https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... edirect=onWashington Post hat geschrieben:National Security
Can Saudi Arabia produce ballistic missiles? Satellite imagery raises suspicions.
By Paul Sonne
January 23 at 5:18 PM
Satellite images suggest that Saudi Arabia has constructed its first known ballistic missile factory, according to weapons experts and image analysts, a development that raises questions about the kingdom’s increasing military and nuclear ambitions under its 33-year-old crown prince.
If operational, the suspected factory at a missile base in al-Watah, southwest of Riyadh, would allow Saudi Arabia to manufacture its own ballistic missiles, fueling fears of an arms race against its regional rival Iran.
Saudi Arabia currently does not possess nuclear weapons, so any missiles produced at the apparent factory are likely to be conventionally armed. But a missile-making facility would be a critical component of any eventual Saudi nuclear weapons program, hypothetically giving the kingdom capability to produce the preferred delivery systems for nuclear warheads.
“The possibility that Saudi Arabia is going to build longer-range missiles and seek nuclear weapons — we imagine that they can’t. But we are maybe underestimating their desire and their capabilities,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who discovered the factory with his team when analyzing satellite images from the region.
Two additional missile experts who reviewed the satellite images for The Washington Post, Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that the high-resolution photographs of the al-Watah site appear to depict a rocket-engine production and test facility, probably using solid fuel.
It is unclear from the satellite images whether the facility has been completed or is functionally capable of manufacturing missiles. Regardless, the complex — which satellite images suggest broke ground in 2013 when King Salman was defense minister — highlights the nation’s intention to make its own advanced missiles after years of seeking to purchase them abroad, at times successfully.
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the nature of the facility at the missile base. The Pentagon, State Department and CIA also declined to comment.
News of the facility’s existence comes at an inflection point for Saudi Arabia in international affairs. The kingdom has taken a more aggressive approach to military power under its new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who warned in an interview last year with “60 Minutes” that Saudi Arabia would develop a nuclear bomb if Iran does. The crown prince has been defense minister since 2015.
Saudi Arabia has been pursuing a nuclear power-plant deal with the United States that would potentially include allowing it to produce nuclear fuel. The kingdom’s insistence on domestic fuel production has raised worries among U.S. officials that the kingdom wants the atomic power project not only for civil use but also for covert weapon-making purposes.
The killing last October of Saudi dissident and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents in Istanbul has hardened opposition to the power plant deal in Congress.
A gambit by Saudi Arabia to build a ballistic missile factory would make sense given the rivals in its neighborhood. The kingdom faces an Israel armed with an advanced nuclear and missile program and an Iran that has continued to perfect its own abilities to make ballistic missiles. Should Iran stop abiding by the 2015 nuclear accord’s limitations, many analysts believe the country could attain nuclear warheads in as little as a year.
The Trump administration pulled out of the Iran deal, in part citing missile threats from Tehran that were not covered by the pact.
A functional ballistic missile production facility would allow Saudi Arabia to begin matching some of the domestic missile-making capabilities that Iran has developed over the years and tapped to supply weapons to Houthi rebels fighting Saudi-backed forces in Yemen.
The existence of a Saudi strategic rocket base at al-Watah first became public in mid-2013 after Jane’s Defense Weekly published satellite imagery of the military facility, which was suspected of housing ballistic missiles purchased from China.
But when Lewis and his colleagues David Schmerler and Fabian Hinz looked at satellite images of al-Watah captured by Planet Labs more recently, they discovered, in Lewis’s words: “Whoa, that is not just a missile base anymore.”
The base was still there — with its launchpad, underground tunnels and administrative buildings — but across the road an entirely new facility had emerged, and it looked a lot like a rocket-engine factory designed to make ballistic missiles, they said.
The facility included high-bay buildings, which Lewis says appear to be tall enough for a missile’s motor case to stand on its end and be filled with fuel. Another clue was a barrier around one of the structures for protection against explosions. The site was also dotted with lightning rods, because the tall metal structures can attract lighting strikes that could ignite the propellant. That the facility is in the same location as an existing Saudi missile base bolstered the case.
Above all, what appears to be a rocket-engine test stand set off alarm bells. The horizontal setup, Lewis said, coupled with the lack of pipes or tanks in the images, suggests that the facility was probably designed to produce solid-fuel rockets rather than liquid-fuel ones. Solid-fuel missiles tend to be more sought after because they are easier to conceal, can be launched more quickly and can be stored for a long time, making them more survivable in a conflict. How the Saudis obtained the technological expertise necessary to build the facility is unclear. One potential supplier: China.
The Saudi engine test stand, according to Lewis, looks particularly Chinese. While most countries test rocket engines out in the open, Lewis said, China partially covers the flame shooting out of the engine and cools the test building with water so it does not catch fire. The Saudi test complex appears to replicate that setup, he noted, with a trench for the water next to the stand and what appears to be water runoff.
China has sold ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia in the past and has helped supply ballistic missile production capabilities to other nations. In the 1990s, Pakistan secretly built a plant for medium-range missiles using blueprints and equipment supplied by China. The factory in Pakistan has long drawn the attention of top Saudi officials.
What involvement, if any, China or Pakistan had in building the Saudi facility is unclear. Nor is it clear what kind of ballistic missiles Saudi Arabia is manufacturing or preparing to produce.
The Chinese and Pakistani embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
The plant is smaller than those of other countries, suggesting it could have a limited capacity, said Lewis, Elleman and Bermudez, and recent satellite photos do not show any cars in the parking lot at the site, raising the possibility that the plant is not yet operational. It also has fewer barriers against explosions — earthen mounds known as berms — than similar production facilities in other nations, they said.
Traditionally, the United States formally has sought to prevent the proliferation of ballistic missile technology. Washington at one point sanctioned China, for example, for delivering missile launchers and components to Pakistan in the 1990s.
“Under normal circumstances, we would be doing everything we could possibly do to constrain and convince the Saudis not to do this,” Elleman said. “The U.S. has always been opposed to the transfer of missiles that are inherently capable of carrying nuclear weapons.”
The main way the United States seeks to prevent the spread of drone and missile technology is through the Missile Technology Control Regime, or the MTCR, an informal multicountry pact designed to prevent the transfer of certain missile technologies. China is not a member but has agreed to abide by some of its stipulations.
While the United States sells an array of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, Washington has not sold ballistic missiles to Riyadh, in part because such missiles traditionally have been seen as destabilizing for the region. Saudi Arabia has turned to China in the past when met with refusals from the United States for certain weapons requests.
For example, the United States declined repeated Saudi requests to purchase what are known as category-one American drones, including Predators and Reapers, partly because of MTCR’s regulations. Instead, the kingdom turned to China, first purchasing drones and later striking a deal in which China will build a drone factory that will produce a Chinese copycat of the Predator in Saudi Arabia.
Shane Harris contributed to this report.
http://web.archive.org/web/201907090253 ... about.aspx
Diesem Eintrag zufolge begann die Anschaffung ballistischer Raketen 1986 unter König Fahd bin Abdulaziz unter dem Decknamen Projekt "Al Saqr" (الصقر).
https://www.mod.gov.sa/Sectors/missiles ... fault.aspx
http://web.archive.org/web/202009280134 ... ault.aspx#
UPDATE: Saudi Arabia displays ballistic missiles for the first time (30. April 2014)
Saudi Arabia publicly displayed its Dong Feng-3 (DF-3) ballistic missiles for the first time in a 29 April parade marking the end of what was billed as its largest ever military exercise.
The parading of the missiles will be seen as the latest Saudi step to publicise its ballistic missile capability, which has included media coverage of the opening of the Strategic Missile Force's new headquarters in Riyadh in 2010.
The DF-3 (US designation: CSS-2) is a single-stage, liquid-fuel ballistic missile that was developed by China in the 1960s. It is estimated to have a range of 2,500 km with a 2,000 kg warhead, but suffers from poor accuracy.
It was confirmed in March 1988 that China had transferred an unspecified number of DF-3 missiles with conventional warheads to Saudi Arabia. The estimates of the number of missiles delivered to the kingdom range between 30 and 120.
Saudi television footage of the parade at Hafr al-Batin Airbase in the northeast of the kingdom showed two missiles with DF-3 written on them in Latin script. The missiles were mounted on the same towed erector launchers that have been seen in photographs of Chinese DF-3s. These launchers can only travel on paved surfaces, but provide an adequate level of mobility for firing from the prepared launch pads at Saudi ballistic missile bases.
Speculation that Saudi Arabia is in the process of replacing its DF-3s was fuelled by the circulation of a photograph of Prince Fahd bin Abdullah bin Muhammad al-Saud visiting the Strategic Missile Force headquarters in Riyadh during his brief tenure as deputy defence minister in 2013. The photograph shows senior officers presenting him with a display case containing models of three missiles, including one that looks like a DF-3. There has been speculation that one of the other two missiles in the case is a Chinese DF-25 (CCS-5) with a pointier nose for a conventional warhead.
In January, a Newsweek story cited an unnamed "well-placed intelligence source" as saying Saudi Arabia began replacing its DF-3 from 2007, when it bought solid-fuel DF-25 missiles. The source said the United States approved the transfer after CIA analysts inspected the missiles and were satisfied that they were not designed to carry nuclear warheads.
http://www.janes.com/article/37219/upda ... first-timeOther weapons and platforms that were not previously known to have been acquired by Saudi Arabia but which featured in the parade included Oshkosh Mine Resistance Ambush Protected - All Terrain Vehicles (M-ATVs) and M113s that had been upgraded by the Turkish company FNSS into the M901A TOW anti-tank missile launcher variant.
The parade, marking the end of Exercise 'Saif Abdullah', was attended by dignitaries from various countries, including the king of Bahrain, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, the Kuwaiti defence minister, and Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif.
Saudi Arabia displays ballistic missiles for the first time (30. April 2014)
http://www.janes.com/article/37171/saud ... first-timeThe first ever photographs and video footage of Saudi Arabia's Dong Feng-3 (DF-3) ballistic missiles were published on the arabic-military internet forum and YouTube on 28 April. The imagery comes from the rehearsals for a parade to mark the end of Saudi Arabia's largest ever military exercise.
The parading of the missiles will be seen as the latest Saudi step to publicise its ballistic missile capability, which has included the public opening of the Strategic Missile Force's new headquarters in Riyadh in 2010.
The DF-3 (US designation: CSS-2) is a single-stage, liquid-fuel ballistic missile developed by China in the 1960s.
FOREIGN POLICY, 30. Jänner 2014 hat geschrieben:Why Did Saudi Arabia Buy Chinese Missiles?
The real question is why are we only hearing about it now.
BY Jeffrey Lewis // JANUARY 30, 2014
Jeff Stein of Newsweek has reported that "a well-placed intelligence source" has confirmed that Saudi Arabia purchased Chinese-made DF-21 ballistic missiles in 2007 -- apparently with the approval of the George W. Bush administration.
It's the first intelligence source to confirm, albeit anonymously, something that's long been rumored. It is a good bit of reporting -- and I say this not simply because Stein quotes me. If Saudi Arabia bought the missiles in 2007, it has taken a long time for a reporter to get a source to actually confirm the suspected sale. But the timing of the leak isn't surprising. Saudi Arabia is growing increasingly concerned about Iran, and over the past few years it has started talking a lot about its Strategic Missile Force. In the course of doing so, Riyadh has hinted that it has bought at least two new types of ballistic missiles -- one of which is possibly the medium-range DF-21, which, in China, comes in both conventional and nuclear flavors.
The Saudi Strategic Missile Force dates to the 1980s, when Prince Khalid bin Sultan -- then commander of the Air Defense Force -- traveled to China to purchase DF-3 missiles. The Dong Feng 3, or "East Wind 3," is also medium-range and nuclear-capable, but it uses liquid fuel and is not very mobile. So, many folks expected that the Saudis would eventually replace or augment it, either with another purchase from China or with one from Pakistan. In 1999, Prince Sultan, then the defense minister, visited Kahuta Research Laboratories in Pakistan, where A.Q. Khan was enriching uranium and building copies of North Korea's Nodong missile, which Pakistan calls the Ghauri. At the time, one U.S. administration official told the New York Times that the visit was "definitely eyebrow raising."
A few years ago, Jonathan Scherck, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, published a book called Patriot Lost, alleging that China delivered new DF-21 ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia in 2003-2004. (He has also written a thinly veiled screenplay.) Although Scherck occasionally veers toward the conspiratorial, he's believable when he sticks to what he knows. The book's passages about how the intelligence community monitors changes in missile deployments by tracking construction at bases and the shipping practices of certain Chinese proliferators struck me as informed. Some of his details are wrong, and Scherck clearly wrote the book from memory, which is a fragile thing. But the U.S. government is concerned enough that it's pursuing legal action to seize any money Scherck's made on the book and prevent its further distribution. He's not making all this up.
Stein's reporting would seem to move this story forward, giving us an intelligence source and a possible explanation for why Scherck's interest in the sale was unwelcome.
It used to be that Saudi Arabia did not want to call attention to its budding missile force. Khalid shrouded his ‘80s trip to China, and the ensuing shipments, in secrecy. Although news of the sale eventually broke, and although information about Saudi Arabia's new missile bases near Sulayyil and Jufayr appeared in the press, Saudi officials kept mum.
In his 1996 memoir, Desert Warrior, Khalid finally shared a few details. He tells an anecdote that captures the initial Saudi concern for secrecy. Khalid recalls how a young soldier stationed at one of the bases revealed its location to his father over the telephone, unaware that his calls were monitored. The old man, according to Khalid, figured his kid was up to no good and lying about being posted to a secret missile base in the desert. Khalid, initially not sure what to do about the breach of operational security, claims he ultimately decided to relocate the old man and make him the base's imam in order to keep him quiet. I don't know if the story is true -- maybe Khalid was just trying to refute rumors that the bases were staffed by Chinese -- but the point is that, other than Khalid's memoir, Saudis simply didn't talk much about the Strategic Missile Force. Until now.
What's changed, of course, is Iran. As concern grows in Riyadh about Iran's nuclear and missile capabilities, the Saudi press is simply talking a lot more about the country's arsenal of conventionally armed ballistic missiles. There is also the Internet, where there is a lot of easy-to-find chatter about Saudi capabilities. The result is a field day for open-source analysis.
Saudi officials have been more transparent as well. For example, in 2010, Khalid -- by then deputy defense minister -- cut the ribbon on a new headquarters building in Riyadh for the Strategic Missile Force. Saudi officials released a number of images of the building, both inside and out, and you can see it in satellite photos.
Moreover, since about 2007, the Saudi press has covered graduation ceremonies from the Strategic Missile Force school in Wadi ad-Dawasir. Here is Maj. Gen. Jarallah bin Mohammed Al-Alwit, the current commander of the Saudi Strategic Missile Force, giving a commencement address:
Thanks to the flood of media coverage, it's actually quite easy to piece together the base structure of the Saudi Strategic Missile Force. Most of the bases have a residential area with houses, schools, mosques, and so forth. There is a second "tactical area," which can be located several or even tens of kilometers away, where the missiles and launchers are located. My colleague Sean O'Connor described some of these locations in great detail in a recent Jane's article. Others are just coming into view.
The most interesting image, however, is this picture of Khalid's replacement -- the recently removed Deputy Minister of Defense Prince Fahd -- visiting the Strategic Missile Force headquarters in Riyadh. Now, it is normal for the Saudi Strategic Missile Force to give a visiting dignitary a gift -- you know, something classy like a solid gold falcon in a glass case. In this instance, however, there is something much more interesting in the glass case: three missiles.
The missile on the far left is a DF-3 of the sort that Saudi Arabia purchased from China in the late 1980s. But the other two? One might be a DF-21 with a very pointy nosecone. What's amazing is that the glass case suggests yet another missile sale we don't know about -- from China, Pakistan, or who knows where.
Here is an illustration from the U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center's report Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat that shows some of the candidates.
Although the NASIC illustration doesn't show it, Chinese missiles like the DF-15 and DF-21 come in "C" variants with an elongated nosecone for accurate conventional munitions. Stein reports that, when the 2007 shipment of Chinese missiles arrived, "Two analysts [from the Central Intelligence Agency] subsequently traveled to Saudi Arabia, inspected the crates and returned satisfied that the missiles were not designed to carry nukes." If I had to guess how Saudi Arabia might reassure the United States that its purchase was intended to carry conventional and not nuclear weapons, I would guess it relates to the payload and dimensions of the nosecone. If the missiles have a narrow reentry vehicle with lots of weight dedicated to guidance systems, there probably isn't a lot of room for the sort of nuclear weapon that China or Pakistan could sell to Saudi Arabia, or that the Saudis could develop themselves.
But, holding aside the question of which missiles are in the glass case, it is pretty obvious that someone is trying to tell us something.
In his memoir, Khalid talks about the decision to buy the first generation of Saudi missiles in secret. On the one hand, it makes sense that Saudi Arabia wanted to have an operational missile force before anyone was the wiser, so that it could present the United States and others with a fait accompli. Then again, the whole point of having a deterrent force is lost if you keep it a secret! So the Saudis had to tell their neighbors sooner or later. Here is how Khalid described Saudi thinking:
The effectiveness of a deterrent capability depends on a potential enemy knowing of its existence. When our Strategic Missile Force was close to being operational, I wrote an analysis for the high command suggesting that, if our acquisition of Chinese missiles was not detected by November 1988, this would be an advantage; if not by February 1989, this would be greatly in our favor; if, however, it was not detected by June 1989, we should consider leaking the news ourselves as the object of acquiring the weapon would not have been achieved. As it happened we had no need to do so, because the Americans broke the news first.
With the DF-21 sale, the U.S. intelligence community kept quiet, perhaps because Saudi Arabia let them inspect the shipments. Now that the deal is done, it makes sense for the Saudis to start dropping hints. Gilded hints, in glass cases, perhaps. I wonder, though, if anyone at the CIA expected to see two new missiles in the case.
However many missiles the Saudis may have bought, Riyadh is now eager to publicize its growing capabilities. The Saudis have been making very clear over the past year that they are not happy campers, as symbolized by their recent decision to reject a long-sought Security Council seat over frustration with policies regarding Syria and Iran. Highlighting the Strategic Missile Force is another reminder to the United States that Saudi Arabia can look out for number one if negotiations with Iran don't pan out. If those talks collapse, who knows what we're likely to start seeing in glass cases.
KHALIL MAZRAAWI/AFP/GettyImages
Exclusive: CIA Helped Saudis in Secret Chinese Missile Deal (29. Jänner 2014)
http://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-cia-h ... eal-227283According to a well-placed intelligence source, Saudi Arabia bought ballistic missiles from China in 2007 in a hitherto unreported deal that won Washington's quiet approval on the condition that CIA technical experts could verify they were not designed to carry nuclear warheads.
The solid-fueled, medium-range DF-21 East Wind missiles are an improvement over the DF-3s the Saudis clandestinely acquired from China in 1988, experts say, although they differ on how much of an upgrade they were.
The newer missiles, known as CSS-5s in NATO parlance, have a shorter range but greater accuracy, making them more useful against "high-value targets in Tehran, like presidential palaces or supreme-leader palaces," Jeffrey Lewis, director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, tells Newsweek. They can also be fired much more quickly.
The poor accuracy of the old DF-3s rendered them impotent during the first Gulf War as a counterstrike to Saddam Hussein's Scuds, according to Desert Warrior, a 1996 memoir by Saudi Prince Khaled bin Sultan, then-commander of the Riyadh's Air Defense Forces. King Fahd declined to fling them at Iraq because the likely result would have been mass civilian casualties, and "the coalition's air campaign being waged against Iraq was sufficient retaliation," Khaled wrote.
When that war ended, the Saudis went looking for something better. In China, they likely found it. But unlike in 1988, when they royally annoyed Washington with their secret acquisition of DF-3s, this time they decided to play nice. And the CIA was their assigned playmate.
CIA and Saudi air force officers hammered out the ways and means for acquiring the new Chinese missiles during a series of secretive meetings at the spy agency's Langley, Va., headquarters and over dinners at restaurants in northern Virginia during the spring and summer of 2007, a well-informed source tells Newsweek. The arrangements were so sensitive that then-deputy CIA director Stephen Kappes ordered the CIA's logistical costs, estimated at $600,000 to $700,000 buried under a vague "ops support" heading in internal budget documents - prompting loud complaints from the head of the agency's support staff.
Aside from technical personnel, among the few CIA officials let in on the deal were the agency's then-number three, Associate Deputy Director Michael Morrell, a longtime Asia hand; John Kringen, then-head of the agency's intelligence directorate; and the CIA's Riyadh station chief, who Newsweek is not identifying because he remains undercover. Two analysts subsequently traveled to Saudi Arabia, inspected the crates and returned satisfied that the missiles were not designed to carry nukes, says the source, who asked for anonymity in exchange for discussing the still-secret deal.
The CIA declined to comment, as did current and former White House officials. The Chinese and Saudi embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Saudi Arabia 'targeting Iran and Israel with ballistic missiles' (11. Juli 2013)
Images analysed by experts at IHS Jane's Intelligence Review has revealed a hitherto undisclosed surface-to-surface missile base deep in the Saudi desert, with capabilities for hitting both countries.
Analysts who examined the photos spotted two launch pads with markings pointing north-west towards Tel Aviv and north-east towards Tehran. They are designed for Saudi Arabia's arsenal of lorry-launched DF 3 missiles, which have a range of 1,500-2,500 miles and can carry a two-ton payload.
The base, believed to have been built within the last five years, gives an insight into Saudi strategic thinking at a time of heightened tensions in the Gulf.
Analysts at IHS Jane's believe that the kingdom is currently in the process of upgrading its missiles, although even the DF3, which dates back to the 1980s, is itself potentially big enough to carry a nuclear device.
The missile base, which is at al-Watah, around 125 miles south-west of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, was discovered during a project by IHS Jane's to update their assessment of Saudi Arabia's military capabilities.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... siles.htmlIt serves as both a training and launch facility, with the missiles stored in an underground silo built into a rocky hillside. To the north of the facility are two circle-shaped launch pads, both with compass-style markings showing the precise direction that the launchers should fire in.
The Chinese-made missiles, which date back to the 1980s, are not remotely-guided and therefore have to be positioned in the direction of their target before firing.
"One appears to be aligned on a bearing of approximately 301 degrees and suggesting a potential Israeli target, and the other is oriented along an azimuth (bearing) of approximately 10 degrees, ostensibly situated to target Iranian locations," said the IHS Jane's article, which is published on Thursday.
While the lorry-launched missiles can theoretically be fired from any location, the idea of having pre-planned directional markers is to ensure that they can be deployed in accurate fashion as quickly as possible, said Allison Puccioni, an image expert at IHS Jane's.
"There is a marked out spot for the launch truck to park in, which will facilitate an expedited launch," she said.
Robert Munks, deputy editor of IHS Jane's Intelligence Review, said: "Our assessment suggests that this base is either partly or fully operational, with the launch pads pointing in the directions of Israel and Iran respectively. We cannot be certain that the missiles are pointed specifically at Tel Aviv and Tehran themselves, but if they were to be launched, you would expect them to be targeting major cities.
