Free Republic

Helped by highly sophisticated contraband weapons smuggled out of Libya, Iran and Hizballah are getting the Palestinian Hamas equipped for another round of hostilities with Israel. debkafile's military sources report that Sunday, Sept. 25, Egyptian security forces, acting on information from a Western intelligence source, homed in near Ismailia on a large half-empty buried cache of advanced SA-24 anti-air infrared missiles (a version of the US Stinger) stored there en route from Libya to Gaza. The information came too late to block delivery; most of the crates were found empty of their contents of missiles and other military equipment which...

Iran has acquired surface-to-air missiles modified with chemical weapons. Western intelligence sources said Iran has acquired modified SA-2 air defense systems from North Korea. They said Pyongyang has converted the SA-2 from a surface-to-air to a surface-to-surface missile. "The North Koreans took an old clunky SAM system and turned it into a tactical non-conventional missile with excellent accuracy," an intelligence source said. The sources said Iran was believed to have acquired the converted SA-2 in 2008. The system has been deployed along the Iranian coast near Qatar in what has become escalated regional tension. The heritage SA-2, a 1950s-era Soviet...

The Australian think-tank, Air Power Australia (APA), has released another in their series of techno-strategy papers, this time analysing the advancements in Russian-built Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) (http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2009-02.html), and what it means in global strategic terms for the Americans. The APA report is direct and unequivocal – Russian radar and missiles have improved to the point where the US fleet of F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s, as well as the planned Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), are not capable of surviving against these systems and unless the Americans build another four hundred-plus F-22s, they will lose the strategic advantage they have...

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003. The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program. The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Engines for long-range missiles have turned up in Jordan from unguarded sites in Iraq that were once monitored for materials that could produce banned weapons, U.N. inspectors said on Wednesday. In a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting, Demetrius Perricos, the acting director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, warned that too many pieces of equipment were leaving Iraq, some as scrap. "We found a few more engines and a few other items in Jordan," Perricos told Reuters. "It is getting bad. Too many things are coming out." UNMOVIC, using photographs and serial numbers, previously...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. weapons experts have found 20 engines used in banned Iraqi missiles in a Jordan scrapyard along with other equipment that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, an official said Wednesday. The discoveries were revealed to the U.N. Security Council by acting chief U.N. inspector Demetrius Perricos during in a closed-door briefing. The text was obtained by The Associated Press. The U.N. team was following up on an earlier discovery of a similar Al Samoud 2 engine in a scrapyard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said inspectors also want to check...