Quote:
Originally Posted by James
Alastair Campbell was the guy that released the Iraq War dossiers and came up the idea that Iraq could deploy WMDs in 45 minutes.
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He didnt actually come up with that figure, it was originally bandied about at Saddams Dance Party 1 (Kuwait). The 45 minutes was the minimum time assessed for the Scud to park up, cable up, update and and achieve MIF (Missile in Flight) from known Scud launch sites to the Saudia Arabian Airbases being used by coalition forces or their other favourite target, Israel.
When the Iraqi Scuds (Al Hussein) deployed in order to increase their accuracy they needed to have updated telemetry data and be launched from a hard standing, most of these launch sites were detected by satellite overpasses. So standing patrols were positioned near them when the Scud came along and started to connect up an airstrike would be called in.
There were always Strike aircraft on call to take out Scud launchers and it was pretty much guaranteed if a team called in a forward air support mission and the target was a scud you have something big heavy and explosive leaving a strike aircraft en route to the allocated target within 20 minutes.
Thing was they had evidence from the UN weapons inspection teams stating Iraq didnt have any serviceable Scuds nor did they have anything else capable of throwing CBR (Chemical biological or Radiological) or even decent sized conventional warheads to any tactical distance over their own borders prior to the build up of forces in the gulf for the second party.