Steven J. Zaloga - Red SAM: The SA-2 Guideline Anti-Aircraft Missile

STEVEN J ZALOGA was born in 1952, received his BA in history from Union College, and his MA from Columbia University. He has published numerous books and articles dealing with modern military technology, especially armored vehicle development. His main area of interest is military affairs in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in World War II, and he has also written extensively on American armored forces.

JIM LAURIER is a native of New England and lives in New Hampshire. He attended Paier School of Art in Hamden, Connecticut, from 197478, and since he graduated with honors, he has been working professionally in the field of Fine Art and Illustration. He has been commissioned to paint for the US Air Force and has aviation paintings on permanent display at the Pentagon.

T he S-75 was the most important tactical missile system of the Cold War and played a central role in the evolution of modern air warfare. Better known by its Western intelligence designator as the SA-2 Guideline, it was originally developed for the strategic defense of major Soviet cities against US and British bomber attacks. It was first used in combat in the late 1950s and early 1960s against US U-2 spyplanes over Russia, China, and Cuba. As strategic weaponry evolved from long-range bombers to intercontinental missiles, the importance of the S-75 in strategic air defense diminished. The Soviet Union began exporting the S-75 to many of its client states, including Vietnam, Egypt, and Syria. As a result, it played a pivotal role in the air wars over Vietnam in 196673, and in the Middle East in 1967, 1970, and 1973. The use of the S-75 in these air battles was the primary catalyst for the wizard war that resulted in many new innovations in electronic warfare, including the development of stealth technology. Although increasingly obsolete, the widespread export of the S-75 ensured that it was used in many other conflicts during the 1980s and 1990s.

The combination of long-range strategic bombers and the atomic bomb initiated the greatest revolution in warfare of the twentieth century. Instead of massive thousand-plane bombing raids, it became possible to destroy an entire city with a single bomber carrying a single nuclear bomb. Traditional defenses based on artillery and fighters became obsolete overnight since they could seldom defeat more than five to ten percent of the attacking bombers. In the nuclear age, this was completely unacceptable since even a single bomber leaking through the defenses could cause unimaginable damage.

The S-75 Dvina system was the worlds first surface-to-air missile used in combat, revolutionizing air defense tactics. This is a Soviet 11D missile on its SM-63-I launcher, better known in the West as the SA-2b. (US DoD)

Seen here at the Khodynka museum are the key components of the first Soviet strategic SAM, the S-25 Berkut with a Lavochkin V-300 missile in the foreground and one of the windmill antennae of the unusual B-200 radar behind.

In 1945, Germany was on the verge of deploying revolutionary air defense technology using new guided missiles such as the Wasserfal and the Schmetterling. Early Soviet surface-to-air missile (SAM) design at the NII-88 (Nauchno-issledovaniy institute: Scientific Research Institute) was based on German technology. Although many test flights were conducted, these programs came to naught due to the political machinations of the rival Special Bureau No.1 (SB-1) headed by the radar expert Pavel N. Kuksenko. On the staff was Sergei L. Beria, the son of the sinister head of the Soviet secret police, Lavrentiy Beria. They proposed developing an entirely new SAM and in 1951 the rival programs were terminated and their personnel shifted to work on the new Berkut (Golden Eagle) system, an acronym for Beria and Kutepov, the Deputy Director of KB-1. Stalin was alarmed by the reports coming from Korea of the effectiveness of US B-29 bomber attacks, and on August 9, 1950, he ordered that the Berkut be deployed within a years time to protect Moscow.

The Berkut was an immense undertaking, consisting of 56 missile regiments in two concentric rings around Moscow, each with a massive B-200 radar bunker and 60 launch pads. Missile development was undertaken by the foremost Soviet fighter designer, Semyon Lavochkin, which accounts for his mysterious disappearance from aircraft design in the late 1950s. During the course of the Berkut program, Stalin died and his henchman Lavrentiy Beria was arrested by army officers and shot. In the ensuing purge of Beria supporters, his son was evicted from the design bureau, which was reorganized under S. A. Respletin as KB-1, later becoming better known as the famous Almaz design bureau. Almaz would lead Soviet strategic SAM development for the next half-century. The project was also renamed as S-25 (Sistema-25: System-25). The program led to the construction of Moscows two famous ring-roads, a project that consumed the equivalent of a years concrete production. The first regiments of the S-25 were deployed, beginning in March 1954, by the PVO-Strany (Protivovodushnaya Oborona Strany National Air Defense Force) and went on permanent alert in June 1956, about four years later than the similar US Army Nike-Ajax SAM. By the time it reached service, the S-25 was already approaching obsolescence due to the rapid changes in aviation technology. The Kremlin considered deploying a cheaper, rail-mobile version, called the S-50, around Leningrad but this was rejected in favor of a much more sophisticated system codenamed Dal. In the event, the Lavochkin Dal program would become mired in its own set of technological and cost problems and was canceled in the early 1960s before becoming operational.

Even though Dal was canceled, the Lavochkin 5V11 missile was frequently paraded in Red Square, leading NATO to give it the Griffon codename, appropriately a mythical beast.

Birth of the S-75

While Moscow and Leningrad might warrant expensive systems, the Kremlin wanted a more economical air defense system to protect other Soviet cities and military bases. This secondary system was designated the S-75 and the program was authorized on November 20, 1953. A design team under Boris Bunkin at the KB-1/Almaz bureau was put in charge of the program. There was some hope of shifting from the low-frequency N-band (10cm) used on the S-25 system to the high-frequency V-band (6cm), but until new N-band magnetrons were completed, the radar program ran on parallel tracks. The low-frequency version of the S-75 system was called SA-75 Dvina and used RSNA-75 radar, while the definitive high-frequency version was called the S-75N Desna and used RSN-75 radar; both versions were named after Russian rivers, a practice that became a tradition with the naming of Soviet strategic SAMs.