Al Hussein Totally Explained

Everything about Al Hussein totally explained

Al Hussein or al-Husayn (Arabic: الحسين) is a designation of an Iraqi ballistic missile, supposedly named after Imam Hussein.

Development

The origins of the Al-Hussein could be traced back to the first stages of the war with Iran. The Iranian forces, after suffering a heavy attrition of their aircraft, had made an extensive use of Scud B missiles, which can hit a target 185 miles away. Key Iraqi cities like Sulaymaniya, Kirkuk, and Baghdad itself came within the range of this weapon.
   Iraq, which also deployed Scuds B, was conversely unable to strike the main Iranian industrial centers, including the capital, Teheran, because these are located more than 300 miles from the border. To surmount the Iranian advantage, Iraqi engineerings designed a program to upgrade the original Scuds into a series of ballistic missiles whose range would surpass 500 miles. The assembly facility was located near Taji.
   The first development, called Al-Hussein or Project 1728, with a range of 400 miles, allowed the Iraqi army to attack deep inside the Iranian boundaries. The range was extended by reducing the original 945 kg warhead to 500 kg and increasing the propellant capacity. The warhead carried HE, although it had Chemical, Biological and Nuclear capabilities. According to UN inspectors reports, the Iraqis were able to produce all the major components of the system by 1991. The Al-Hussein was 12.46 meters long and had a diameter of 0.88. The guidance was inertial, without terminal phase. The altitude where the motor burnt out was 31 miles, while the trajectory highest altitude or apogee, was 94 miles. The accuracy for the impact was estimated in a radius of 1,000 meters, and the missile launch weight was 6,400 kg. Its flight time was of about seven minutes for the maximum range.
   The missile fuel was the common to every tactical missile of the Cold war: a mix of kerosene, ignited by a nitric acid oxidizer, called IRFNA. Each missile loaded 4,500 kg of liquid propellant, composed by a 22% of kerosene and 78% of IRFNA.
   The Iraqis also modified the extension of the launch rail of 11 Soviet-produced MAZ launchers to fitted them to the longer local-built missiles. The responsible for the maintenance and operation of the new missiles was initially the 224 Brigade, already established since 1976 to deal with the R-17 Scuds imported from the Soviet Union in 1972.
   By 1989, a second army Brigade was formed, the 223, equipped with 4 locally developed trailer launchers, known as the Al-Nida. There were also a second indigenous launcher, the Al-Waleed, but apparently it never became operational.
   Some concrete silos were built west of Ar Rutba, near the border with Jordan. They were destroyed by precision bombings carried out by USAF F-15s during the first hours of Operation Desert Storm.

Operational history

Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988)

Up to 200 missiles were launched against Iran between 1987 and 1988, killing some 2,000 people. Teheran, Qom and Isfahan became the usual targets. Their poor accuracy, while mostly ineffective to conduct a major strategic campaign, made of them basically weapons of terror, forcing thousands of refugees out of the main Iranian cities. This exchange of ballistic missiles was indeed known as 'the war of the cities'. The full-scale campaign lasted from 29 February 1988 until a truce was agreed by both sides on April 20. Iraq, which had been looking for some kind of compromise gesture from Iran, is largely viewed as the 'winner' by some authors.
According to Iranian sources, the fuselage and warhead were prone to break in to fragments while re-entering the atmosphere. Ironically, it would later represent an advantage as a counter-measure against the Patriot missile during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Gulf War (1991)

Eighty-eight of these modified Scuds were fired at Saudi Arabia (46) and Israel (42) during January and February 1991.
   The greatest tactical achievement of the Al-Hussein was the destruction of a US military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on February 25 1991, when 28 soldiers were killed and other 110 injured, effectively taking out of action an entire supply company, composed mainly by reservists from Pennsylvania.
   One of the units involved in this incident, the 14th Quartermaster Detachment, specializing in water-purification, suffered the heaviest toll among US troops deployed in the Gulf, with 81% of its soldiers killed or wounded.
   Only 10 of the 46 Al-Hussein launched at Saudi Arabia caused significant damage: two strikes on US military bases (including the barracks at Dhahran), one on a Saudi government's building, and the remainder seven on civilian facilities. The following is a detailed list of these attacks: ť :::::::: Attack Assessment

No.	Place & date	Target	Area damaged	Cause of damage	Intercepted by Patriot
1	January 22 Dhahran	USAF air base	Hangar's area hit by explosion 1 F-15 damaged 1 Patriot launcher damaged Civilian airport struck by debris	Warhead/Debris	Yes
2	January 22 Riyadh	Coalition air base	Civilian neighborhood	Warhead	Yes
3	January 25 Riyadh	Coalition headquarters	Saudi Department of Interior	Warhead	Yes
4	January 28 Riyadh	Downtown Riyadh	Experimental farm southeast of the capital	Debris	Yes
5	February 3 Riyadh	Downtown Riyadh	Apartments area	Warhead	Yes
6	February 8 Riyadh	North of the city	Parking lot	Warhead	Yes
7	February 11 Riyadh	Downtown Riyadh	Islamic University campus	Warhead	Yes
8	February 14 Hafir Al Batin	King Khalid Military City	Automobile workshop destroyed Neighborhood damaged	Warhead	No
9	February 24 Riyadh	Coalition headquarters	Girl's school	Debris	Yes
10	February 25 Dhahran	USAF air base	US Army barracks destroyed	Warhead	No

Besides the American soldiers, Saudi authorities reported one people killed and about 70 injured as result of the missile strikes.
Thirty-eight of the 42 missiles aimed at Israel landed within the boundaries of that country; the other four fell on the West Bank area. Although thousands of houses and apartments were damaged by the strikes, only two people died directly as consequence of the impacts. Another 12 lost their life from indirect causes (suffocation while wearing gas-masks and heart attacks).
From the strategic point of view, the threat posed by the Al-Hussein was an Iraqi success, since it forced the coalition air forces to divert 40% of their missions to hunt the launchers along with their support vehicles and supplies. The ground war was postponed one week for this reason.

End of the program

Under the terms of the ceasefire of March 1991, corroborated by the resolution 687 of the UN Security Council, a commission (UNSCOM) was established to assure the dismantling of the Iraqi missile program. They were only allowed to purchase or produce missiles with a range no longer than 150 km. At the end of the war, the Iraqi government declared it had only 61 Al-Hussein and other ballistic missiles in its arsenal. These weapons were destroyed under UNSCOM supervision. This process was completed by July 1991. The western powers were however suspicious that the Iraqi army may have hidden as much as 200 missiles. The Iraqis took advantage of the provisions of the ceasefire by developing two types of short-range ballistic missiles, the Ababil-100 and the Al-Samoud, which were in an experimental phase at the time of the Invasion of Iraq in 2003. These projects were part of the casus belli raised by the American administration against Saddam Hussein.

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