According to the CIA expert on Iraq's chemical warfare program, Iraq admitted to filling three aerial bombs with VX to test storage life. Furthermore, this Scud landed near Doha, Qatar, far from the location of this alert. For this reason, the Fox vehicle has almost no capability to detect VX as a vapor. The only alert we have a record of before this spectrum was from more than three hours earlier as discussed in alert 6. It is not known why this spectrum was performed.
Precursors chemicals are mixed with other precursor chemicals to make chemical warfare agents.
Analysis of Alert 7 These alerts occurred four hours after Alert 6. The complete tapes in Tab E show that between Alert 6 and 7 the sampling probe was not cleaned and was therefore susceptible to false alerts or alarms. While the probe is being cleaned, significant ion activity is occurring, allowing interferents to cause false alarms. After the temperature program completed, the MM-1 recorded no alerts for over three hours. The only means of ground system delivery for mustard agent was 155mm artillery, but during this alert, the Fox was not receiving any artillery fire.