Air Defense Sys Onboard Ship: Korea to Syria

[Backstop]

LATimes

IN BRIEF / SYRIA

Ship's Cargo Reportedly Is Air Defense System
From Times Wire Reports

September 12, 2006

A ship bound for Syria from North Korea and detained in Cyprus on an Interpol alert for suspected arms smuggling was carrying an air defense system, Cypriot authorities said.

The shipment was billed as weather-observation equipment on the freight manifest of the Panamanian-flagged Grigorio 1.

The ship was carrying 18 truck-mounted mobile radar systems and three command vehicles. "The radars on the 18 trucks appear to be part of an air defense system," a police spokeswoman said.

Also posted here: http://www.transasianaxis.com/vb/sho...=8259#post8259

[Sean Osborne]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

Sep. 11, 2006 16:21 | Updated Sep. 11, 2006 16:28

Cyprus stops Syria-bound N. Korean ship

By JPOST.COM STAFF


Authorities in Cyprus on Monday impounded a ship carrying military equipment to Syria. Officials said the Panama-registered Gregorio 1, intercepted last week on its way from North Korea, was stopped after Cyprus received an alert from Interpol that the ship may have been smuggling weapons.

According to the shipping documents, the vessel had been carrying meteorological equipment ordered by the government of Syria. The actual cargo, port authorities discovered, included some 20 mobile radar systems that can be mounted on trucks and used for air-defense.

Port officials have impounded the ship and arrested all 15 crewmembers pending an investigation.
The ship was bound for Syria's Mediterranean port of Latakia when it was stopped by Cyprus last Tuesday after entering the island nation's territorial waters to refuel.

[Sean Osborne]

http://jta.org/page_view_breaking_story.asp?intid=4662

Arms shipment to Syria halted

A North Korean shipment of air-defense systems that may have been on its way to Hezbollah was intercepted en route to Syria. A ship carrying 18 truck-mounted mobile radars and three command vehicles was stopped this week while docked in Cyprus after Interpol issued an arms-smuggling alert. Local authorities said legal deliberations were under way on what to do with the shipment. During its war this summer with Israel, Hezbollah lost a large number of gunmen and ground missiles to airstrikes.

[Sean Osborne]

Based upon these reports, what has been intercepted in Cyprus appears to be three squadron's of mobile air defense systems.

The 18 truck mounted radar systems make up the bulk of a 7-truck squad. Each squad has 6 radar/missile launcher vehicles and 1 Command and Control (C2) vehicle.

I suspect these systems to be a variant of the Chinese designed HQ-7 Feimeng 80/90 point defense SAM. The radar is comprised of an E/F Band ACQ/TA (Target Acquisition) and J-Band Target Tracker (Engagement).

[Sean Osborne]

Why is the seizure of this ship with its North Korean cargo significant?

Well, in the words of the Federation of American Scientists...

Although the quality and quantity of mobile anti-aircraft gun systems remains unknown, there is no indication of any mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems other than man-portable systems such as the SA-7 and SA-14 or SA-16 (based on parade photographs) entering the inventory to augment North Korea's static air defense umbrella. Lack of SAM systems could be a major deficiency in the army's tactical air defense capability during mobile offensive operations.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/agency/army.htm

Simply stated, the systems on board that ship were not supposed to exist when the above was written 13 years ago (1993). But that remains as the avant garde of open source data to this day. Here is a very current report on this topic - something which now must be assessed in light of the physical evidence sitting tied up in a Cyprus harbor.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HH18Dg02.html


Excerpt

North Korea has a very large number of SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, though once again of older design, mainly Russian, or Chinese copies of the SA-2, SA-3 and SA-5. Some 15,000 man-portable Wha-sung copies of Russian SA-7 and SA-16 are known to be available.

Again, North Korean mobile SAM systems are not supposed to exist. Clearly they do.

[American Patriot]

Good catch on the part of the Cypriotes

[Sean Osborne]

This was an intelligence operation which in turn tipped off Interpol who went to Cypriot law enforcement to impound the ship pending legal wranglings over what to do with the contraband systems.

I think the US, NATO, Israel, South Korea and Japan should each receive some portion of this equipment to evaluate for R&D countermeasures against.

[Sean Osborne]

Scratch some of what I said above. New assessment below.

http://65.77.135.178/vb/showpost.php...&postcount=440