Delta Force SCUD Missile Hunters

Pictured: SAS special forces who joined Delta Force in the coalition mission to track down Iraq's hidden SCUD launchers.

As the military coalition aligned against Saddam Hussein’s forces launched airstrikes to begin the first Gulf War, Iraq responded with a sequence of SCUD missile attacks on Israel.

While they achieved little in military terms, the old and inaccurate missiles provoked a political crisis and panic in Israel. The country was eager to retaliate against Hussein. Still, such an action would have caused an irreparable rift between the U.S. and the Arab countries coalesced in support of the American cause against Hussein.

Instead, the U.S. redirected coalition military aircraft from their assigned targets to hunt for the SCUDs, destroying most of Iraq’s static missile installations. The Iraqis complicated the mission, however, by hiding mobile missiles in the vast desert. They proved nearly impossible to locate from the air.

Israel, still enraged by the attacks, had to be placated by assurances that a special operations force sent by the United States was on the hunt for the remaining missiles. Delta Force was on the job. A secret team was deployed to the region while the United Kingdom provided additional Special Air Service squadrons to seek out and destroy the SCUDs, the launchers, and their manufacturing plants...

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Видео Delta Force SCUD Missile Hunters канала Dark Docs