Word: 5s
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Located near the towns of Dumeir and Shimshar, the sites consist of two batteries of 12 launchers each. Spare missiles bring the total number of SA-5s to about 50. The complex early warning and tracking radars, plus the communications systems and defenses made up of less advanced batteries, are all manned and operated by Soviets. Even though the SA-5s are integrated into a Syrian-controlled air-defense network, the Kremlin has a veto over their use. So tight is Soviet control, in fact, that the Syrian Defense Minister has never been allowed to enter the bases...
Enter the SS-20. It was first deployed early in 1977. It was a replacement for the SS-4s and SS-5s, with which the Soviets had been menacing Europe for decades. The SS-20 was therefore not a new threat in that its targets more or less matched those of the old SS-4s and SS-5s that were destined for retirement. But the SS-20 is an immensely more capable weapon. It is mobile, highly accurate and dauntingly destructive, with three independently targetable warheads. (SS-20 is its NATO designation. The Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces innocently dubbed...
...Andropov offered to reduce the number of SS-20s aimed at Western Europe from the current level of 250 to somewhere around 162, equal to the number of British and French missiles. He also implied that the U.S.S.R. would take out of commission its old SS-4sand SS-5s...
...proposal was deceptive and vague. The SS-4s and SS-5s were overdue for the scrap heap anyway. The Soviets may have deployed excess SS-20s precisely so that they could negotiate away some of the surplus to prove their reasonableness. Moreover, Andropov left open the possibility of merely moving the excess SS-20s so that they were east of the Urals; from there the missiles could be put on trains and brought back within range of Europe...
...talks devoted specifically to the problems surrounding medium-range missiles. Launched largely at the instigation of NATO's European members, these negotiations will seek to find ways of reducing the numbers of, if not eliminating altogether, the 250 Soviet SS-20s and 350 older SS-4s and SS-5s already trained on Western Europe, and the 572 U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles scheduled to be deployed by 1983 in West Germany, Britain, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands...