Sergey Borisov: Iraq’s super weapon

As long as the USA is getting ready for the war with Iraq, the Western media are putting out more and more of the information about a unique cannon that Saddam Hussein has. It is not clear if the cannon is good for the future war or not, but the Americans are actively frightening themselves with that weapon.

The modernized variant of the cannon is reportedly able to fire the biological, chemical and even nuclear shells and hit the targets in Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey and Israel. These are the countries, which are supposed to be included in the new anti-terrorist coalition. They also fear, lest they should become a target for Saddam’s super-weapon.

The original version of the cannon was could hit the targets in Teheran and Tel-Aviv. As the news service Debka said, Saddam Hussein used the services of the Canadian astrophysicist Gerald Bull in 1985, during the last days of the war between Iran and Iraq. This scientist was considered to be one of the most outstanding figures in the field of missile-building and artillery in the 70s and 80s. At that time Bull helped Iraq to raise the defense capacities of their weapon. But his major development was a 424-millimeter cannon, which could fire the shells ј tons heavy , shooting them at the distance of over 1700 miles. In 1991 the UN inspectors destroyed the parts of one of such cannons, constructed by the Canadian scientist.

Gerald Bull was killed in 1990 in Brussels. Newspapers wrote that it was the Israeli Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency) that killed the scientist to stop him from developing his weapon further on. There was also another version, which said that Bull was killed by the attendants of the Iraqi special services, since he was suspected of cooperation with Israel. This way or other, Iraq had Bull’s design drawings of the cannon after he died, but the country did not know, what to do with them. But Saddam Hussein is a very ambitious man, and he never gave up the grand ideas. For example he wanted to launch the Iraqi military satellites to the orbit; in 1992 and 1995 there were experiments carried out, the goal of which was to create a so-called space shield above Iraq.

Speaking about the super-cannon, Saddam was praising it. The American and Israeli intelligence services said they had the information that Saddam had about three or four of such super-cannons. They all are a lot more powerful, than the ones, developed by Gerald Bull. Debka informed that the largest one of them was 260 meters long, the diameter of its barrel was 1000 millimeters, the range of the weapon was 2000 miles.

A cannon from Baghdad can hit a target in the south of Italy. The Americans and the Israelis could not find this weapon, because the cannons were dismantled. The barrel of the biggest cannon consists of 35 separate parts. Iraq has started assembling the cannons recently, and they were noticed by the spy satellites. Hussein’s super-cannons, as big as three football grounds, will become one of the major targets for the US military operation against Iraq.

Gerald Bull’s son said in the interview to the Canadian newspaper that he was not really sure, if Iraq could really create such a weapon. Michael Bull said that a country with such a hard economic state as Iraq was not likely to do something of that kind. He added, the cannons were originally meant for delivering the satellites to the orbit – that was what his father was intended to do. Such a cannon could not be a mobile weapon, and it would be very easy to destroy it with several blasts or bombs. Moreover, Michael Bull said the cannons would not be ready to shoot at once - a couple of test shots would be necessary to perform, and they will be quickly registered by the foreign satellites. He also added it takes a day or even more to load a cannon. However, Michael Bull did not know, what Saddam Hussein’s new cannon looked like: either it was really the new super-weapon, or just a imagery weapon of the psychological war that Hussein was waging against the West.

Sergey Borisov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov