Russian missile system spirited out of Libya by US
Samer al-Atrush, Tunis
Wednesday January 27 2021, 5.00pm GMT, The Times
United States
A Pantsir S-1 anti-aircraft system falling into the wrong hands poses a threat to both military and civilian aircraft
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A truck-mounted Russian air defence missile system captured on a Libyan battlefield was flown intact to a US air base in Germany in a covert mission,
The Times has learnt.
The operation was ordered amid concerns that the Pantsir S-1 missile battery, which can easily bring down civilian aircraft, could fall into the hands of militias or arms smugglers in the war-torn north African country.
The operation involved sending a team on a US air force C-17 Globemaster cargo plane to Zuwara airport, west of Tripoli, last June to load the battery and transport it back to the Ramstein base in southwestern Germany. It had been purchased from Russia by the United Arab Emirates, which had sent it to Libya to support forces loyal to the self-styled
Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
At the time of its capture his forces were involved in a battle to take Tripoli from the UN-recognised government, supported by Turkey. He was backed by the UAE and Russia, and mercenaries from the Russian
Wagner group are believed to have operated some of the air defence systems. The Pantsir was captured after an airbase was overrun in a counter-attack.
The mission sheds further light on covert actions by the US against the Russian presence in Libya, which has some of Africa’s largest oil reserves. While President Trump showed little interest in the Libyan conflict, the military and the State Department have sought to expose the growing Russian role in the country.
In 2019 the US tipped off Libyan authorities about the presence of Russian political consultants in Tripoli working for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner, which has also established operations in several
other areas of Africa. Last year the US military’s Africa Command took the unusual step of publicising its intelligence on the deployment of advanced Russian jets to Libya to support Marshal Haftar.
The US had a score to settle with Russia because it believed a Pantsir battery operated by Wagner technicians shot down one of its £23 million Reaper drones while it carried out a surveillance flight over the country. The US military demanded to have the wreckage back but Marshal Haftar claimed ignorance of its location.
A Russian official said Moscow was aware the US had removed the Pantsir system but suggested its capture would be of limited intelligence value, since the US would have the opportunity to study the same system in the UAE. Although the UAE worked closely with Wagner, and has allegedly helped to finance the thousands of mercenaries in Libya, the country is a close US ally. It has bought more than 50 Pantsir batteries.
Export versions, such as the one captured in Libya, are supposedly stripped of a carefully guarded identification friend or foe database with the transponder codes for all Russian air force jets. The system is capable of engaging multiple targets from low altitudes up to 50,000 feet and has a range of about 20 miles.
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After its capture from the Watiya airbase on May 18, 2020, fighters transported the Pantsir to the town of Zawiya, west of Tripoli, where it was seized by a notorious militia commander called Mohamed Bahroun, nicknamed the Rat. He is suspected of having ties to smugglers and Islamist extremists.
However, forces under the interior minister forced Bahroun’s fighters to hand over the missile system. It was then transported to a base hosting Turkish forces and later to the airport for collection.
Observers said the episode reflected favourably neither on Russia nor the UAE. There is supposedly a UN arms embargo that prevents the import or export of weapons from Libya, which has been in almost constant tumult since a Nato-backed revolt ousted Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
“It’s remarkable that a state which is a major importer of US weapons would then hand a sophisticated weapons system to a warlord who handles it so recklessly that it then falls into the hands of a potentially dangerous militia leaders on the other side,” said Wolfram Lacher, a Libya authority with the SWP think tank in Germany.
A Russian made anti-aircraft missile system was used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of 298 passengers and crew. A different Russian system, sold to Iranian forces, shot down a Ukrainian airliner flying from Tehran last January, killing 176. On both occasions it is thought the missile crews mistakenly believed they were firing at enemy aircraft or incoming missiles.