Russian SAM systems, all evolved from their Soviet era late Cold War forerunners, are now the most capable threat systems in the contemporary globalised weapons markets, capable of defeating all Western systems other than the B-2A and F-22A.
Early Operational Success of the SAM
First generation Soviet SAM development culminated in the S-75/SA-2, which became the most widely deployed and used air defense missile in history. The missile is credited with the demise of the U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft and the development of sophisticated electronic countermeasures by air forces in the West.
The first S-75 batteries were deployed in the Soviet Union in late 1957. The missile's first known kill against a Western aircraft remains disputed. Some sources claim it was a U-2 over China in 1959, some say it was Gary Powers' CIA-operated U-2 lost over Sverdlovsk in May 1960. Many sources also claim a Soviet MiG-19 Farmer was also downed by PVO missileers in the same engagement. An S-75 shot down a US Air Force U-2 flown by Major Rudolf Anderson over Cuba in October 1962. The lethality of the S-75 against the subsonic U-2 rapidly led to the development of the Mach 3 A-11/SR-71 Blackbird.
By 1965 the S-75 was widely deployed in the Soviet sphere of influence, and scored its first kills against combat aircraft. Russian sources claim 4600 launchers were deployed in the Soviet Union alone by 1970.
The S-75 system was deployed to North Vietnam in 1964 to counter US air raids, with US electronic intelligence detecting Fan Song radar emissions in April 1965. The US was ill prepared for the S-75, as only a limited number of aircraft were equipped with radar warning receivers to detect the system, let alone jammers to defeat the Fan Song engagement radar. As the PAVN constructed a series of SAM sites across the north, the Johnson administration refused to authorise attacks on these sites for fear of killing Warsaw Pact or Russian instructors training the PAVN missileers, thus escalating the conflict.