IN THE THICK OF THE YOM KIPPUR WARtanks had been mostly stripped of machineguns, which would have been effective
against infantry.
Sharon was among the few who downplayed the effect of the Saggers relative to the
rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and the Soviets themselves were not entirely content
with the Malyutka’s performance either.^37 “Despite the overall success, the war in Eg ypt
uncovered a serious flaw of the new weapon. The missile was too slow.” The designer
Nepobedimy set about developing the next generation.^38 The Eg yptian arena thus con-
tinued to function as a proving ground for Soviet weapons, as well as a source for cap-
tured US hardware.
Ivliev stated in an interview that he was charged with collecting samples of Israeli-
and US-made armaments. He is credited for sending exemplars of several dozen
weapons to Moscow during the war. The Soviets took some of the Eg yptians’ booty,
but also made sure to get the most sought-after items themselves. Among their best
prizes, Ivliev reports, were a downed unmanned aerial vehicle and a brand-new M-60
Patton tank with only 100 kilometers on the odometer, which Ivliev’s group took
immediately after crossing.^39
Another testimony reveals that such feats were accomplished by specially assigned
Soviet spetsnaz (special ops) detachments. Such units were either drawn from among
those who were already posted in Eg ypt (e.g., to guard such sensitive elements as the
Scuds and, later, a redeployed MiG-25 outfit), or were specially dispatched for the
purpose. In the first few hours of the war, it was reported to Moscow—evidently by
Ivliev’s advisers—that Eg ypt’s newly supplied T-62 amphibious tanks were unexpect-
edly vulnerable to the cannon of presumably outdated Israeli Centurions.^40 Soviet
commandos twice went behind Israeli lines to obtain these British-made tanks for
study of their Israeli-upgraded gun.
In raids on 8 and 9 October, the spetsnaz teams succeeded in killing two Centurion
crews while disabling the vehicles only in such a way that they could still be driven
back over the pontoon bridges to Cairo for air transport to Moscow. The
Komsomolskaya Pravda report about this exploit backed it up with a facsimile of one
plane’s flight log. But for anyone with a military background this account is further
authenticated by an anecdote that rings unmistakably true. The first tank’s turret was
immobilized with the cannon pointing sideways, and it wouldn’t go through the
cargo plane’s back door. After hours of vain attempts, an Eg yptian begged
“Mr Officer, just cut it off !” to which spetsnaz Major “Ivanov” replied: “I’d sooner cut
off my you-know-what.” Finally, both Centurions were loaded and flown to the
USSR. One was used as a target for weapons development and the other is still exhib-
ited at the Kubinka proving ground near Moscow.^41
A Soviet “air group” was set up in Cairo under the command of Maj.-Gen.
M.S. Dvornikov “on the war’s sixth day, when luck turned against the Eg yptians.” It
was attached to the Soviet embassy in Cairo to prepare an air intervention on the
Arabs’ behalf. The air group’s “full deployment” never materialized, except for the