Where Russia’s missiles are sited

Press, 9 May 1983, Page 20

Where Russia’s missiles are sited

From lAN MATHER, in London

The Russian SS-20 missiles, subject of the Geneva talks on inter-mediate-range nuclear weapons this month, are stored at nine separate locations ready to be moved into the surrounding countryside in times of tension. These SS-20 bases (shown on the attached map) are scattered across the Soviet Union, indicating the need Soviet strategists feel to balance American, European, and Chinese intermediate-range nuclear weapons pointing towards the Soviet Union from many directions.

In nine of the 11 bases on the map there are 353 SS-20s, rapidly replacing the older SS-4s and SS--ss. The other two sites house submarine-based intermediaterange nuclear weapons. The most significant aspect is that four of the five bases which will be within range of the cruise and Pershing 2 missiles due to be installed in Europe are either colocated with Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles or are dualpurpose bases with missiles that have both an intermediate and an intercontinental role. An attack on these bases from Europe would thus amount to an attack on some of Russia’s intercontinental missile force.

This suggests that Marshal Dmitri Ustinov, the Soviet Defence Minister, was not bluffing when he

warned in a speech in East Germany on April 6 that the use of cruise and Pershing missiles against the Soviet Union would result in nuclear retaliation against the United States as well as against Europe. The four bases are at Yedrovo and Polyarnyy, both shown on the map, and at Dereazhnya in the Ukraine and Pervomaysk north of Odessa on the Black Sea where Russia has SS-11 and SS-19 vari-able-range missiles, capable of either a “theatre” or intercontinental role.

The difficulty Soviet leaders would face in deciding whether a nuclear attack on those bases was “theatre” or “intercontinental” is thus evident. Since land-based intercontinental missiles form a much greater proportion of the Soviet Union’s strategic arsenal — about three quarters (compared with less than half in the case of the Americans) — the Russians would presumably be unwilling to accept a nuclear exchange involving the loss of many of these missiles without retaliating against the American mainland.

Professor lan Bellamy, of the Centre for Study of Arms Control and International Security at Lancaster University in northern England, who has made a study of Soviet missile bases, notes that most of the sites are either close

to the trans-Siberian railway or on branch lines, indicating the importance of railways and the poor state of Russian roads. “The Russians are extraordinarily conservative in their choice of sites,” he said. “They base their intercontinental and intermediate-

range missiles in the same places. They do not go to the trouble of building new hardened sites as the West does.” The two bases housing SS-20s in ■the Far East, at Drovyanaya and Olovyannaya, both near the Chinese border, are intended to coun-

ter-balance Chinese nuclear weapons and American nuclear weapons in the Far East. The SS20s at Omsk and Verkhnyaya Saida, close to the Urals, can be swivelled to point east or west. Copyright, London Observer Service.