France urged to come clean on Exocets
Calls for inquiry into claim that Paris failed to tell UK of Falklands missile ‘kill switch’
‘If people they were selling them to found out there was a way of defeating it, they would not have been happy’
SENIOR MPS have called for an inquiry into claims that France withheld secrets about missiles that killed 46 British sailors in the Falklands war.
The Daily Telegraph has been told that the French-made Exocet guided missiles contained a “kill switch” that could have disarmed them, but that France denied such a device existed.
Today, on the 40th anniversary of the Exocet attack on HMS Sheffield that caused the first British fatalities of the conflict, France has been urged to come clean about what it did not share with Margaret Thatcher’s government.
Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of Parliament’s defence select committee, said the matter “warrants further investigation”, while Liam Fox, the former defence secretary, said France, a vital defence partner of the UK, should be “open and honest” about what happened.
Three Royal Navy ships were hit by Exocets during the Falklands conflict in 1982, two of which – HMS Sheffield and the merchant vessel Atlantic Conveyor – sank as a result. Sailors died on all three ships.
The missiles were made by French firm Aerospatiale, and as the Royal Navy task force sailed south to retake the islands from Argentine occupiers, Britain appealed to its ally for information about how the missiles worked and whether they could be disabled.
British experts believed the Exocets contained a kill switch, which arms manufacturers sometimes secretly build into weapons so they can be disabled if they fall into the hands of a hostile state.
According to a highly placed source, France denied the kill switches existed, but British officials became convinced France was not telling the truth, partly as a result of investigations that were carried out on an earlier variant of the missile that had been purchased by the UK.
Last night, Admiral Lord West, the former first sea lord, who commanded the frigate HMS Ardent during the Falklands war, told The Telegraph he had heard of the alleged kill switch in Exocet missiles and had been told Britain was denied the technology.
He said: “I was told that the French were very helpful in terms of letting us see the flying of Mirages and the Super Etendard [French-built fighter aircraft, used by Argentina] so we could get their flight profiles. They did give us a certain amount of material about Exocet, but I was also told there was a mechanism within it, so that foreign people couldn’t fire an Exocet at a French ship without them being able to do something to mean it wouldn’t be able to hit them.
“They were making a lot of sales of Exocet and if the people they were selling them to found out that there was a way of defeating it, they would not have been happy.”
Aerospatiale, which was later broken up and taken over by other companies, was run at the time by Jacques Mitterrand, brother of the French president François Mitterrand. The president was approached directly by Mrs Thatcher for information about the missiles and,
according to one report, she threatened to launch a nuclear attack on Argentina if Mr Mitterrand did not hand over the information needed to disable Exocets.
Mr Ellwood said the suggestion France could have shared knowledge about the Exocet which could have saved British lives “warrants further investigation”. He said: “We don’t know the wider decision-making that surrounded this, indeed those responsible might not even be alive today.
“As we look to future battles we must learn from past events and that includes how we work with allies and how we share critical intelligence. It certainly would have been game-changing had France chosen to share this characteristic of the Exocet.”
Dr Fox pointed out that David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy signed the bilateral Lancaster House treaties for defence and security cooperation in 2010 and: “I would have thought, in the spirit of those treaties, the French would want to be as open and honest as possible with us.
“It would not change anything about that relationship, but it would set the historical record straight.”
Bob Seely, the Tory MP and former Army captain who sits on Parliament’s foreign affairs select committee, said: “If Exocets contained what was effectively an on/off switch the French should have shared that with us.
“If it turns out that information was withheld, that would be one of the most shameful episodes in Anglo-french relations. A lot of British sailors died because of those weapons and we owe it to the families of those who died, and to history, to get to the truth.
“It may be that the French did tell us all there was to know, but we need them to be transparent.”
A memorial to the 20 sailors who died aboard HMS Sheffield will be unveiled today at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire after the HMS Sheffield Association raised funds for it to mark the 40th anniversary. Exocet missiles
‘British sailors died because of those weapons and we owe it to their families, and to history, to get to the truth’
also killed 12 people aboard the Atlantic Conveyor and 14 sailors on board HMS Glamorgan before Argentine forces in the Falklands surrendered in June 1982.