scuds

The Scud is a family of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union and designated by NATO as the SS-1 Scud. First deployed in the early 1960s, the system was intended for short-range battlefield use and became one of the most widely produced ballistic missiles of the Cold War. The launch platform could be fixed or road-mobile, and several export versions were provided on different launchers.

The missile is a single-stage, liquid-fueled design. It uses unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) as fuel and inhibited red fuming nitric acid (IRFNA) as oxidizer. It carries a conventional high-explosive warhead, with a payload typically around several hundred kilograms. Guidance is inertial with a pre-programmed flight path, giving modest accuracy by modern standards. Propellant and maintenance requirements contributed to reliability and handling challenges, especially for non-state operators.

Variants include the original Scud-A (R-11) and Scud-B (SS-1C) with ranges around 300 km, and later Scud-C and Scud-D variants that offered extended ranges and improvements. The Scud family was widely proliferated and produced under license or copied in many countries, including in the Middle East and Asia. It served in various conflicts from the 1960s onward and remained a platform for future missiles, with many countries developing derivative systems, some of which remain in limited service or as training aids.

Notable usage occurred during the Gulf War (1991), when Iraqi forces fired Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia, drawing international attention and U.S. Patriot intercept attempts. Since then, the Scud has become a symbol of early ballistic missile proliferation and a baseline for more modern short-range systems.