Hard Sell

In defense of the Exocet

The manufacturer of a weapon that became famous for its successful use against Britain during the 1982 Falklands war took out an advertisement in a British magazine last week--not to apologize but to defend the weapon against charges that it is a lemon. The sponsor of that milestone in marketing history is Societe Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale, the French firm whose Exocet air-to-surface missile was responsible for one of the biggest British setbacks of the ten-week war. Argentina used the weapon to sink the destroyer H.M.S. Sheffield, which went down in the South Atlantic on May 4, 1982, with a loss of 20 seamen. Aerospatiale bought a page in The Economist (estimated circ. 252,000), which usually costs about $5,650, to dispute recent reports that the Exocet is not really the devastating ship killer Britons had come to revile. On the contrary, boasted Aerospatiale heartily, "Exocet is and remains the leader in its category ... that's why it upsets people so much!"

The Exocet has been frequently used against Persian Gulf shipping since the four-year-old war between Iran and Iraq extended to gulf waters last March. In recent months, however, a number of publications, quoting military analysts, have charged that the missile often misses its target and that its 363-lb. warhead frequently fails to explode on impact. Aerospatiale had endured such criticism in silence, the ad indicated, partly out of "respect for the seamen who lost their lives during the fighting." Now, however, the firm could wait no longer to refute the "inaccurate information ... to set the record straight."

According to Aerospatiale, no less an authority than the Sheffield's commander, Captain Sam Salt, has vouched for the missile's effectiveness. "I was there," the ad quotes Salt as saying, "and there is no doubt that the warhead exploded." In addition, Aerospatiale claims that as of July 10, Exocets had been used successfully against 112 ships in the Persian Gulf, a statistic that has not been independently confirmed. Of 103 cases examined, the ad stated, "57 ships either sank, ran aground or were towed home for scrapping; damage to the other 46 was variable . .. Only one case of non-explosion was recorded."

In the gulf last week, Iraqi planes continued to threaten shipping. One missile caused only slight damage to a Liberian-registered supertanker, the St. Tobias. But another of the weapons was believed to have been responsible for destroying a small, German-operated supply ship off Iran's Kharg Island. The explosion killed the ship's eleven-member crew, including three British divers. Britain promptly issued a "strong protest" to Iraq. -