Boston Globe, The Pentagon's new Javelin antitank missile received mixed reviews from some US Marines in Iraq, who complained over the summer the $68,000 weapon didn't lock on to targets. In response, several Army Special Forces soldiers praised the system as decisive in another battle.
Such tactical interservice debates often happen in secret. But some details of the weapon's performance are publicly available via the website of Raytheon Co., the Waltham defense contractor that makes Javelin in a joint venture with Lockheed Martin Corp.
Last month Raytheon put up an account of the Battle of Debecka Pass, where Javelin-firing Special Forces destroyed 14 Iraqi vehicles, including two tanks, on April 6 and turned back a major counterattack.
“We wouldn't be standing here and be back with our families if you didn't build such a great product,” the site quotes Special Forces Sergeant 1st Class Frank Antenori, speaking at a Raytheon meeting at its Tucson, Ariz., missile division in early September. The site also includes maps and photos of the battle, a rare stand by Iraqi forces in the northern part of the country. Based on the fight, “Javelin's accuracy and effective range appeared underrated,” Antenori said.
Federal rules prohibit soldiers from endorsing products. But Raytheon executives say they pressed hard for Army clearances to post the material after it became clear the engagement was a success story for the $1.2 billion Javelin system, the latest infantry defense against tanks. The company says it's not an advertisement and not meant to counter the Marines' complaints.
Some outsiders say the Webpackage has the effect of an advertisement, anyway. “It's basically guys in uniforms giving product endorsements,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington research group. He called the Raytheon Web package “peculiar” but said he expects to see more like it as defense contractors emphasize conventional victories rather than the messy unconventional conflict now under way.
Robert Sherman, a weapons specialist with the Federation of American Scientists, said Raytheon's site seemed like a sales tool to promote foreign military sales, where Javelin competes with the Spike series made by an Israeli-European partnership. (Javelin has won several major competitions including sales to Australia and Britain, and Sherman added that Javelin's record in Iraq seemed like “a terrific success” overall.)
Raytheon business-development manager Michael Conti said he might mention the Debecka Pass material in briefings with foreign customers. But he said the website was only “put there so that people who work for the firm and the stockholders can take a look at the site and see the product literature and see a great story.” Sabrina K. Steele, a Raytheon spokeswoman, said the company is seeking customer approvals to discuss the military use of other products, such as an infrared missile targeting sight.
Federal rules and customer sensitivities make the creation of any missile marketing or communications material a delicate matter. Military contractors frequently praise their products in trade journals, newspapers, and policy magazines to influence politicians in charge of military spending, but rarely offer specifics of how a system was used. Raytheon's partner on the Javelin, Lockheed Martin, had access to the same Debecka Pass material but chose not to post it on its own website. “We'd prefer not to be that edgy,” said a company executive, who asked not to be named.
One defense contractor that has begun offering battlefield specifics is Textron Systems of Wilmington, which describes the first combat use of its Sensor Fuzed Weapon, a tank-killing cluster bomb, in a recent trade press ad. It shows an aerial photo of a smoking line of Iraqi tanks and says: “In combat sorties from 2 April onward, SFW from Textron Systems took out multiple Iraqi combat vehicles . . . Actual battle damage is classified.”
Maureen Collins, Textron marketing communications manager, said the point was to remind policymakers of the weapon's combat record. “The best thing to be able to say is, it was used successfully in OIF,” or Operation Iraqi Freedom. “Every contractor wants to be able to say that,” she said.
In the case of Javelin, at first it wasn't clear Raytheon and Lockheed would be able to say the same. Fired from a shoulder launcher, the heat-seeking missile is designed to soar up and then strike down at the weaker armor plating on the top of enemy tanks. Javelin entered production in 1997 and the companies are in the midst of a four-year, $1.2 billion contract awarded in 2000.
Criticism of Javelin emerged shortly after the ground war began. Sherman said he heard from defense sources that the first combat Javelin shot missed a large building, which he called “a great embarrassment to everyone involved with the program.” Raytheon's Conti acknowledges some problems but said that overall “the system worked better than the requirements.” Final after-action reviews of Javelin aren't yet available, military officials said.
Then an article appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune on July 22 under the headline “Javelin didn't earn its stripes, Marines claim.” The newspaper quoted several who said the system wouldn't stay locked on targets, and complained of a lack of live-fire training with the weapons. “It will either go to the target or it'll be erratic and scare the living bejesus out of you because you don't know where it's going to go,” Captain Michael McCready told the newspaper.
A Camp Pendleton spokesman wasn't able to make the same Marines available to be interviewed. At a Sept. 9 press conference, however, Marine Lietenant General James T. Conway seemed to minimize the concerns.
“We didn't have problems with the Javelin,” he said. “And when I went back to just informally canvass, in the wake of having read that report, I didn't get a lot of negative comment on the Javelin.”
Meanwhile, the Army Special Forces soldiers had returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., where they are in demand to give briefings of their dramatic fight. According to Antenori, it began when two 12-man Special Forces teams in unarmored Humvees were confronted by about 150 Iraqi troops and armor including four tanks at a strategic road intersection.
For thirty minutes until warplanes arrived, the Javelins were the only weapon to counter the tanks available to the Special Forces, who like the Marines had little training with the system. Still, 16 of the 19 Javelins they fired scored hits and kept two surviving tanks in defensive positions; their crews fled a few hours later. In a telephone interview this week, Antenori said that without the Javelins, “Either we would have been run over or we would have had to run. And I hate running.”
Antenori said he cleared his briefing to Raytheon with Army lawyers and public affairs officers, mindful of rules that prohibit soldiers from making commercial appearances. “I was told that as long as we didn't endorse Raytheon and say, for example, `Raytheon is the greatest company' we'd be good,” Antenori said.
