Cold War S-200 Deployments

Video (with good resolution) that shows S-200. Watch it on full screen.

http://zvezdaarmy.ru/sugeti/2007/06/28/ucheniya-sil-protivo

Bulgaria had no MiG-25 interceptors, they were all recon/training aircraft. Yet the S-200/300 missiles around Sofia and the S-75s there, alongside with S-125s around Plovdiv and the Burgas and Varna S-75s and S-125s made an unintereupted front from Yugoslavia to the Black sea.

yes i am sorry my memory is not so good ,. i remeber there was to be a full transfer of several mig-25 variants but it got mig-25RB recon and bomber version…
the bulgarians latter changed their mind and shiped back 3 foxbats in order to buy mig-23 interceptors.soc
north of lake sevan is another vilage i will try to give you map later.since its abandoned site and armenia give back to russia its mig-25s and s-200 vehicles.

So, a typical three-position site would have had 18 ready to fire weapons and a maximum of 144 reloads, with 18 of them on the rapid reloaders and the rest in storage.

I hope you find it useful.
As you can read here(link below) the S-200 Vega site located near capital city Prague and nicknamed “Klondike” had three launch areas with six launchers. The main storage area contained 34 pcs of the 5V28 missile in containers, two missiles were permanently kept in alert status. With proper storage maintenance the missile lifetime is about 20years, but once the missile was filled with high aggressive fuel compounds, its lifetime droped rapidly. The missile had to be emptied imediatelly when alert warning went off. After five years these “worn out” missiles were sent to Kapustin Yar for live fire excercises. In late 80ies one 5V28 missile cost about 8million Czechoslovak krones. Because of these reasons only 2 missiles were filled and kept ready to launch during peace time.
The whole S-200 site lifetime was estimated between 30-40minutes during a war, what is discussible since NATO already knew the site location, thus expecting they would strike it quick. However, it was assumed the site will launch the whole package of missiles stored (36 pcs total).
http://www.fortifikace.net/pov_pvos_skupina_vega.html

What about a second location …., or a location inside Slovakia?

It was simple, after Czechoslovakia split in 1993, Czechs kept the stationary S-200 sites and Slovakia got the single S-300PMU package with the 5V55R missiles.

no s-200 in yougoslavia got dvina nad volhov of older sams.
they were in neutral movement
no s-200 in romania ukraine site covered whole of it.
There were no gaps in survailance radars and missile ranges gaps were closed with new versions of missile and MiG-25 in bulgaria.
Yes and no ,there was reserve position for tbilisi battery on mountain north of lake sevan in armenia to cover most of east black sea in case of need be.

Bulgaria had no MiG-25 interceptors, they were all recon/training aircraft. Yet the S-200/300 missiles around Sofia and the S-75s there, alongside with S-125s around Plovdiv and the Burgas and Varna S-75s and S-125s made an unintereupted front from Yugoslavia to the Black sea.

How many missiles did a typical site have (launchers and reloads)?

Ok, each “site” was in reality a combination of between one and five launch positions, with two or three being the most common (and I’ve yet to find one that had four, dunno why they went from three to five). Each launch area had six launchers, and each area also was assigned up to 48 spare missiles. 6 of these were on rapid reloaders near the launch rails. The rest were stored in bunkers. So, a typical three-position site would have had 18 ready to fire weapons and a maximum of 144 reloads, with 18 of them on the rapid reloaders and the rest in storage.

I’ve also managed to locate four more sites in Russia: the one I was looking for near Chelyabinsk/Ozersk (turned out to be one location, another one was further north), one near Kazan that appears to have mutated out of an old S-75 site or vice versa, one near Nizhnaya Tura (the one I thought should’ve been near Ozersk), and one near Kirov. I know where six more sites should be found in the FSU but still haven’t found them: Belogorsk/Svobodnyy, Kaliningrad, Lithuania, and three in Belarus. Based on the numbers and the documents I’ve seen showing Soviet SA-5 deployments I think this is pretty damn close to being a complete list of SA-5 locations from the Cold War.

Huh. Well, due to my obsession over this at the moment, I’m going to be scouring Armenia north of the lake to find that location if it’s still visible at all. You don’t have any idea where it might be do you? Or do I get to spend another two hours looking at terrain to find a single location again, just like last night 😀

Go

A few questions. It is known that no S-200s were ever placed in Romaina, but were there ever batteries in Armenia or Yugoslavia? If so, where were they located? Was there a second location in Georgia aside from the one near Tbilisi? What about a second location in Bulgaria apart from the Sofiya battery, or a location inside Slovakia? Locations like those would cover obvious gaps in the deployment.

I’m .

no s-200 in yougoslavia got dvina nad volhov of older sams.
they were in neutral movement
no s-200 in romania ukraine site covered whole of it.
There were no gaps in survailance radars and missile ranges gaps were closed with new versions of missile and MiG-25 in bulgaria.
Yes and no ,there was reserve position for tbilisi battery on mountain north of lake sevan in armenia to cover most of east black sea in case of need be.

Alright, after looking through some declassified Cold War documents, it seems that I am missing three sites in Belarus, one in Lithuania, one in Kaliningrad that I think I have found, and at least three in Russia (Chelyabinsk, Ozersk, and Belogorsk/Svobodnyy). Beyond that every site I have found a reference to in documents from the 60s through the 80s that I can make out an accurate reference to has been located. Part of the problem is bad quality maps that have a lot of the western Russia stuff incomprehensible and hard to make out.

How many missiles did a typical site have (launchers and reloads)?

Reloads I’d have to investigate, but most sites had either two or three firing positions. Each firing position would have six launch rails and be linked to a SQUARE PAIR radar. Therefore, most sites had a multi-target engagement capacity, while the system itself did not, because of the presence of multiple engagement radars.

SOC,

You might find these sites helpfull:

I’ve seen the PVO site, but the German one is pretty interesting. I think I have all of those sites already but the site does have some good stuff in there regardless.

SOC,

You might find these sites helpfull:

http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_mlomni/S-200/

http://pvo.guns.ru/s200/index.htm

How many missiles did a typical site have (launchers and reloads)?