The Deadly New Weapons

The deadliest enemy that Israel faces in the current fighting in the Middle East is Soviet military technology. Russian-built missiles and rockets have accounted for most of the planes and tanks lost by Israel so far.

Some of the Soviet hardware of course has long been familiar to Israel. Its planes had encountered the high-altitude SA-2 and lower-altitude SA3 surface-to-air missiles during Nasser's 1969-70 war of attrition against Israeli defenses in the Sinai. But in the current war, the Israelis find themselves also facing the SA-6, a Soviet-built missile so new that it has never before been used in combat. In fact, according to British Military Analyst Edward Luttwak, the Soviet army itself has only limited quantities of the SA-6. Lethally accurate, it is responsible for downing most of the 70-odd American-made F-4E Phantoms and A-4E Skyhawks that Israel lost in the first week of the war.

Western intelligence sources have only scanty information about the SA-6, but they believe that the U.S. has nothing exactly like it. Launched from a highly mobile, tracked vehicle, the SA-6, called the Gainful, is more accurate and has a much more versatile guidance system than the U.S. Hawk--the American missile closest to it. Unlike anything U.S. pilots encountered in Viet Nam, the SA-6 can hit a plane flying anywhere from just above ground level to seven miles up. The SA-6 uses its radar to focus on the incoming plane, and at the right moment launches its rocket and directs it against the plane until impact--all within a few seconds.

As much as the SA-6 has been the nemesis of the Israeli air force, the Soviet-built Snapper antitank missile has tormented Israeli armor. With a range of roughly one mile, the Snapper can literally be steered to its target by a gunner who guides a pair of hair-thin wires that unravel from the back of the soaring rocket. It has accounted for most of Israel's nearly 300 tank losses. More conventional but nonetheless effective has been Egypt's use of the Russian T-62 main battle tank. This is the first time that the 36.5-ton tank has operated in combat. It carries a 115-mm. gun.

Israel, of course, is not fighting the war with a slingshot.

The ship-to-ship Gabriel missile, developed by Israeli scientists, has a range of more than twelve miles. Israel also uses American-made jets, tanks and artillery, and arms its warplanes with missiles and rockets the U.S. perfected in Viet Nam. Especially deadly are the Sidewinder air-to-air heat-seeking missile; the Sparrow, an air-to-air missile that uses radar to direct it against either planes or tanks; and the Maverick, the so-called smart rocket of the Viet Nam War, which carries a TV camera that steers it to targets on the ground. These missiles have accounted for most of the 800 Arab tanks and more than 150 Arab planes destroyed by the Israelis.

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