European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 20, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes monday May 20, 1991 by Ron Jensen. Staff writer. Silo i Turkey a a team of . Civil affairs experts will enter the iraqi. Held City of do Hick soon to assess what is needed to restore the City a services a military spokesman said sunday. The team will determine How Best to restore medical water electrical and other services in anticipation of the return of thousands of kurdish refugees now living at coalition Camps in the mountains. Many of the kurd who fled to the mountains say they come from Dozhuk the provincial capital and that they will not return Home until their Security there is certain. The spokesman did not know when Dozhuk will be visited by the assessment group which will include members of the . Disaster assistance response team and civil affairs personnel. The coalition officials were awaiting a response from the iraqi the kurd continue to leave the mountains but. Those from Dozhuk Are stopping at temporary Camps instead of going Home. Maj. Damian Mckinney commander of the 40 commandos of the British Royal marines said More than 20,000 kurd Are now camping at Kani Masi Iraq at what was designed Only As a resupply station. He said about 5,000 arrive from the mountains daily and about 2,000 of them remain. The rest move to their Homes or to temporary Camps at Zakhoo Iraq. A we concluded very quickly there was a Large percentage of people who wanted to go to Dozhuk Quot said . 1-Iowey a or they do not want to return Home until Dozhuk is secured he said. _ a whether we like it or not we re going to have to feed these people Quot Mckinney a said. A a a a a a a a a. The arrival of the kurd in Kani Masi a Village destroyed by the iraqi military in fighting with the kurd in 1988, has forced a change in coalition plans. Instead of simply supplying kurd for the trip Home they have had to bring in sup a plies to feed them on a continuing basis. Mckinney said the Supply base is prepaid it ing for a tidal wave of people when a a Camp at i Kurca empties. That set. Element has about 80,000 people in it and they Are in less better health than the kurd who have already left other Camps. As the kurd leave the mountains and set up in Kani Masi they bring health problems with them. However the situation is not As desperate As the medical problems found at Large Camps such As Isik Ocren according to a dutch doctor who arrived in with the inter National group doctors without Borders. A you can to compare Isik Veren with this Quot or. Gilles Van Delft said of the. Mountain Camp which closed a week ago. A the people were really hungry. They were fighting for v at Kani Masi doctors see a much less malnutrition than we. Saw in Isik verent Van Delft said. A a lot of the malnourished children have already died. And the first people who come Down from the mountains Are the Strong from Page 1 land and Malaysia have been informed on a much less detailed basis he said. Work has begun on the second phase of withdrawals which the official said would focus More on reducing combat forces. . Military leaders in the Region have begun drawing up plans for the next round of cuts. Given that Cheney and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen. Colin Powell Are working on cutting . Military strength worldwide by 25 percent a and some arc predicting Post cold War withdrawals of 200,000 from Europe Over the next five years a a cuts in Asia be so severe the official said. A if you look at the numbers out of Europe it will allow us to take less than 25 percent in Asia he said. But the defense department is at a Point where a some very difficult decisions must remade about the makeup of the forces in Asia. Given the threat from North Korea the unsettled situation in the soviet Union and possible flare in the Middle East Africa or Indian subcontinent defense officials must decide a a what a More important a the symbolic value of combat troops which is very High profile a or the real military value of having an infrastructure that you can build Back up very rapidly Quot the official said. The changes will affect the air Force and the army primarily because the Navy must Deal with the vast Dis Tances and protect Many vital sea Lane areas he said. With the next round of cuts the official said a we believe we have reached a Point where we Are fairly dose to the level we think we need to sustain Over the Long a a a a. However such cuts May not appease those in the Congress pressing for More reductions overseas. A a we re tired of being the 911 number for the world free of charge a says rep. Patricia Schroeder a Colo. Schroeder and a handful of other democrats want a Cap of 30,000 on the number of . Troops assigned to South lawmakers have also called for cutting the . Defense budget by $8 billion with the Money coming from cuts in forces and equipment in Europe Japan or South Korea As Well As the closure of 50 overseas bases. \ a a a from Page 1 ence Are unfair because the weapon is not meant to defend Large Urban areas and was used experimentally by the israeli defense familiar with the system Echo that Point. A the Patriot was not used in the role for which it was designed developed and tested a at least not in Israel Quot said John Krings the Pentagon a former director of operational testing and evaluation. A it was always looked at in terms of something incoming on or near the patriots physical location. It was not designed to defend a wide area. You can form judgments but they can t be linked to what the Patriot was originally designed but Pierre Sprey former special assistant to the pc to agony Stop official for systems analysis said the army a doctrine Calls for the Patriot to defend Large areas. A and we re talking Large As in Many Miles. That a Why the Patriot has the kind of Range it has a he said. A so How big do you think downtown Tel Aviv is a the army for its part is adopting a business As usual attitude. A Congress Hasni to Askea us to testify at any hearings about the patriots performance so they must not have any outstanding concerns a said maj. Peter Keating an army spokesman. A True assessment of the patriots legacy May be impossible because different criteria can be used by critics and advocates to reach their conclusions. A precise comparisons in this Case arc difficult a Krings said a whatever assessment you make depends on what questions you ask in the first Overall the Patriot intercepted 45 of 47 scuds in Israel and saudi Arabia the army said. But one of those two missiles proved to be among the costliest . Failures of the War when a scud scored a direct hit on a Barracks near Dhahran saudi Arabia killing 28 serv ice members. The radar net of the missile Battery on duty that night never picked up the scud and no patriots were fired. The israeli defense Force has been playing up its own critique of the patriots performance which con eludes that the missile hit its primary targets scud warheads Only 44 percent of the time. Raythelon vice president Robert Skelly agreed with that figure but said the Patriot hit scud warheads on missiles aimed at saudi Arabia 89 percent of the time. He attributed the difference to the Rush to get Patriot batteries to Israel from Germany and the layout of the heavily populated areas a Factor that resulted in some launchers doing placed in ices Ihan Ideal locations. He also said israeli Crews experimented with the Patriot leaving it to the system operator to decide which Patriot missile system sources air defense artillery Jane s land based air defense staff research a amps Susan Harris missiles to fire and when to fire them rather than letting the systems computer do that automatically As is the Case under . Army doctrine. The army has quietly circulated a memo raising the same Points. In addition the memo says the israelis moved units around launched missiles from a less than optimal fire units Quot and varied the number of launchers brought on line during missile alerts. Some critics have zeroed in on the army a score keeping questioning the military definition of a pm the Rcpt Quot As that term applies to the Way the service and Raythelon have touted the missiles successes. Keating does no to see Why that should cause confusion. A the goal is to get a warhead kill a he said. A but damaging or knocking an incoming missile off course is also a successful intercept when you re talking about defending hardened military Sites where people Wear flak jackets and take cover in a critics have even speculated that deploying the Patriot to Israel did More harm than Good. Theodore Postol an Engineer and physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of technology suggested to House lawmakers last month that deployment of the Patriot in Israel May have led to increased damage by scud missiles. A i understand that san upsetting conclusion but its possible a he told the House armed services committee. He cited the israeli newspaper Maaris which said that in the wars first four Days 13 scuds were fired at israeli Cit is wounding 115 people and damaging 2,698 apart mints. During the rest of the War with at least five Patriot batteries in place the newspaper said 11 scuds killed four wounded 174 and damaged 9,029 apartments. Keating said the United states has been unable to confirm israeli damage assessments because Israel has barred anyone else from inspecting missile Crater damage from scud debris a the israelis have not had the Opportunity to allow us to visit the damage Sites. Are we talking about broken windows damaged roof tiles Complete destruction of buildings Only the israelis know a. The crudity of the scud which a House armed services committee staff member recently called a the dumbest missile in anybody a Arsenal a seems to have contributed to some problems that the Patriot had. The Patriot is designed to counter the Short Range Svi it version of the scud. The iraqis used faulty welding when they boosted the fuel capacity and thus the Range of the missiles but that make them unstable. Almost every scud broke up As it approached its target. The patriots automatic radar system would target two missiles to every object appearing on the screen even if it was Only a fragment of a scud fuel tank. On Jan. 25 in Riyadh saudi Arabia a scud broke into 14 pieces resulting in the launch of 28 patriots a $19,6 million in hardware. The Patriot also sometimes intercepted scuds too close to the ground because the modified iraqi version App be a targets at velocities 50 percent higher than the soviet Model Keating said. But he said a software improvement made in Early february allowed the system to More easily discern scud warheads and a Cut in half the number of patriots necessary to meet the scud people on both sides of the debate agree that the Only Way to measure the missiles performance from a pure military perspective is a shot by shot accounting of All Patriot launches. News reports generally put the number tired during the War at 158. Technically it seems to have worked but whether it was truly a Good weapon for the Challenge we had the Sta Ristics will show a Krings said. Keating said army officials will get a detailed briefing on the Patriot s performance in the War within weeks
