45 Years of Scud; How One of the Most Prolific Ballistic Missiles of All the Time used in conflicts.

45 Years of Scud; How One of the Most Prolific Ballistic Missiles of All the Time used in conflicts.

The Scud is today the most widely used ballistic missile platform in the world, and has proliferated widely to almost thirty countries in the six decades since the design was first produced. While the Scud A, a somewhat primitive and widely inaccurate platform, was long ago retired by the Soviet Union and was never manufactured in large numbers, its was its successor the Scud B would become very possibly the most prolific ballistic missile ever designed. The liquid fuelled Scud B, inducted into service in 1964, served as the Soviet Union’s prime tactical strike platform until the entry into service of the more advanced solid fuelled OTR-21 Tochka in 1976. The Scud remained in service in a number of Soviet successor states until the 2000s, and remains active in the Kazakh military until today. While the existence of missile had long been known to Western intelligence, the Soviet military was keen to demonstrate its capabilities in a combat test - which occurred in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War. The Soviet Union was the prime supplier of arms, the majority of them sold at a financial loss, to the Arab Republic of Egypt from the mid 1950s until the 1970s. This would come to include Scud B ballistic missiles, which according to a number of reports were operated by Soviet personnel rather than the Egyptians themselves. With Soviet MiG-25R reconnaissance jets having flown several sorties over the Israeli held Sinai Peninsula as well as over Israeli territory itself, the USSR had detailed information on the location of key Israeli targets which would come invaluable after the opening of hostilities. Shortly before the end of Yom Kippur War, which begun on October 6th and ended 19 days later, a missile strike was carried out - though whether this was under Egyptian or Soviet orders remains uncertain. Three Scud B missiles were used to strike Israeli targets, with one deployed against Arish, a city in northern Sinai, and the other two targeting Israeli bridgeheads on the Western bank of the Suez Canal which were being used to transfer forces for an offensive onto the Egyptian mainland. The deployment of Scud missiles during the Yom Kippur War was more than anything a show of force rather than an attempt to yield real strategic gains. With ten launchers and dozens of missiles reportedly having been deployed to Egypt, they could threaten assets deep in Israeli held territory - thereby deterring attacks by the increasingly dominant Israeli Air Force on Egyptian infrastructure targets deeper in to the country’s mainland. The missiles were also an effective means of sending a signal to the Western Bloc regarding the sophistication of Soviet Union’s strike capabilities in Eastern Europe, with Scuds deployed to West Germany and throughout the Warsaw Pact capable of posing a considerable threat to Western assets. Indeed, the attack was considered such a great success that the Egyptian government claimed it had been carried out by indigenous Al Kahir ballistic missiles - a widely inaccurate domestic program which was shut down in favour of acquiring the Soviet Scud. following the Yom Kippur War, Scud missiles would be widely deployed in a number of conflicts continuing until today. It remains second only to the Nazi German V-2, a platform deployed during the Second World War, in the number of combat launches. The Scud was widely used during the Iran-Iraq War, with Iraq obtaining and deploying the platforms two years into the war and conducting its first launch in October 1982 at an Iranian population centre causing 120 civilian casualties. Frustrated by failures on the battlefield, Iraqi missile strikes intensified as the war progressed - with over 100 missiles fired at Iranian targets in 1985 alone. Iran also acquired Scud B missiles from Libya and well over a hundred of the Hwasong-5 - an advanced North Korean derivative of the Scud B. Iran’s successful retaliation led Iraq to place further orders for Scuds from the USSR and attempts to acquire more advanced platforms, including the longer ranged TR-1 Temp to allow it to strike Tehran - though without success. Iran would following the end the war turn to North Korea to develop an indigenous missile industry, which continues to produce Korean missiles, many of them derived from the Scud, under Iranian names - with the Hwasong-5, Hwasong-6 and Rodong-1 being built as the Shahab-1, 2 and 3 alongside other more advanced Korean missile platforms operated by Iran. Iraq would become one of the most prolific users of the Scud missile following the end the Iran-Iraq War, deploying the platforms to launch attacks against the forces of the Western Bloc and their allies during the 1991 Gulf War. Many of these missiles were modified indigenously with some limited success, and included the Al Hussein, the Al Hijrah and the Al Abbas. Iraqi Scuds were launched from both fixed and mobile sites, and while immobile missiles were quickly hunted down by hostile aircraft after the country quickly lost air superiority - mobile platforms proved significantly harder to neutralise even in open desert terrain. The Scud missiles were used against targets in Saudi Arabia and Israel, though they were operated poorly under combat conditions and had only very limited success - with constant air attacks forcing Iraqi operators to reduce the launch sequence from 90 to 30 minutes which seriously compromised their accuracy. Scud missiles have otherwise been deployed by the Soviet aligned Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against Western backed Islamist insurgent groups, and these missiles were relied on extremely heavily following the Soviet withdrawal and launched with high intensity. From October 1988 to February 1992 Afghan government forces are estimated to have launched up to 2000 Scud missiles within Afghan territory, averaging 1.7 launches per day, which became the most intensive use of ballistic missiles in history other than that by Nazi Germany during Second World War. Afghan Scud missiles were also fired at targets in Pakistan, a Western ally supporting Islamist groups operating in Afghanistan, in 1988. Other conflicts which have seen the deployments of Scud missiles include communist South Yemeni forces’ deployment against Sana’a in 1994, the Russian military campaign against Western supported Chechen militants in 1999 and early 2000, and according to some reports Libyan strikes on territories held by Western backed anti government islamist groups in 2011. The fact that Libya’s weapons facilities and military bases had been heavily covered by Western inspectors in the early 2000s to disarm the country of its missile arsenal makes claims of Scud deployments in 2011 unlikely however. Scud missiles have more recently been deployed by Yemeni Ansurullah Coalition forces however against Saudi targets from 2015, including he indigenous Burkan 1 and Burkan 2 variants, and the country has reportedly received considerable assistance in upgrading its missile forces from North Korean specialists. Scud missiles remain key to the deterrent forces of a number of countries, and since the Soviet Union ceased production of the missiles North Korea has become the leading party which has manufactured, modernised, and proliferated the missiles. Vietnam relies on these platforms to deter Chinese forces in South East Asia, much as Syria relies on them to deter large scale Israeli attacks, and North Korea’s short range missile forces remain a key asset to strike U.S. and South Korean assets on the peninsula as more sophisticated longer ranged platforms are allocated extra peninsular targets, from Guam and Okinawa to the U.S. mainland itself. Much as the Soviet Union began to phase the Scud out of service once more advanced solid fuelled missiles started to enter service, North Korea appears to have begun a similar process - producing solid fuelled Hwasong-11 platforms based on the Soviet Tochka and more recently inducted a new generation of short ranged ballistic missiles apparently based on the Russian Iskander. The Scud’s gradually phased out from services of all Armies as new and better platforms are valid. Gm* Courtesy _Militry watch magazine