S. African-Made Howitzer Poses a Major Threat

A South African-made gun, produced to match modern Western weapons denied to Pretoria by an anti-apartheid arms embargo, will pack a powerful punch for Iraq in Persian Gulf war land battles.

The G-5 155-millimeter howitzer, regarded as one of the best weapons in Iraq’s arsenal, can deliver a nuclear, chemical or conventional warhead up to 25 miles with great accuracy.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies says the Iraqi army has 100 South African-built G-5s.

Tough to combat, it can be set up, fired and moved on again within four minutes to escape retaliation.

“It’s the best gun the Iraqis have got. In its category it’s probably the best gun in service in the world,” South African defense analyst Helmoed-Roemer Heitman told Reuters.

The state-owned, sanctions-busting arms company Armscor produced the G-5 in the 1980s after South Africa’s World War II-vintage artillery was battered during fighting in Angola.

South Africa was unable to buy NATO-issue modern weapons from its traditional Western allies after 1977 because of a U.N. arms embargo imposed as a result of its apartheid race laws.

Armscor refuses to discuss exports, but analysts say they believe that Iraq acquired up to 200 G-5s in a weapons-for-oil deal worth almost $2 billion.

Oil was also denied to South Africa by world sanctions.

According to published reports, Armscor gleaned sophisticated technology from several Western sources and adapted it to South Africa’s regional battlefield experience to make the G-5.

The basic barrel and ammunition appear to have been developed in the United States and Canada and blended with some Swedish technology.

Canadian ballistics scientist Gerald Bull was jailed for six months in the United States for cooperating with South Africa on the gun. He was assassinated in Brussels last March.

The robust G-5 would come into its own during a land war.

The 13.5-ton weapon and its eight-man crew can be towed into action at speeds up to 55 m.p.h.

It can fire between two and three shells a minute, each carrying 100 pounds of high explosive and each casing shattering into about 4,500 white-hot fragments--fearsome for advancing troops.

“It can fire any NATO standard 155-millimeter shell. If Iraq has chemical shells it could fire them with no problem,” Heitman said.