Socialists on hotseat for buying Useless Radar. Greek Conservatives Checking Books. (Amusing)

A parliamentary committee of inquiry has heard how a radar system Pasokbought has earned international condemnation as useless. Meanwhile, a $132million rebate for Russian missiles is still missing

Is he eating his cake, or having it? Defence Minister Spilios Spiliotopoulos was celebrating his birthday en route to Berlin on October 29. he has come under fire from socialists over a probe into past defence purchases

A parliamentary committee of inquiry into arms procurements under socialist governments heard military testimony damning to former defence minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos.

A US-made radar system Tsochadzopoulos selected for the army is "useless", retired major-general Pantelis Mavrodopoulos told the committee. Mavrodopoulos was head of the Greek army's artillery in May 1999, when Tsochadzopoulos ordered the purchase of six TPQ-37 radars for $108 million. Mavrodopoulos was in charge of assessing the system in a series of field tests.

Mavrodopoulos said of the two TPQ-37 systems Greece already possessed at the time: "We could not assess the radars because either one or the other broke down. We fixed them and half an hour later one or both broke down again. That worried me."

Technicians from the manufacturer, Raytheon, apparently called these "baby problems". Some were fixed but most persisted in trial after trial, Mavrodopoulos said.

Artillery radar pinpoints enemy guns by tracking the trajectory of incoming fire. Mavrodopoulos told the committee that the TPQ-37 couldn't register certain types of shells. When it did register fire, it could be off-mark by as much as half a kilometre, he said.

He also found that the TPQ-37 did not interact well with existing systems. "At one point I discovered that the airforce warning radar ISMAROS was jammed by the TPQ-37, which used the same transmitter tube, " he said. Mavrodopoulos explained that the reverse was also true; the airforce radar jammed the TPQ-37s.

A rival consortium led by Swedish firm Ericsson smelled blood. Tipped off by leaked information, they began badgering the ministry to favour their products, Arthur and Cobra. Mavrodopoulos said army representatives were impressed by tests of these systems, but he felt pressured to accept the faulty American radars.

"Pressure was everywhere from persons whose names I don't want to disclose, " said the general.

Mavrodopouls said that in light of the decision to purchase the TPQ-37 he pressed the manufacturer for 31 modifications and a discount, to which Raytheon agreed.

But there are some problems modifications cannot fix. Artillery radar is meant to be mobile so that it can travel with advancing infantry. But each TPQ-37 is made up of three trucks carrying a generator, an operations centre and the radar, respectively. The whole system needs an 8- to 12-man crew.

Furthermore, Mavrodopoulos, said: "This thing is 7.85 metres high and, if you go, say, to the beach you can see it 20km away. It takes 12 crew members to operate it and cannot keep memory for transfer. This radar cannot serve Greek artillery in any way."

System performance of the TPQ-37 has become an issue with American troops in Iraq and Israelis in Lebanon.

An article by Megan Scully in the October 11 issue of Defense News said: "For members of the 1st Squadron, 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, the 20-year-old AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder Weapon Locating System was more of a problem than an asset. The unit came under mortar fire 40 times in Iraq, but the system only detected rounds three times. The squadron suffered between 10 and 15 injuries from mortars."

The article quoted squadron leader Lt-Col Gregory Reilly as saying: "We stopped, we moved the radar around, the technical guys around worked the [software] programming. We tried everything humanly possible."

Defense News said the unit even fired its own mortars at the system in an attempt to work out the bugs. Even under the best circumstances, the radar detected only one out of five rounds.

In his testimony, Mavrodopoulos talks of his fact-finding visit with the Israeli artillery directorate. He said he visited the Lebanese border where the Israelis faced daily Hezbollah rocket attacks.

The general asked the Israeli colonel in command what they had been using as an artillery-locating system. The Israeli colonel's reply, as recounted by Mavrodopoulos, was: "We have three TPQ-37, which cannot locate." The colonel said he relied on a low-tech system. "We have an acoustic system that is very good, and at any time we can see where we are receiving fire from and we respond accordingly, " he said.

Tsochadzopoulos is under fire because he ordered the TPQ-37 systems directly from Raytheon without a competitive bid process and over the objections of his military staff.

The committee also heard colourful testimony from former general director of armaments Ioannis Sbokos on November 30 and December 1. Sbokos attacked the socialists for not including him on the ballot in the last election, causing the ire of socialist deputy Evangelos Venizelos, a committee member.

The chair lost control for a while amidst outbursts from Pasok deputies. Accusations flew back and forth between ND and Pasok deputies and the committee had to be recessed for five minutes. The recess wasn't enough and tempers flared yet again.

The Sbokos testimony focused on the other system purchase that the committee is investigating, the Russian-made TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles.

Unlike the TPQ-37 radar, the TOR-M1 is not under fire for its suitability, but for its cost. Sbokos told the committee the Greek government never claimed a $131.76 million rebate from the Russians, known as an offset. The rebate was written into the $818 million contract.

Greek law demands a letter of guarantee from a bank to back offsets. The Russian manufacturer Antei produced a Russian government letter of guarantee instead.

Sbokos said that incremental daily penalties foreseen in the contract mean Antei now owes the Greek government an astronomical amount in excess of $2 billion.

"On 15 August 2004, [the penalty] was $2,768,238,138... Some madman had the audacity not to make good on this contract with such penalties," he said, in an apparent reference to Antei.

The Russian offsets have been the subject of fierce media speculation in the past weeks, with the opposition-friendly press producing documents purporting to show the present defence minister, Spilios Spiliotopoulos, consenting to the contract signed by the socialists in 2000.

Venizelos produced a document he suggested proves that New Democracy is willing to trade away the accumulated debt. He said the document was an undated letter from the Greek defence ministry to the Russians forgiving the penalties. Venizelos was not asked how he acquired the document and its authenticity has not been verified.

Sbokos defended the choice of the Russian system on the grounds that it could be positioned on Cyprus - something Western manufacturers would not allow, for fear of overturning the region's strategic balance.

"The effort of the armed forces was to get a weapons system and gain an edge. If you don't gain one or two characteristics that give you an edge over your adversary, what's the point of buying? " he said

This is the editorial showing the behind the schenes efforts of socialists defending their corruption: (SHADENFREUD)

http://www.athensnews.gr/athweb/nathens.prnt_article?e=C&f=&t=01&m=A99&aa=9

The trouble with Evangelos

JOHN PSAROPOULOS

When it comes to muddying the waters, there's no one like Evangelos Venizelos.

In 2001, the socialist government enlisted him in a battle to build the Olympic rowing venue in Marathon. Faced with archaeological evidence that the intended construction site was in all likelihood part of the ancient battlefield and ought to be respected as such, Venizelos simply denied the evidence.

The Archaeological Service, he said, believed that the site of the rowing centre was open sea in 490 BC.

Today the socialists have enlisted their favourite hatchet man to disabuse the public of the idea that their governments contracted to buy unsuitable weapons systems, or overpaid for those systems.

Assisted by the opposition-friendly press, Venizelos, who sits on the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the purchases, has launched a counter-offensive from the guts of the government machine.

He peppers his fellow committee members with criticisms, sometimes disrupting testimony and sometimes acting like an alternative chairman; and he occasionally unearths a document of dubious origin. Last week, for instance, he claimed to have obtained proof of the government's willingness to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of penalties to Russian defence contractor Antei.

The claim is preposterous on two grounds; first because Venizelos read from an allegedly leaked defence ministry document whose origin nobody questioned him on; and second because Venizelos was criticising the government for forgiving penalties arising from a $132 million rebate his government should have collected and didn't (see story on page 3).

Earlier, Venizelos criticised defence minister Spilios Spiliotopoulos for apparently countersigning the 2000 contract to buy the Russian surface-to-air missiles. This, Venizelos supported, proved that the minister was a hypocrite, approving a contract that his government was investigating as suspicious.

Defence ministry sources have told this newspaper that Spiliotopoulos' signature on the document was an intra-ministerial formality, according to which everyone who has received a copy of a document signs the archive copy. This keeps a record to those who have knowledge of the document.

Logic dictates that there was nothing for Spiliotopoulos to approve in the Russian contract. The Russian defence manufacturer Antei had already delivered the TOR-M1 missiles, and the Greek government had already paid it $818 million. It was a done deal. The only outstanding part of the contract was that of the so-called offsets, the $132 million rebate the Greek side negotiated and never received. It is this part of the contract that Spiliotopoulos has been tryinig to enforce, so far without luck.

What the leaking of Spiliotopoulos' signature really reveals is the extent to which the defence ministry is still not fully under his control. In this he is not alone to blame.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis has undermined his authority by directly appointing the defence ministry's general secretary George Zorbas to probe the contracts. Zorbas does not answer to Spiliotopoulos.

Spiliotopoulos also suffered the indignity of having the prime minister fire his spokesman from under him, apparently over his spokesman's antagonising Zorbas.

Shortly after, Spiliotopoulos himself fired his private secretary - perhaps the only job shift directly attributable to him.

Spiliotopoulos has also proven an inept defender of the government and of himself. Accused of hypocricy in the Russian contract probe, he simply said that he had never signed anything illegal, as though it was he who was on trial.

The truth is that defence procurements under socialist governments are highly deserving of investigation.

Akis Tsochadzopoulos, who bought the Russian missiles, has never explained what happened to the offsets. He also purchased an inept American radar system over the objections of his military staff. In the 2003 Iraq war, even US armed forces found that the radar, TPQ-37, was operationally useless.

Tsochadzopoulos is the minister who in 2000 purchased dozens of Humvee jeeps at $134, 000 apiece, when their going rate is about $55,000.

His successor, Yannos Papantoniou, purchased 651 million euros' worth of transport helicopters from the European consortium NHA Industries in 2003. The previous year, Papantoniou had received government approval to spend the money for 42 of the helicopters. In August last year, however, he announced that he would purchase just 20 for the same price. That brought the price of each helicopter to almost 33 million euros, almost three times the prices of other models on the market.

These purchases are scandalous, yet the government's commnuication strategy is so inept as to have lost the real focus. In the public eye, there is now confusion. Venizelos has managed to wrest from Spiliotopoulos, Zorbas and Karamanlis the initiative, and cast reasonable doubt on otherwise damning prosecutorial evidence.

The socialists tried to seize the initiative in the same way over George Alogoskoufis' audit of past budgets; here they failed, because polls showed that a majority of Greeks, suffering from inflation and lack of confidence in the socialists, believe the audit was a good idea.

It is preposterous for Pasok, in power for twenty years and out of power for a few months, to be trying to claw its way back so soon.

The government of New Democracy started in an unorthodox fashion. Pasok set its agenda with the Annan plebiscite in Cyprus and the Olympics; but it should now proceed to liberalise the economy, and de-scale the state of a plaque of vested interests.

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