The article did NOT say Depleted Uranium. Yes, I suppose it's a possibility, but by no means can we just dismiss them as DU.
They may well be radioactive enough to qualify as "dirty bomb" missiles. Russia did have other such missiles.
Here is an article from the Washington Post (other sources are more detailed, but I know some would dismiss those sources).
Dirty Bomb Warheads Disappear
Stocks of Soviet-Era Arms For Sale on Black Market
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41921-2003Dec6?language=printer " Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world's first surface-to-surface dirty bomb.
The radioactive warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared.
The documents, which were provided to The Washington Post, are a series of official letters written in 1994 by a Transdniester civil defense commander, Col. V. Kireev, who apparently became concerned about radiation given off by the rockets.
One document described an inventory of 38 "isotopic radioactive warheads of missiles of the Alazan type," including 24 that were attached to rocket. In the two other documents, the commander requested technical help in dealing with radiation exposure related to storage of the warheads. He complained that uniforms of soldiers working with the warheads were so contaminated that they had to be "destroyed by burning and burying."
"I propose to categorically ban all work with the missile . . . and to label it as a radioactive danger," Kireev wrote on Oct. 24, 1994.
The article did NOT say Depleted Uranium. Yes, I suppose it's a possibility, but by no means can we just dismiss them as DU. The article didn't say DU because this is NewsMax, and depleted uranium would not have made for a sensational enough story. There's zero chance that the material is enriched uranium, since what would be the point of putting a sub-critical mass of such an enormously expensive material in a tiny air-to-air missile? I suppose it could be natural uranium, but why waste natural uranium which the Russians could have processed for the U-235? So that leaves DU. Nothing else makes much sense.
In the absence of something substantial to the contrary, it's not a WMD and it's not big news. NewsMax is trying to puff up their "scoop" into something much more than it really is.