Missiles for Israel

Stephen Green writes about one of my current preoccupations, the fact that the next illegal Israeli attack on one of its neighbors will bear a terrible price for Israel, missile retaliation (emphasis in red):

“The problem with the game of offense, however, is that both sides can play it. As  I indicated in ‘Living by the Sword’, published in 1988, some Arab governments have learned that while they may not be able to defend themselves against the Israeli Air Force, they can obtain and deploy weapons against which Israel has virtually no defenses…..such as the Soviet SS-21.

In the late 1970's and early 80's, SS-21s were installed by the Soviets across Eastern Europe, and it gravely concerned the U.S. and its NATO allies. The effective range of the weapon is a little more than Mr. Eisenstadt indicated in his Washington Institute policy paper – about 80-100 miles, in fact, or enough reach all of Israel to points just south of Tel Aviv. 

Unlike the Scuds and the multiple-launch rocket systems which the Soviets sold to many of their client states across the globe in the period, the SS-21 is a tactical ballistic missile that is accurately targetable to within about 50-100 yards, and carries a payload of around one ton. It is not a Scud. At impact, it is traveling at over 2000 MPH. Launch to target times from southern Syria to northern Israel would be 3-5 minutes: Israeli pilots would not even have a chance to get their helmets on. And anti-missile systems, like the Patriot, would be about as effective as they have been to date.

Moreover, Syria has for decades been developing radiological and chemical/biological agents which could be carried in the SS-21 warheads, and these could render Israel's main air bases uninhabitable for many, many years. In the 50 year history of Arab-Israeli conflict, the moments when Israel did not have total air superiority on the battlefield have been so few and so localized as to be not worth mentioning. That's what could change in 3-5 minutes.”

He focuses on an attack on the Israeli military.  The real profound effect will be the psychological one on Israeli civilians.  Thus, the massive amount of lying (!) and spinning (!) over the obviously failed Israeli probe of Syrian/Russian air defenses around northern Syrian missile sites (not to mention all the total BS, now apparently withdrawn in the face of international guffaws, about destruction of the Syrian-North Koran nuclear alliance!).  The Israeli public can’t be allowed to know that Israel has no answer to the Russian missiles.