Insider : Military Planners Look Beyond Scud’s Menace : In a few years, missiles will be more accurate, faster and more numerous. Stopping their development may not be possible, experts say, but perhaps it can be slowed.

Even as Iraq’s Scud missiles continue to fall on Israeli cities, U.S. military planners are worrying about what could happen in some future war, when a new generation of better missiles may be available to leaders like Saddam Hussein.

Hussein’s Scuds--purchased from the Soviet Union and North Korea and later modified inside Iraq--have proved to be crude and inaccurate weapons. But in a few years, experts say, the missiles will be more accurate, faster and more numerous.

“Right now, you have a political weapon of limited range, relatively easy to counter, that produces big headaches,” one Defense Department official says of the Iraqi missiles. “The fact of the matter is that we’ve had to deploy, at great expense, Patriot systems in both Turkey and in Israel. People got hurt. We were frightened about engagement and coalition issues (such as whether Israel would retaliate against Iraq).”

Yet, he added: “As bad as that may be, it doesn’t begin to compare with missiles that are relatively difficult to counter, militarily effective, in large numbers.”

The Soviet Union’s Scud-B missiles are more than 30-year-old and are based on the design of the old German V-2 rockets used during World War II. The Soviet Union has exported these missiles to at least six countries--Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The cost is no more than $1 million a missile.

North Korea also manufactures its own home-grown version of the Scud-B, apparently based on missiles it obtained from Egypt. And Iran, too, has reportedly been trying to produce its own version of the Scud.

Yet popular as they are, the Scuds are also becoming passe. As the Israelis and Saudis are now seeing firsthand, the Scuds can’t be relied upon to hit within even half a mile of their targets.

“The short-range ballistic missiles likely to appear in the Third World during the 1990s will be more accurate than the Scud-B missiles now in widespread use,” W. Seth Carus of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told a conference on missile proliferation.

One technological advance, for example, is the new Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) navigational system, which makes use of satellites to fix locations on Earth with an accuracy within 15 meters (about 50 feet) or less.

“Even in its commercial mode, it (GPS technology) could help missiles reach their targets with an accuracy of approximately 100 meters” (330 feet), Henry D. Sokolski, the Defense Department’s deputy assistant secretary for non-proliferation policy, told Congress.

Greater accuracy is only one part of the future military problem.

As other medium-sized countries follow the path of North Korea by producing their own missiles, they may be able to build up inventories far larger than they have been able to obtain by importing the Soviet Scuds.

“I can assure you that when you get beyond having five or six of these things and you get an order of magnitude more, you run into problems,” a Pentagon planner says of trying to counter the weapons. “You have to then come up with a new, higher-performance radar and tracking system and everything else.”

Furthermore, the Iraqi Scuds use liquid fuel. Before each launch, the liquid must be pumped into the missile, a process that can take hours and makes it harder to set off large numbers of missiles.

The next generation of missiles will use solid fuel, so it will be easier to launch large numbers of weapons--and to do so quickly, before enemy pilots can detect the launch sites.

Worst of all, over the next decade a number of countries may either produce or buy missiles with greater ranges than the original Scud-B, a short-range weapon that could travel slightly under 200 miles.

The Iraqis modified some of their Scuds to roughly double their range. And a number of other countries--including Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Taiwan--are also reportedly working on longer-range missiles.

The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, signed in 1987, barred the United States and the Soviet Union from exporting missiles with a range greater than about 200 miles. But three years ago, China, apparently responding to the INF treaty and to demand on the international market, began offering for export its own M-9, a solid-fuel missile with a range of about 375 miles.

Chinese officials reportedly were trying to sell the advanced missiles to Syria, Iran, Libya and Pakistan.

Both the Reagan and Bush administrations have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent China from selling these M-9s. The issue was a top priority during visits to Beijing by then-Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci in 1988 and by President Bush in early 1989, and on the secretive trip made by National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in December, 1989.

U.S. officials say that so far as they know, China hasn’t shipped any of its new missiles overseas. But the M-9 is still reportedly being developed and tested in China, and experts say they can’t really be sure yet whether Beijing will abide by some vaguely worded assurances that it would not ship these missiles to Middle Eastern countries.

For the moment, the Bush Administration’s efforts to stop the spread of newer, more advanced missiles is focused on the strategy of controlling exports. In 1987, the United States and other industrialized countries formed the Missile Technology Control Regime, which seeks to restrict the export of high-technology items useful for producing missiles.

However, no one is particularly optimistic that export controls will prevent countries from obtaining new missiles. Rather, U.S. officials suggest that they are playing for time.

“It ought not to be believed that if you can’t stop something, you shouldn’t try to slow it,” one Bush Administration official said.

Iraq Added Range to Soviet Scuds

Scud missiles manufactured by the Soviet Union for Iraq have limited range, so Iraq decided to extend the range os some missiles by altering them. By reducing the payload and increasing the amount of fuel in the Scuds, the Iraqis effectively doubled the range of the missiles. However, the Scuds are still considered to be highly unreliable in terms of accuracy.

SCUD B

Length: 37 feet

Diameter: 3 feet

Launch weight: 7.0 tons

Payload: One 2,172-lb. warhead, conventional or chemical

Propulsion: Liquid fuel

Range: 186 miles

SOURCE: Associated Press, Jane’s Soviet Intelligence Review