Do you guys know that during GW1, Iraqi has abt 66 Astros II
with SS-60 too?
Becos of that, Iraqi arty out range the US arty except the ATACMS
Blk I( max range 165km) which 32 were fired.and of course the
Tomahawk from navy ships.
What's is the impact during that war?
Practically no impact.
How many were destroyed during GW1 ?
I dunno , Iraqi arty pieces during that war was largely ineffective
and many of their arty pieces were targeted and destroyed.
And how many Scud launcher were destroyed during that war, the
problem is no one know except the Iraqi, USAF has strike abt 100
suspected Scud launchers after firing of Scud was detected, some
believe many are actually decoys but some could be actual
launchers.
Secondly, Some 650 R-17 missiles and 36 MAZ launch vehicles were
sold to Iraq by the Soviet Union plus the fact with their own
production, the number of Scud could as high as thousand before the
war.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/scud_info/scud_info_refs/n41en015/scudnt3.htm
But after war, Iraqi admitted that only had abt 52 Scud left,
others Intel agency believe it to be abt 100+ left.
Less than 100 were fired in GW1 , so the rest must be destroyed,
becos USAF also targeted the production facility, storage and
military installation related to the Scud.
The main difference with Scud and Astros is it's range, Scud has
range from 373~900km, which mean the search area to hunt them is
much larger, Astros II's SS80 only has 89km, so the search area is
very much smaller.
2nd thing, Scud may operated by just only 2 vehicles, the launcher
and the command vehicle during firing.
Whereas Astros II usually at the minimum operated in a battery of 6
plus FCS vehicle to be effective.
A convoy of 6 or more large 6x6 trucks is either resupply convoy or
Astros II battery and should be targeted regardless during a war,
no matter how they try to disguise them.
Anyway, Scud w/o a WMD warhead is no threat to change the outcome
of the war, as proven in GW1.
Likewise, Astros II with it's highly inaccurate rocket is more a
terror weapon against civilian than against well armed conventional
force with air superiority.
