UFO Info Week-End

An American missile identified from the remains of its serial number was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a

An American missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis. But investigations by The Independent show that the missile ­ thought to be either a Harm (High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile) device, or a Paveway laser-guided bomb ­ was sold by Raytheon to the procurement arm of the US Navy. The American military has confirmed that a navy EA-6B “Prowler” jet, based on the USS Kittyhawk, was in action over the Iraqi capital on Friday and fired at least one Harm missile to protect two American fighters from a surface-to-air missile battery. The Pentagon and Raytheon, which last year had sales of $16.8bn (£10.6bn), declined to comment on the serial number evidence last night.

A US Defence Department spokeswoman said: “Our investigations are continuing. We cannot comment on serial numbers which may or may not have been found at the scene.”An official Washington source went further, claiming that the shrapnel could have been planted at the scene by the Iraqi regime. On Saturday, Downing Street disclosed intelligence that linked the Wednesday attack ­ and by implication Friday’s killings ­ on Iraqi missiles being fired without radar guidance and falling back to earth. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “A large number of surface-to-air missiles have been malfunctioning and many have failed to hit their targets and have fallen back on to Baghdad. We are not saying definitively that these explosions were caused by Iraqi missiles but people should approach this with due scepticism.” The Anglo-American claims were undermined by the series of 25 digits and letters on the piece of fuselage shown to Mr Fisk by an elderly resident of Shu’ale who lived 100 yards from the site of the 6ft crater made by the explosion.The numbers on the fragment ­ retrieved from the scene and not shown to the Iraqi authorities ­ read: “30003-704ASB7492″. The letter “B” was partially obscured by scratches and may be an “H”.

In actual field usage, Harm now demonstrates reliability four times better than specification. No modern weapons arsenal is complete without Harm in its inventory.”Faced with apparent proof that one of its missiles had been less accurate than specification, Raytheon was more coy on the capabilities of its products. A spokeswoman at the company’s headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, said: “All questions relating to the use of our products in the field are to be handled by the appropriate military authority.”Defence experts said the damage caused at Shu’ale was consistent with that of Paveway or, more probably, a Harm weapon, which carries a warhead designed to explode into thousands of aluminium fragments and has a range of 80km.Despite its manufacturer’s claims, it also has a record of unreliability when fired at a target which “disappears” if, as the Iraqi forces do, the target’s operators switch their radar signal rapidly on and off. Nick Cook, of Jane’s Defence Weekly, said: “The problem with Harms is that they can be seduced away from their targets by any sort of curious transmission. They are meant to have corrected that but there have been problems.” During the Kosovo conflict four years ago, a farmer and his daughter were badly injured when a missile exploded in their village.

A shard of the casing was found near by with a reference very similar to that found in Baghdad: “30003 704AS4829 MFP 96214.”The American navy confirmed that one of its Prowler jets, which is used to jam enemy radar, had been over an unspecified area of Baghdad on Friday night. A pool reporter on the carrier USS Kittyhawk was told that the Prowler squadron had fired its first Harm on Friday evening in response to an air-defence unit that was threatening two F/A-18 Hornet jets. Lieutenant Rob Fluck told the journalist that the crew had not seen where their missile had landed.. Modern armies don’t march on their stomachs; they drive on their fuel tanks.