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Ministry of Defence

Answer

Mr. Wigley: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if British tanks fired depleted uranium shells during the Gulf War; and if he will make a statement. [59333] Mr. Doug Henderson: The Main Battle Tank used by UK forces during the Gulf conflict in 1990-91 was the Challenger 1, armed with the 120mm rifled-barrel L11 gun. However, when planning Operation GRANBY, it was assessed that the existing tungsten-based armour-piercing rounds in use with Challenger 1 might not be sufficiently powerful to defeat the most modern Iraqi tanks--Soviet designed T72s. It was therefore decided that MOD should undertake the emergency development and deployment of a new armour-piercing round for Challenger 1. This new round was based on a 120mm armour- piercing round, containing a solid depleted uranium (DU) penetrator core with a protective (non-DU) coating and known as CHARM 1, which was already being developed for use by the more powerful gun on the new Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank, also then under development. In fact, the CHARM 1 round needed only minor modifications in order to fit the existing gun on Challenger 1, but a totally new charge needed to be developed. The new charge and slightly modified round, known as Jericho I and Jericho II respectively, were deployed to the Gulf and issued to UK armoured formations just before the start of Coalition operations against Iraq. The MOD's current assessment is that UK forces fired fewer than 100 Jericho II rounds against Iraqi military forces during hostilities, which equates to less than 1 metric tonne of DU overall, although additional rounds were fired during earlier work-up training to establish the round's Mean Point of Impact (MPI).

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

319 c453W; 59333

Session

1997-98

Subjects

Ammunition Iraq-Kuwait conflict Tanks Challenger tanks Shells