United States:  Pentagon Clears Patriot Crew That Downed British Aircraft

A U.S. Defense Department board of inquiry has cleared a Patriot missile crew of responsibility for the March 23 downing of a British Air Force Tornado jet and the killing of the aircraft’s two-man crew, the London Daily Telegraph reported today (see GSN, April 4).

Flt. Lt. Kevin Main and Flt. Lt. David Williams were killed by a Patriot missile that reportedly misinterpreted their landing aircraft to be an incoming Iraqi missile.

According to an inquiry by the U.S. Central Command, the Patriot battery “mistook the aircraft for an antiradiation missile based on its high-speed descent and lack of functioning IFF (the plane’s Identification Friend or Foe signal).”

British sources criticized the U.S. finding, saying the plane would not have taken off without a working IFF signal and that the pilot would have noticed if it had failed midflight and contacted ground-control officials.

British Royal Air Force officials also said that the radar image of a Tornado aircraft is not similar to an incoming missile (Michael Smith, London Daily Telegraph, July 16).

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U.S.-Russia:  Joint Early Warning Center to Open Next Year

A joint U.S.-Russian center to provide advance notification of ballistic missile launches is set to open in Moscow early next year, an adviser at the Russian Political Studies Center said last week (see GSN, May 23).

The center will be equipped with computer equipment to process, track and display ballistic missile information, Lt. Gen. Vasiliy Lata said.  Approximately 20 U.S. Defense Department officers will work at the center alongside Russian experts, according to ITAR-Tass. 

The mission of the center is to prevent false alarms of missile launches and to make a realistic assessment of the ballistic missile situation in space, according to Lata (ITAR-Tass, July 10 in FBIS-SOV, July 11).

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