Other news stories

Military home page

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, has ordered trials of American computer software which scrambles messages sent between allies. It is one of the main recommendations of a Ministry of Defence report on the lessons to be learnt from the Kosovo war, which started a year ago this week.

The MoD will also begin trials of an American-made anti-tank missile, named Maverick, which is more accurate and deadly than traditional cluster bombing. The initiatives, with a total cost of about £100 million, come after claims that there was a spy within Nato's ranks during the early part of the Balkans war who leaked the Allies' bombing targets to the Serbs.

Although defence chiefs stress that there is no evidence that the conversations between British pilots were being intercepted, they say that the new system will prevent them having to use traditional code wordswhich could be interpreted by an enemy.

The new RAF communication system will initially be installed on about 50 aircraft. It uses an American invention which scrambles the speech of pilots talking to ground control and their counterparts from friendly nations, making it impossible for enemies to decode.

Mr Hoon told The Telegraph last night: "There is no evidence that pilots were intercepted in Kosovo, but there is always a concern and that is something you look at as part of your assessment of these kind of military operations."

A secret report compiled by American air force chiefs is said to have concluded that Nato security was being compromised during the conflict. Although Nato and Downing Street denied the allegations, made in a television documentary last week, US officials admitted that there were suspicions that that Serbs were well-informed about what the Allies were doing.

The Maverick missile, made by the US firm Raytheon, will be fitted to RAF Harrier jets. It uses infra-red to track tanks, allowing an accurate hit even in heavy cloud. Maverick was used to great effect by the US airforce during the Kosovo war, while British forces had to fall back on old-style cluster bombs. These scatter around a target and have five per cent failure rate - the Serbs claimed that its failings led to the loss of civilian lives.

MoD officials insisted that the adoption of Raytheon's missile does not mean that the Brimstone warhead, a similar weapons programme it has commissioned from GEC Marconi, would not go ahead.