The Dangerous Dinosaur

Weapons experts are quick to point out the deficiencies of the Scud missile. It is unwieldy and inaccurate, practically antique, a dinosaur compared with the sleek and precise Tomahawk cruise missile. But clumsiness can still be dangerous -- as Israel discovered when a dozen Scuds came galumphing into Tel Aviv and Haifa last week. Designed by the Soviets to deliver nuclear warheads over a short range, the Scud can miss its mark by as much as a mile. It is most effective against large cities, where the goal is not to hit a specific target but to terrorize the population. During the Iran-Iraq war, Baghdad and Tehran fired Scuds into each other's urban centers, killing hundreds of civilians.

No one outside Iraq knows for certain how many Scuds Saddam Hussein had in his arsenal before war broke out last week. Estimates run between 500 and 800. Baghdad possessed as many as 32 fixed launchers in silos and at least 36 mobile ones mounted on huge eight-wheel trucks. After the first air raids, most fixed launchers were destroyed, but some 15 mobile Scuds survived. It takes about five hours to prepare a Scud for use.

The 37-ft.-long Scud traces its lineage to a 1940s design for the V-2 rocket, which the Nazis propelled into London in the waning days of World War II. NATO dubbed it the SS-1A Scunner, code-named Scud for short. The Scud-A evolved into the larger and longer-range Scud-B. By the early 1980s, the Soviets had begun phasing out Scuds in favor of the more versatile SS-23 surface-to-surface missile. However, Moscow did not stop selling the old workhorse. As a Soviet client, Baghdad took deliveries of the ballistic missile and improved on its range, extending the Scud-B's maximum reach of 175 miles to 390 miles for the Al Hussein model and 540 miles for the Al Abbas.

Last week's attack was not Israel's first brush with Scuds. Toward the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Egypt fired three Scud-Bs at targets in the Sinai and at the battlefront, inflicting little damage. In the ongoing conflict, however, the violently wayward Scud is invested with new menace by Iraq's chemical-warfare potential.

Why didn't Iraq arm its Scuds with poison gas during its attacks on Israel? There are several possible explanations. First, when Iraq waged chemical war on its own Kurdish minority and on Iran, the toxins used were encased in bombs and dropped by aircraft. Baghdad may not have mastered the science of equipping missiles with chemical warheads. Second, the initial Desert Storm air raids may have knocked out the Scuds armed with nerve or mustard gas, as well as possibly halting chemical production. Israel's threat of nuclear retaliation may also have muzzled those missiles. All well and good. But that leaves one unpleasant possibility. Perhaps Saddam Hussein still has poison Scuds -- and decided not to use them right away.