My Nomination 4 "The Wolrds Dumbest Aviation Related Article"

I think just by reading this you can get the picture of just how well educated R todays press writers about the topics they choose to engage in.

Sunday Times
October 06, 2002

Saddam gets air defence advice from Yugoslavs
Stephen Grey and Tom Walker

RADAR and weapons system experts from the Yugoslav army are helping Saddam Hussein to organise his air defences against British and American jets ahead of the anticipated allied bombing campaign on Iraq.
An investigation by The Sunday Times has revealed that highly skilled officers have been seconded to help Saddam. They performed impressively during the 1999 Kosovo war, when their adroit use of supposedly outdated technology helped much of the army’s hardware to escape destruction by American airstrikes.

It is thought the Yugoslav army, many of whose senior officers are still hostile towards the West after the Nato bombardment, has sanctioned co-operation with Baghdad.

The revelation coincides with reports that the army is being asked to give American and British military liaison officers in Belgrade details of assistance it has given the Iraq military in the past.

The current Belgrade government and Yugoslav army headquarters have denied any co-operation with Saddam, but the information corroborates reports from dissident sources in Iraq. There appear to be divided loyalties within the army, whose senior ranks have been torn by infighting since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the former president, two years ago.

Friends and relatives of at least two officers confirmed to The Sunday Times that they are in Iraq. One was based with an air defence unit in Montenegro and another with a battery near Belgrade.

“In the army there are still many senior commanders with personal links to the Iraqi establishment,” said one former Yugoslav officer. “They are basically pro-Saddam.”

There have been various theories put forward as to why the Yugoslav army proved such an elusive target for Nato in the Kosovo war, and also much speculation over how its ageing MiG fighter jets managed to down an American B-2 stealth bomber west of Belgrade.

Some military analysts believe the Yugoslav army has adapted a Czech-made radar system known as “Tamara”, which rather than attempting to detect stealth aircraft, instead reveals the “holes” they leave in radar patterns.

Others claim the Yugoslav methods are rather more low-tech, and point to the army’s use of decoy wooden missile batteries during the Kosovo campaign, which were repeatedly hit by American strikes.

Britain’s armed forces have stockpiled an extra 1.2m chemical warfare suits in preparation for an assault on Iraq. The army now has enough nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) suits to equip a military force of 20,000 men for 60 days in a biological or chemical environment, where the suits have to be changed every day.
Some Royal Marine and Parachute Regiment soldiers are due to undergo additional “top-up” NBC training at Porton Down, the government’s chemical warfare research laboratory in Wiltshire.