Subject:      Iraqi ASAT gluegun
From:        thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson)
Date:         1995/09/25
Message-Id:   <thomsonaDFHAGI.M01@netcom.com>
Newsgroups:   sci.space.policy,alt.politics.org.cia,alt.war

   And now, a special offering for connoisseurs of the truly bizarre:


      WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 1995 (UPI) 
      [EXCERPTS]
   The high-ranking Iraqi defector Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majeed said 
   Iraq was working on a space weapon launched from a "supergun" that 
   would "blind" Western spy satellites with a "sticky material." 
      He also said the "supergun," which consisted of a more than 100- 
   foot artillery barrel that was being constructed in northern Iraq, 
   could have delivered a nuclear device.
      "It was meant for long-range attack and also to blind spy 
   satellites. Our scientists were seriously working on that. It was 
   designed to explode a shell in space that would have sprayed a sticky 
   material on the satellite and blinded it."



   If there's anything to this, which I think is still very much 
TBD, it has the interesting implication that the Iraqis believed 
they could deliver a device to LEO with some precision.  The radius 
of effective action of a gluebomb probably isn't very great. 

   Imagine the ignominy of having a billion-dollar spysat slimed to
to death by Iraqi artillery. ;-)