U.S. suspends Tomahawk firings in Red Sea, Med

“It’s ordnance, and you have to make sure it’s as safe as possible,” Carr said.
The Cape St. George is among 12 Norfolk-based cruisers and destroyers armed with Tomahawks and supporting the U.S. offensive in Iraq. The ship fired five Tomahawks earlier in the week, and its 400-member crew had geared up every day since then for additional launches. Several Norfolk-based attack submarines involved in the war and thought to be operating in the Red and the Mediterranean seas also carry Tomahawks.
At least three of the missiles that have gone awry in the current war on Iraq landed in Turkey; an unknown number fell into Saudi Arabia. None detonated. The Tomahawk’s warhead is not armed until just before it reaches its programmed target.
Both Saudi Arabia and Turkey are U.S. allies that border Iraq and have granted use of their airspace for the war but have refused to permit American ground forces to operate from their territory.
A Navy official said fewer than 15 of the 700 Tomahawks fired to date as part of the war in Iraq have either veered off course or failed to make the transition from rocket to jet propulsion. A small rocket motor blasts each Tomahawk from a tube aboard ship; once the missile is aloft, a jet engine is switched on to carry it to the target.
A Navy spokesman said the missile’s success rate is classified. “We use the baseline that it has a 10 percent failure rate,” Carr said.
“The present generation of weapons is significantly more precise than those that were used in the last Gulf War, when they were vastly oversold,” Christopher Simpson, an American University professor and authority on military propaganda, told the San Francisco Chronicle last week.
Carr called Friday’s suspension of firings “a political decision,” but said he was uncertain whether it was requested by the Turks or Saudis or if it was a U.S. initiative. He also was unsure when firings might resume.
At least two other Tomahawks fired during the past week have splashed into the sea near the ships that launched them. Those missiles also did not detonate because the Tomahawk’s warhead is not armed until just before it reaches its programmed target.
The Tomahawk debuted during Operation Desert Storm, the Persian Gulf war of 1991. Since then, the missile has become the showcase weapon of the surface fleet, allowing ships to strike precise targets hundreds of miles inland.
The Tomahawks now in use are satellite-guided. Once aloft and under jet-propulsion, the missile sprouts a pair of stubby wings and flies just above tree level at around 550 mph to the target. A satellite signal steers it to coordinates loaded into an onboard computer before launch.
A new version to be introduced in 2004, the Tactical Tomahawk, will be more flexible. Signals transmitted in flight will be able to change its target, and the missile will be able to loiter for several hours over a potential target area while commanders study video pictures it transmits and uses them to decide where it should hit.