Steven J. Zaloga - The Russian S-300 and S-400 Missile Systems

The S-300 missile system is one of the worlds most sophisticated and effective air defense weapons. It forms the backbone of the Russian national air defense network as well as those of the former Soviet republics. The S-300 has been widely exported and is the principal strategic air defense system of China, Iran, Vietnam, Syria, and several other countries. Over the years, new generations of the system have appeared, including the S-350, S-400, and S-500. The S-300 appears regularly in the news for its role in various conflicts and in international confrontations.

In the aftermath of World War II, the Soviet Union had an independent branch of the armed forces for national air defense, called the PVO-Strany. Until the mid-1950s, its principal weapons consisted of antiaircraft guns and interceptor aircraft. The first Soviet air defense missile system was the S-25 Berkut (SA-1 Guild). Its deployment was limited to the Moscow area starting in 1954.

The complexity, cost, and technical shortcomings of the S-25 Berkut prompted the PVO-Strany to sponsor a more cost-effective air defense system that could be deployed on a national basis. This led to the S-75 (SA-2 Guideline). Design of the S-75 system was cooperatively undertaken by two design bureaus that would form the core of Soviet strategic surface-to-air missile (SAM) development to this day. The KB-1 (later Almaz) bureau under chief designer Aleksandr Raspletin had overall responsibility for the program. The new missile was developed by the OKB-2 (later Fakel) design bureau under Ptr Grushin. Deployment of the S-75 system began in 1958 and it became the most widely deployed SAM of its generation with about 4,800 launchers in service by 1969. It was also credited with being the first SAM to shoot down a hostile aircraft when an S-75 in China shot down a Taiwanese RB-57D reconnaissance aircraft on October 7, 1959. The S-75 became internationally famous on May 1, 1960 when a CIA U-2 reconnaissance aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk. The S-75 was widely exported and saw extensive combat during the Vietnam War. It later saw combat in many other conflicts, especially in the Middle-East wars of 1970 and 1973.

The S-75 had been deployed to deal with high-altitude strategic bombers such as the USAF B-52 Stratofortress at medium to high altitudes. The effectiveness of the S-75 led the US Strategic Air Command to develop new tactics to avoid the SAM threat, including the use of nap-of-the-earth tactics to exploit the shortcomings of the S-75 at low altitudes. This was anticipated by PVO-Strany and, in May 1957, the S-125 (SA-3 Goa) program began to supplement the S-75 at low altitudes. Deployment started in 1964 and about 1,400 launchers (4,600 launch rails) were in Soviet service by 1981. Like the S-75, the S-125 was widely exported. It first saw extensive combat in 1970 in the War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel.

The S-200 (SA-5 Gammon) was one of the most powerful SAMs developed for the PVO-Strany. Although well suited to dealing with high-altitude, supersonic bombers, by the time it arrived the threat had shifted to low-flying cruise missiles.

Further development of the PVO-Strany air defense network was heavily shaped by anticipated strategic bomber threats from the United States, Britain, and France. The US development of the high-altitude, supersonic B-58 Hustler and XB-70 Valkyrie in the early 1960s as well as the SR-71 Blackbird strategic reconnaissance aircraft led to a PVO-Strany requirement for a new SAM system optimized for the long-range, high-altitude mission. This began in 1958 as the S-200 Angara (SA-5 Gammon). By the time that the S-200 entered service in 1967, the XB-70 program had been canceled and the B-58 Hustler was retired in 1970. In spite of the evaporation of the high-altitude threat, the S-200 continued to be deployed, though on a reduced scale compared to the S-75/S-125 with about 2,030 launchers in service by 1985. The S-200 was exported on a much more limited scale than its predecessors due to its sophistication and cost.

After a frantic program to deploy a nationwide SAM network from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, the PVO-Strany began to take a look at future requirements based on the rapidly changing strategic balance with the United States. While strategic bombers had been the main threat in the 1950s, by the 1960s strategic ballistic missiles including both intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles were fast becoming the predominant threat. Even though bombers remained a significant aspect of the US strategic arsenal, the technological and tactical features of this threat changed by the late 1960s. Since high-altitude attacks had been deterred by the Soviet SAM network, low-altitude attack profiles dominated US Strategic Air Command tactics. This was also reflected in new bomber-launched missiles. The first of these was the AGM-28 Hound Dog cruise missile that entered service in 1960. It was designed to attack Soviet SAM sites or to permit the B-52 to attack from stand-off ranges outside the SAM network. Another penetration aid was the ADM-20 Quail decoy. This small missile could be launched ahead of the B-52 to confuse Soviet air defenses and to soak up Soviet SAMs that might otherwise be used against the parent bomber. B-52 bombers typically carried two of these when they were introduced in 1961.

The Hound Dogs flight characteristics made it vulnerable to the S-125. The Hound Dog was the size of a fighter plane so only two could be carried on a B-52. It was followed in 1971 by the AGM-69 SRAM (short-range attack missile). This was a small, nuclear-armed, aero-ballistic missile specifically designed to burn corridors through the Soviet SAM network with low-yield nuclear warheads. A B-52 could carry up to 20 SRAMs, or a mixture of SRAMs and nuclear free-fall bombs.

The Hound Dog was ultimately replaced in 1982 by the much smaller AGM-86B ALCM (air-launched cruise missile) with the B-52 capable of carrying 1220 missiles each. This became the principal weapon of the B-52 and remains in service to this day. Beyond the air-launched threats, the US began deploying the Tomahawk cruise missile both in a ground-launched configuration in 1983 and a ship/submarine-launched configuration in 1984. The Tomahawk flew a nap-of-the-earth trajectory, exploiting the vulnerabilities of PVO-Strany SAMs at low altitude. Besides these cruise missiles, new American strategic bombers were on the horizon in the late 1960s and early 1970s including the FB-111 and B-1A bombers, optimized for low-altitude attack.

The latest Soviet SAM, the S-200 Angara, was not well configured to deal with the low-altitude challenge. In addition, Soviet missile and radar technology had advanced considerably since the mid-1950s when the S-25, S-75, and S-125 were developed. In 1966, the chief of the PVO-Strany, Marshal P. F. Batitskiy, headed a delegation to North Vietnam to examine the performance of S-75 missile battalions that had been in combat against American aircraft since the summer of 1965. The delegation discovered that the S-75 was becoming increasingly ineffective as the US forces improved their electronic warfare capabilities.