The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967–1973. The USSR’s Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict

THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973

Katyshkin credits the chief adviser with the initiative to address this weakness by
sending in Soviet regulars:

When in Moscow the issue had to be decided whether to comply with the Eg yptian leader-

ship’s request and introduce Soviet military formations into the UAR, there were many

doubts and discussions. Not the least part in the positive decision was played by

Katyshkin’s position. He was of the opinion that besides the nuances of international

relations and diplomacy ... an example of combat skills and courage could be given to the

Eg yptians by Soviet soldiers.^45

At the end of July, Marshal Savitsky returned to Eg ypt to inspect the effect of the
Israeli air campaign. He “immediately asked to fuel up an interceptor and, in front of
the astonished Eg yptian pilots, executed some superior aerobatics to demonstrate the
combat capabilities of our planes. Their generals don’t fly, and the pilots are very
poorly prepared—so that the IAF rules the air.”^46 Another visitor at this “darkest hour
for the air defense forces ...when it seemed that they could not hold out” was the
radio-technics head of Soviet Air Defense, Lt-Gen. M.T. Beregovoy. “He listened
attentively” to the advisers and made a helicopter tour of the units, “despite the risk
of making such a flight in daylight under combat conditions. The results of this tour
as reported in Moscow caused the formation of a military specialist group that arrived
in Eg ypt under a separate contract. These were lower-ranking officers, the air-defense
forces’ repair experts.”^47
By then, at least a partial antidote for low-flying Israeli intruders was on the way.
According to Kubersky, it was already in the works when its necessity was demon-
strated by the sonic-boom scare:

Two months before, I had been with one of our advisers when he was received by the

Eg yptian Army’s counterintelligence chief. ... From us he needed only figures and dates,

technical-tactical data—when and how many ... [we could supply of ] the hand-held, self-

homing Strela-2 system that is effective from 50m to 1500m [altitude], with a range over

3km and a combat-ready weight of 14.5 kg—that is, shoulder-fired. ... The United States’

Stingers were still under development, while our Strela-2 was already being inducted.^48

The Strela’s lead designer, Sergey Nepobedimy, confirms that its development had
begun only in late 1967, in response to the IAF’s success in the Six-Day War, and was
completed in a crash effort “in the spirit of ‘socialist construction’” under the personal
supervision of munitions production boss Dmitry Ustinov.^49 Heikal states that the
Strela was first promised to the Eg yptians by Brezhnev’s now demoted archrival,
Aleksandr Shelepin, on a visit to Cairo in January 1969, and supplied during the same
year while problems with the “primitive” initial production series were still being
ironed out.^50 The decision to try it out in Eg ypt was thus made but a few weeks after
Lashchenko, in his final report, had included it among the “new weapons” that he
recommended sending there, and was further accelerated by Nasser’s umbrage at the