success.
quote:Chirac fumes over claims that France sold missiles to Iraq By Philip Sherwell and Kim Willsher
An angry President Jacques Chirac of France yesterday forced the Polish government to withdraw claims that its troops had found four French anti-aircraft missiles, manufactured earlier this year, at a weapons dump in Iraq.
Poland's defence ministry expressed "regret" last night over the reports, first made on Friday evening, that it had uncovered missiles which could only have been supplied to Iraq in breach of the United Nations weapons embargo.
However, the statement released in Warsaw did not assuage President Chirac's fury at suggestions that France may have supplied Saddam Hussein's regime with weapons in the months before the US-led invasion.
"I believe that the Polish soldiers have created confusion that could have been avoided with thorough verification," he said.
The controversy arose from the markings on the Roland-type missiles discovered last week near Hilla, south of Baghdad. In photographs released in Warsaw, the markings included the coding: 07-01 KND 2003.
Polish forces apparently took this to indicate the date of manufacture, but France insisted that it has produced no Roland missiles since 1993. Defence officials said the significance of the code was not immediately clear, and a Pentagon official said the style of markings did not correspond to those usually used by France.
Further investigation has been hampered as the Polish troops destroyed the missiles last week. It is standard procedure for former Iraqi ordnance to be blown up by Coalition forces.
Mr Chirac is particularly prickly about accusations that French weaponry had reached Iraq as recently as this year, even if via a third country, as France has a poor reputation for selling arms to dubious regimes.
At the European Union summit in Rome, Mr Chirac rejected the reports out of hand and said he had made his point "in a friendly but frank and firm way" during two meetings with Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller.
The French Foreign Ministry has emphasised that France has not authorised the sale of weapons, or even spare parts, to Iraq since 1990.
quote:France has a poor reputation for selling arms to dubious regimes.
Except with the dubious regimes themselves, presumeable, with whom France has a very good reputation. As does the US.
quote:Interestingly, both Iraq and Argentina had a chance to use the systems against the RAF, without success.
Good. Pity the Exocet worked; the frogs basically sold 'em to Argentina so they'd get a chance to demonstrate them against us. So much for European union.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Well, arming Argentina was a hobby for the British as well. They sold anything from destroyers to helicopters to aircraft carriers to the Argentine Navy, which then went on to use French and US aircraft and French missiles and thus diverted attention from the British elements...
As for Exocets, those were a very typical weapons sale, with built-in obsolescence. The engines for the MM.38 model in widespread use expired in the late eighties or early nineties, and the manufacturer won't provide new ones. The French and Germans still have working Exocets, of the MM.40 model, but everybody else still using the weapons risks a high likelihood of them blowing up in the launch canister. Ditto for most of the SAMs Saddam had - it's a wonder he got as many of those airborne as he did.
posted
NOt that Saddam was real concerned about his troops getting blown up.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Either he kills them or we do, the end result is the same, although the lowered expenditure on us is preferrable.....
The USAF had some Rolands at one point in time, used in the UK as airbase defense....
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
quote:The USAF had some Rolands at one point in time, used in the UK as airbase defense...
Lee Response: Oh, gee, thanks a lot. Everyone else gets Patriots, we get Frog missiles. Except a Frog missile is totally different from a Roland missile, which rather ruins that joke.
Rob Response: So the Iraqis must have got the missiles from the UK! Let's bomb them!
posted
Mind you, Patriot's fairly crap as well; based on past form the RAF would spend half it's time trying to avoid the damn things.
Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Lee, USAF Airbases..... They were on a modified M109 self-propelled howitzer chasis....
Wraith, well, they would have the home turf advantage there.....
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
Yeah, but it's still insulting. I suppose your airbases on British soil aren't as important as your other airbases, hmm? Well, fine! be like that! We don't care, we didn't want your airbases protected with Patriots anyway, so there! It's my ball, I'm going home! 8)
posted
Well, the RAF Regt. do have Rapiers, and are actually trained to use them. Which does help, contrary to US doctrine...
Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
In any case, the M-109-chassis Rolands were probably intended as a rapidly air-redeployable force, with base protection as a side job... They are for point defense, while Patriots are more of an area defense system - and the preceding-generation Hawk system (which is closer to area than point defense) would also have been used to protect the RAF bases, right? (Or did you still have Bloodhounds?)
Neither Hawk nor Patriot is as air-mobile as Roland (or tracked Rapier, or some comparable system), which basically requires nothing more than the launcher vehicle. Area defense missile systems are veritable circuses of vehicles. You should see a SA-3 battery on the move! It's got everything, from an animal act (the MP dogs) to trapeze artists (the poor saps who get to erect the radar) to clowns (the people who insist the system is mobile)...
posted
Oh, but Timo is soooo right it is scary....
Reminds me of a divisoinal HQ trying to move....
Roland is a divisional unit ADA system, while the Patriot is a Corps or EAC ADA system, although none will ever have a name as nice as HAWK...
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
