Guardian: Missile that hit Baghdad Market a Raytheon Product

H. Curtiss Leung hncl at panix.com
Tue Apr 1 11:22:27 PST 2003


From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/dailybriefing/story/0,12965,927233,00.html

(You'll have to scroll down a bit to find it)

Meanwhile it has emerged - as a result of detective work on the

internet by a Guardian reader - that the explosion in a Baghdad

market which killed more than 60 people last Friday was indeed

caused by a cruise missile and not an Iraqi anti-aircraft rocket

as the US has suggested.

A metal fragment found at the scene by British journalist Robert Fisk

carried various markings, including "MFR 96214 09". This, our reader

pointed out in an email, is a manufacturer's identification number

known as a "cage code".

Cage codes can be looked up on the internet (www.gidm.dlis.dla.mil),

and keying in the number 96214 traces the fragment back to a plant

in McKinney, Texas, owned by the Raytheon Company.

Raytheon, whose headquarters are in Lexington, Massachusetts, aspires

"to be the most admired defence and aerospace systems supplier

through world-class people and technology", according to its website

(www.raytheon.com). It makes a vast array of military equipment, including

the AGM-129 cruise missile which is launched from B-52 bombers.

NB: to do the search yourself, go to the link given and choose "Business Identification Cross-Reference System (BINCS)". In the form that appears, enter 96214 in the "Cage" field. Aside from whatever this is being made by Raytheon, I can't parse it.

Curtiss



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