US accused of using neutron bombs in Iraq

US accused of using neutron bombs

english.aljazeera.net

The former commander of Iraq's Republican Guard has accused the US of using non-conventional weapons in its war against the Middle East country.

The bombs annihilated soldiers but left the buildings and infrastructure at the airport intact, he added.

A neutron bomb is a thermonuclear weapon that produces minimal blast and heat but releases large amounts of lethal radiation that can penetrate armour and is especially destructive to human tissue.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 4/9/2007 by Togetic]

Somehow I doubt the validity of that statement. There is no evidence that anything like that was ever used. Furthermore, if a neutron bomb had been used, I doubt they would have been able to keep it secret for long. I find this to be little more than propaganda, especially considering that the interviewee has a bounty on his head.

english.aljazeera.net
(visit the link for the full news article)

Found something on it too. Seems, according to attached article, there may be a lot more to the possibility a neutron device was used as well as some serious initial resistance leading up to its use. ie:

"...Now we know more about the Battle of Baghdad Airport, which began on Friday night, April 4th, 2003, and involved the near complete annihilation of the US 3/7 Cavalry. At that time mainstream media covered these these events with a great deal of confusion and contradiction, and no mention of major US losses. The US then apparently counter attacked the Iraqi defenders at the airport, using a single neutron bomb, which wiped out all resistance. Of course this was not mentioned by the media at all..."

www.iraq-war.ru...

Dallas

There are 2 videos from the same detonation on youtube which
looks very very similar to a tactical nuke explosion. I´m not mean a
neutron bomb but it is a very good sign that the US are using
non-conventional weapons in iraq.

Watch the second big explosion in this video:

Google Video Link

Watch the ultra-bright flash in this video:



What do you think?

Well, by "minimal" they mean it's like a few kT for the smallest ones. Not that it goes "bang" like a howitzer shell or something. Neutron bombs do have blast effects, and they show up on standard double-flash detectors just like any other nuke.

More, you don't deploy them in ground bursts, you set an ER weapon off pretty far overhead - the idea is to get it up high enough that it can't suck in a lot of ground debris, and that the zone of lethal radiation is optimally large. There's a design height for all of them.

Nonetheless, they produce fallout from bomb residuals. And you'd have induced radioactivity from neutron radiation that you'd be able to read for quite some time. You would not be able to occupy the area immediately.

Haven't seen the video's yet as I can't get them too work, but wouldn't a neutron bombardment irradiate solid matter, such as the Airport itself, leaving it rather unusable?

Also, I know that "neutron bombs" are basically a tampered nuke that emits more Neutrons than normal. It's still a nuke and would leave a significant radioactive footprint at the airport. Someone would have noticed by now.....

If those really were nukes, the EM blast would have destroyed the ability for the camera to keep rolling after the detonation.

Also, with a tactical nuke that detonates under the ground?

My understanding is that the neutron weapon is an air burst. There are sources stating that the US does not have neutron weapons any more. How would the world really know? I wouldn't put it past the military to say one thing and do another.

If the US military did use a neutron weapon, would it bother any other US citizens. I bothers me, considering the circumstances.

we did agree to destroy all our neutron bombs during the carter admin.and if one was used at airport the radiation would have been there for quite sometime i imagine.i would also consider these story sources highly dubious.

For starters, it is alleged that we do not have them. Secondly, in order to be effective it must detonate in the air, not on the ground. Thirdly, they still carry at least a 1 kiloton blast which would have decimated the airport, but not the surrounding area as a full-scale nuclear weapon. Forthly, material would have remained irradiated for a period of 48 to 96 hours making the place uninhabitable with residual radiation possibly lasting longer. Finally, such a blast would've created enough of an EMP pulse to disable even US military equipment in the vicinity.

Our president might be stupid, but the US military isn't that dumb. A neutron bomb would've easily been detected by many countries around the world and the US would've been condemned within minutes - not days, weeks or months later!

Have attached an info link on the NB. Over the years ATSrs have talked about the use of it. I know I have many times as it's the obvious choice for max death in areas pretty-much untouched structure wise. And of course re-usable in little time.

What is a neutron bomb?

"Tactical neutron bombs are primarily intended to kill soldiers who are protected by armor. Armored vehicles are very resistant to blast and heat produced by nuclear weapons, but steel armor can reduce neutron radiation only by a modest amount so the lethal range from neutrons greatly exceeds that of other weapon effects. The lethal range for tactical neutron bombs can exceed the lethal range for blast and heat even for unprotected troops. Armor can absorb neutrons and neutron energy, thus reducing the neutron radiation to which the tank crew is exposed, but this offset to some extent by the fact that armor can also react harmfully with neutrons.

Alloy steels for example can develop induced radioactivity that remains dangerous for some time. When fast neutrons are slowed down, the energy lost can show up as x-rays. Some types of armor, like that of the M-1 tank, employ depleted uranium which can undergo fast fission, generating additional neutrons and becoming radioactive. Special neutron absorbing armor techniques have also been developed, such as armors containing boronated plastics and the use of vehicle fuel as a shield."

Neutron Bomb: www.manuelsweb.com...

Dallas

Originally posted by roadgravel
If the US military did use a neutron weapon, would it bother any other US citizens. I bothers me, considering the circumstances.

It would bother me. It would be a disproportional response.

At :
opposingdigits.com...

If the sixth one doesn't load, this is the YouTube link to it :
www.youtube.com...

For those not in the know, these were two different American munition dumps, blowing up.
And not Baghdad Airport defended by Imperial Guards.

In the third video, the Al-Jazeera one, at 3.57/05:21 minutes you see a major explosion, a white flash, followed by a mushroom cloud.
This one is probably the US munition storage fire at Forward Base Falcon on the 10th of Oct. 2006 in the south of Baghdad.
That flash was very powerful, to be able to overload the camera's night settings, especially since the camera seems a few miles away from the explosions.

The fifth video showing this US “Falcon base in Baghdad", Iraq, which is in fact an ammunition depot fire at Iraq Kirkuk A.B. in 2004, set first on fire by freedom fighters with some lucky mortar round hits.

The explanation for the maximum light overload in the fifth video, at the 00:45/01:59 point, is the explosion's immense light overloading the night vision setting of the camera.
The other explosions in this video, by far did not overload the CCD chips in the camera at their explosive scale.
It's afterglow bulbs seem to have the reminiscent of a nuke, the black spots and the multiple light bubbles in between.
But large scale conventional munitions blowing up also show these type of mushroom clouds.

What I miss however, are the vertical lightning bolts around the stem of the mushroom cloud, present at real nuke explosions.
And the electro-magnetic pulse, which should have blinded the CCD chips and other electronics in the camera, and stopped the radio signals we hear from another compound. And there was no air pressure front hitting the camera man.

To me it looks like probably 155 mm howitzers and tank munitions blowing up, combined with a few "minor" phosphorous ammunitions.

[edit on 9/4/07 by LaBTop]

How about this. A neurton bomb could not have been used, per above atated facts. However, if we were getting high casualties, then used some sort of detonations and THEN MOVED IN TO CONTROL THE AIRPORT WITHOUT FURTHER RESISTANCE, then maybe an unknown type of anti-personell weapon WAS used.

These are the kind of reports I just file away without prejudice... and often, even years later, another piece of the puzzle fits in to it. I believe this is how we all work, really.

I can't research this interesting fact any further. Does anyone know of an other possibility?
B.

If any of this is true, it is more likely to be the part about the US using phosphorus. But I am not familiar with the use of it in the past. Is anyone else up on that?

The lack of physical evidence is what makes me question this report.

Further, I am disturbed that al Jazeera was willing to interview this man, a wanted criminal, and then just let him go on his merry way. I always thought that AJ, for its flaws, was pretty moderate, which is why this surprises me.

For what its worth: during Gulf War 1 I flew many military cargo flights from Dover AFB to Zaragoza, Spain. The cargo airline I worked for had the most military sorties of any airline during that period. I think Fedex got the award for No. 1 because a count of the 'black flights' was not allowed. The 'black flights' were flights in which no log or record of the flight was allowed and our airline had flown many. One evening on a layover in Zaragoza one of the crews returning from downrange told me they had been dispatched to Huntsville, Alabama where some men in 'black suits' loaded a device which they claimed was a neutron bomb. I don't remember where the crew delivered that cargo but there was a place southeast of Cairo near Hurghada where our aircraft were only allowed to land at night. (I never landed there.)

When approaching the area Cairo ATC would hand us off to somebody else where an American voice would give us radar vectors and descent instructions. At about 1000 feet the crew would be instructed to complete the landing checklist and confirm the gear was down. At 500 feet landing lights at the desert field would be turned on and the airplane would land. They would be marshalled into a cargo ramp and unloaded and refueled all in complete darkness. When the airplane was ready to go the airplane would be marshalled into position for takeoff and after takeoff vectored north and turned back over to Cairo ATC and cleared back to Zaragoza.

I have always been interested in reports of the U.S. using the neutron bomb beginning with Gulf War 1.

FWIW, there are all sorts of things going on at Redstone/MSFC that you don't read about in the paper; we were based out of Huntsville for years doing some non-mentionable contract stuff.

And they do have nukes out there. Not all the time. But they bring in nukes from somewhere, you can tell when the base switches alert status that they're coming. You know the drill - the places you could drive through are shut, they change out the pudgy older NG gate guards for active duty guys you've never seen on base, everyone gets sidearms with more than one bullet in their pocket and so on. The DIA/MSIC missile maggots are everywhere, they have thinly disguised intelligence guys in civilian clothing trying to get you to spill the beans over lunch, etc.

A few days later they fly them back out again. I don't think they're there long enough to do anything to them, so it could be just staging. Some of the guys that were working on them said it was some sort of testing, which could be true, but I scouted around for the usual suspects you'd expect to be around for tests and didn't see any. I mean, if you're doing basic function checks or maintenance they can do that on site. If you're tearing it down for analysis you generally have some ESA guys there from LANL. No LANL, no Sandia. It is a mystery.

Still, neutron bombs do a LOT of damage. True, it gets guys in armor and in bunkers if the ground water isn't too high and they didn't defend against it. But it also ruins electronics and activates a lot of elements, and it can be seen from orbit. Leaves some fallout that can be spotted pretty easily.

Could be something else, I used to tell people all kinds of made up crap to make them stop asking questions I wasn't going to answer when I was in and still do if it's something under NDA. Bad habit. It's easier than endless "I can't tell you's". Don't tell me you didn't do the same.

If not neutron bombs, which after all are rather old tech 30+ years on, what about the purported clean hydrogen pocket nukes we've all been hearing about?

Their claimed characteristics would fit the bill much more than a neutron bomb would.