Iraq’s Scuds: Highly Inaccurate Missiles : Arms: They carry a relatively small payload but are the main targets of allied bombing.

Iraq’s Scud missiles, with a 30-year-old design, are considered highly inaccurate and carry a relatively small payload.

But today they proved capable of at least threatening to spread war on a vastly larger scale in the incendiary Middle East when Iraq launched several of the missiles toward Israel.

Earlier this year, Iraqis tested the weapon with a chemical warhead for the first time, but it is not known whether they have developed an operational chemical warhead for the missile.

The U.S. war plan called for destroying the Scud launchers in the first hours of the war, but clearly that mission was not a total success, as Iraq was able to launch several missiles into Israel.

Pentagon officials said the Scud launchers, both mobile and fixed, were among the priorities for the allied air strikes that began Thursday. Even before Iraqi targeted Israel and Saudi Arabia with Scuds, Pentagon officials were concerned about the missile launchers missed in the first wave of allied attacks. U.S. warplanes targeted them with renewed vengeance Thursday night.

“We have been concerned about Scuds all along,” said Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams in a statement released Thursday night. “That is why they were high priority targets.”

U.S. military officials do not know how many Scuds remain in Iraqi hands, but much of Saudi Arabia and the huge U.S. force lie within their range.

Analysts estimate that Iraq has about 100 Scud launchers, at least half of them truck-mounted mobile units.

Iraq has spent an estimated $1 billion to upgrade its arsenal of Scuds, originally bought from the Soviets and the North Koreans, to improve their range and accuracy.

The Baghdad government was aided in the endeavor by firms and individuals from Egypt, and what was then West and East Germany.

The original Scud-B has a range of about 180 miles and an accuracy estimated at no better than half a mile.

Iraq has developed a Scud-C, with a range of about 375 miles, which is known in Iraq as the Abbas. U.S. government officials believe this was the variant launched against Tel Aviv.

A third modification, known as the Hussein, has a range of 560 miles. These are launched from fixed sites in western Iraq near the oil pumping stations H2 and H3. U.S. war planes reportedly destroyed the fixed sites there but apparently missed at least some mobile launchers in the area.

Iraq claims that the Scud-C and the Hussein are accurate to within 300 yards, which would make them ineffective against most military targets but capable of terrorizing an unprotected population.

In the so-called “War of Cities” in early 1988 near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, Baghdad fired 189 missiles at Iran, including 135 at Tehran. The most they were able to launch in one day was 11 missiles, and none was outfitted with a chemical warhead. Although damage was relatively minimal, the resulting terror hastened the end of the war.

A Scud equipped with a chemical warhead, of course, could cause more casualties. But Israel’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies said in a report last year that the small warheads developed for the upgraded Scud-Bs decrease their efficiency when delivering chemical agents.

Analysts from the Israeli center said that a Hussein missile can carry no more 330 pounds of chemical warfare agents.

Three key facilities are at the center of the Iraqi effort to improve its ballistic missile capability, according to government and outside analysts.

A plant known as DO-1, located at Hillah south of Baghdad, primarily produces different types of propellants for ballistic missiles. An explosion destroyed part of the plant in August, 1989.

Plant DO-2, at Fallujah west of Baghdad, manufactures ballistic missiles. A third facility, known as Project 124, also near Fallujah, upgrades Scud-Bs to Abbas and Hussein configurations.

All three sites were high on U.S. military planners’ targeting lists, and preliminary reports indicated they were damaged by American air strikes.

Two other ballistic missile facilities--a testing plant at Karbala southwest of Baghdad and the Saad-16 research center near Mosul--work on producing and improving Iraqi missiles.

The Patriot missile system, a U.S.-designed air defense weapon that has been redesigned to track and destroy incoming short-range missiles, has been the last-ditch defense against weapons like the Scud for U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

In Saudi Arabia, the Patriot units, manned by Army personnel, dot the landscape surrounding major military and industrial facilities.

For several months, the special Patriot missiles and software designed to intercept short-range missiles have been delivered to U.S. units on a first-priority basis. But those orders have left Israel undefended by the weapons, even though the United States shipped several copies of the basic firing system to Israel in early January.

Times staff writers Jim Mann and Melissa Healy contributed to this story.

IRAQI SCUD-B Medium range, surface-to-surface missile Length: 37 feet Diameter: 3 feet Launch weight: 7.0 tons Payload: One 2,172-lb. warhead, conventional or chemical Populsion: Liquid fuel Accuracy: within 1,476 feet Range: 186 miles Scud-B on its MAZ-543 transporter/erector/launcher vehicle

Source: Jane’s Soviet Intelligence Review