Wednesday February 21 08:52 PM EST

Iraq Attack Not So Successful?

By Barbara Starr ABCNEWS.com

Days after the United States proclaimed a successful attack on radar targets in Iraq, officials now tell ABCNEWS the raid may not have been as on target as intially thought.

Last Friday's surprise raid against Iraq might not have been as successful as portrayed, ABCNEWS has learned.

A glitch in the programming of software that controlled the firing of weapons may have caused some missiles to miss some of the 20 targets near Baghdad that pilots were trying to hit during the evening raid, Pentagon officials tell ABCNEWS.

The supposed mistakes in Friday's raid potentially raise the question of whether the United States will strike again, but those officials told ABCNEWS that a decision on such a repeat attack is a long way off.

In one of the most aggressive attacks in a decade since the Persian Gulf War, U.S. and British warplanes launched the air attack last Friday on targets on the outskirts of Iraq's capital. A strike force of 24 aircraft, made up of Air Force F-15s, Navy F-18s and four British Tornadoes, deployed their bombs at five target areas in the suburbs were. Downtown Baghdad was not hit.

Though critics of President Bush have criticized the move in the days following the raid, Pentagon officials described it as a necessary measure of "self-defense" in response to increased use of anti-aircraft radar on American jets patrolling the "no-fly-zone."

Now, sources tell ABCNEWS that a majority of "bomblets" launched by the Navy's "Joint Standoff Weapons" missed their targets. The official numbers are classified, the sources said, and so the full number of missed targets is unclear.

What is most concerning to Navy officials, however, is that the "bomblets" all missed their targets by the same distance, the sources said.

Bomblets fall in an established pattern or footprint. In the majority of the dropped bomblets, each of these patterns missed their aim point by exactly the same distance, the sources said. Sources said the errors may have been caused by an error in programming the software that controls the weaponry.

The Navy used a number of the "Joint Standoff Weapons" against 20 Iraqi radar sites. The weapon, fired from the Navy's F/A-18s from a safe distance, releases a series of highly explosive small bomblets that fall in a pattern. It is specifically used against "soft" unhardened targets such as radars. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/abc/20010221/wl/iraq_attack_not_so_successful__1.html

-- Anonymous, February 21, 2001