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US secretly upgrading UK's Diego Garcia airbase for Iran attack plans

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
[If accurate, this report could mean the US has given up on using
Incirlik in Turkey. The British collaboration would be scandalous
but not surprising. It's old home week, August 1953 all over again. 
- -NY Transfer]

The Herald (UK) - Oct 29, 2007
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/foreign/display.var.1792035.0.0.php

Secret move to upgrade air base for Iran attack plans

By IAN BRUCE,
Defence Correspondent

The US is secretly upgrading special stealth bomber hangars on the
British island protectorate of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in
preparation for strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, according to
military sources.

The improvement of the B1 Spirit jet infrastructure coincides with
an "urgent operational need" request for #44m to fit racks to the
long-range aircraft.

That would allow them to carry experimental 15-ton Massive Ordnance
Penetrator (MOP) bombs designed to smash underground bunkers buried
as much as 200ft beneath the surface through reinforced concrete.

One MOP - known as Big Blu - has already been tested successfully
at the US Air Force proving ground at White Sands in New Mexico.
Tenders have now gone out for a production model to be ready for
use in the next nine months.

The "static tunnel lethality test" on March 14 completely destroyed
a mock-up of the kind of underground facility used to house Iran's
nuclear centrifuge arrays at Natanz, about 150 miles from the
capital, Tehran.

Although intelligence estimates vary as to when Iran will achieve
the know-how for a bomb, the French government recently received a
memo from the International Atomic Energy Agency stating that Iran
will be ready to run almost 3000 centrifuges in 18 cascades by the
end of this month. That is in defiance of a UN ban on uranium
enrichment and would be enough to produce a nuclear weapon within
a year.

[In an recent interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "Late Edition,"
IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei, strongly advised the Bush
Administration to tone down its rhetoric on Iran. He stated: "So
we are not talking about Iran having today a nuclear weapon. We are
trying to make sure that the future intention of Iran is peaceful,
and that's really what we are talking about. Risk assessment of
possible future intention by Iran, if they have the technology to
develop nuclear weapon. I say that because at this stage we need
to continue to work through creative diplomacy. We have the time.
Because I don't see any other solution, Wolf, except through diplomacy
and inspection."]

Diego Garcia, part of Britain's Indian Ocean Territory, has several
current missions. US Air Force bombers and Awacs surveillance planes
operate from its 12,000ft runway and the USAF Space Command has
built a satellite tracking station and communications facility.

The Ministry of Defence says the US government would need Britain's
permission to use the island for offensive action. It has already
been used for strategic strike missions during the 1991 and 2003
Gulf wars against Iraq.

The UK "sovereign territory" has a garrison of 50 British and 3200
US military personnel.

The atoll, the largest in the Chagos Archipelago chain, lies about
1000 miles from the southern coasts of India and Sri Lanka. It is
ideally placed for strategic missions in the Middle East.

The US Department of Defence request for special bomb racks was
hidden in a #95bn request to the US Congress last week for extra
emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new Big Blu bomb is 20ft long, weighs 30,000lb and carries
6000lb of high explosives. It is designed to go deeper than even
existing nuclear bunker-busting weapons.

The bomb is designed to be dropped from as great a height as possible
to achieve maximum velocity and penetrating power, guided on to
target by satellite and accurate to within a few feet.

Each B2 bomber would be able to carry only one weapon because of
its weight.

The B2s, normally based at Barksdale, Missouri, flew round-trip
strikes against Baghdad in 2003, but would ideally be positioned
closer to its targets for missions against Iran.

The Pentagon has drawn up contingency plans for a range of attacks
on Iran.

The likeliest is a five-day bombardment, aiming to disable nuclear
facilities and all major airbases and radar facilities; the most
devastating would involve air and cruise missile attacks on 1000
targets, including headquarters and barracks of the Iranian Republican
Guard Corps, over more than a month.

The US branded the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organisation
last week in the latest round of diplomatic sanctions against Tehran.
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