Instapundit linked to a post of Chris Regan’s at Junkyard Blog that picked up a NewsMax story that said the planes may be equiped with Russian and French made electronics that were sold in violation of the post Gulf War embargo. Chris goes on to state that the planes is a Foxbat “D”, and possibly the latest D variant, the RBSh. Well, I looked at the photos, and I don’t think so. So I commented, and Chris agrees with me. I could have gone over to Tacitus who has a very large Power Point presentation of pictures from the excavation where the plane is labeled as a Foxbat B.
So I think it’s settled that it’s a Foxbat B model (which referes to the airframe), which is a pre-embargo model. But from the pictures you can’t tell what the electronics are. They could be standard issue Russian stuff (RBT or RBF), or they could be something special for the Iraqi’s. A friend of mine once worked on a radar upgrade for Egyptian MiG-21’s; maybe the Russians, or a possibility according to the reporting, the French put something together just for the Iraqi’s (or maybe the French and Russians have been working together on upgrades), or even less likely but still possible, the Iraqi’s put together something for themselves (they did develop their own extended range SCUDs). Only the intel guys know and they aren’t talking (yet).
While it isn’t settled that anybody violated the embargo, it does point up the difficulty in finding WMD or any other contraband in Iraq. Bury it in the desert, kill the people who buried it (Saddam started out as a leg breaker who graduated to assassin for the Baath Party) and viola, WMD all gone (I know I read that idea someplace else first, but I can’t find where – sorry).
