The IADS Project is a collaborative "rebuilding" of various Integrated Air Defense Systems in the world utilizing Google Earth Pro. The idea spawned from the DCS World community and the lack of easily usable data on the location of various Soviet era SAM Sites on DCS World Maps. What started as one person manually looking for SAM Sites on Google Maps rapidly transpired into a complete rebuilding of the 1980's era Soviet IADS and partial rebuilding NATO IADS with multiple contributors. Special thanks to Recoil over at the DCS World 107th Joint Aviation Squadron for his extensive help on this project!
Weaponized Autism... clearly... because who would take the time to put this all on a Google Earth Pro map? Also, computer crushing amounts of pins on Google Earth Pro! But what REALLY you get is a Google Earth Pro .KMZ file which contains all known SAM Sites of the Soviet Union and a huge amount of the Warsaw pact sites as well. Not feeling very red and want a little more blue? Well, we also have most of the West German Nike, HAWK, and Patriot sites with a few goodies in other NATO or NATO aligned countries. You also get A LOT of information on EWR sites from both factions.
This project uses... HEAVILY, I would add... information from primarily one source: https://www.ww2.dk/new/pvo/pvo.htm WW2.DK has some AMAZING information on the Soviet Union PVO (Air Defense Forces). Much of the information the website has contains GPS coordinates which DRASTICALLY spead up the process of locating SAM sites. About 85% of the information used to create this file comes from there. While this site was very helpful, there were occasionally sites which were marked as being something, which we later found out to be inaccurate. Some of those sites are still marked as "Allegedly" or some other somewhat snarky comment in the pin placed at those locations. Some of them we were able to locate the real sites nearby. Some, sadly, did not have coordinates at all and required manually searching through the imagery available to locate. Regardless, this is singularly the MOST HELPFUL SOURCE we had.
Another exceptionally useful source was Wikipedia... now before you crap the proverbial brick, the particular page used was in refernece to Nike missile site locations.
More Sources to be listed Soon.
Using this .KMZ file requires you to have Google Earth Pro downloaded and installed on your computer. It's a free program, but it allows for you to see the organization of the various Brigades and Regiments based upon SAM type, and country they are deployed in.
When you download the file, you'll need to open it. You'll notice the default location when you open the file is to the United States and there are NO PINS there. This is BY CHOICE. I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you UNCHECK all of the pins in the folder browser. NO SERIOUSLY... when you enable ALL of the pins and snap to Europe it CRASHES Google Earth Pro. If you want to see the whole Soviet IADS at once, you must zoom in really far in Europe, enable the entire Warsaw Pact layer, and slowly zoom out. Minimize panning/tilting of the earth or you'll risk crashing the program. THERE ARE A LOT OF PINS!!!!!
Do you have weaponized autism too? Do you want to help this project? Well you can! As pointed out above, there are A LOT of sites which are marked "allegedly" or are were just not located in general. If you want to take the time to go through each Air Defense Brigade and Regiment as Recoil and I did over the last three months, PLEASE DO! :) Any area where you may have found a site which isn't already pinned, take note of:
- Which country it is in
- What the GPS coordinates are
- What type of site it is
- What subordination (regiment or brigade) it belongs to
- Any variant information
Create an "issue" on GitHub and include a picture if you can of the site. Add in the above details and any other available information (such as variant). This is especially true of the SA-10 variants as there are numerous variants of the S-300 family.
We will do our best to check those "Issues" and get them added when we have time. If you have access to LIDAR data or other useful data which can help identify specific sites, include that information as well. If we find sites using satellite imagery NOT on Google Earth, please include a picture so we can add it to the .KMZ file. Historical pictures are cool too!
As a Special Note: If you locate a SAM Site which is currently in use, and it's not marked in the Cold War IADS file, please do some research and see if the site was actually in use during the Cold War... our "cutoff" date is around 1995, which is after the Cold War technically ended, but was still in the realm of the Warsaw Pact potentially causing "issues" with the West. You can send us stuff after this date, but it'll be added to a separate KMZ.
This is NOT the War Thunder Forums... I DO NOT want your classified or restricted documents. I CANNOT stress this enough.
The Russian's are nothing, if not, stubborn in their SAM site layouts. Out of all the systems, the S-300 has the most "variation" in how the site is configured, but even the S-300/S-400 systems are overwhelmingly the same from site to site. What I mean is, the S-300/S-400 sites are more flexible, and you'll see more variation than an SA-2 site has. They were downright dogmatic about an SA-2 configuration.
SA-2:
As I said, the Soviets were particularly dogmatic in the layout of an SA-2 site. You'll rarely see anything but this "Star of David" configuration. Legitimately, I've seen maybe two non-standard SA-2 site layouts in the Soviet Union's employment of the SA-2.
Six launchers surround a central "Fan Song" track radar. Generally the search radars are 120 degrees from each other on the outside of the launcher ring. Those radars consist of the Spoon Rest radar or "Flat Face", "Side Net" height finding radar, and the RD-75 range finding radar.
SA-3:
The SA-3 has a two common configurations. One is a box configuration, the other is a trapezoidal configuration.
Box:
Trapezoidal:(the launch positions are a bit difficult to see on this one but they are bottom right of the pin)
As with the SA-2, your "Low Blow" track radar is centered between all of the launchers. Search radars are again, outside of the launchers, generally behind the site, relative to the direction of anticipated threat. In the box site in Kyrgyzstan the "Flat Face" search radar is at the north end of the complex with the "Side Net" radar right next to the launch positions.
SA-5 Gammon*:
The SA-5 site does NOT have different variants per-se... what it does have is a different number of launch complexes. A launch complex consists of six launchers. There are: single, double, triple and quintuple (5) launch complex sites. I'm going to only link a double site and quintuple site because the other variations all employ the same shape with more/fewer launch complexes.
Double: (One of the few active SA-5's in the world, Launch Complexes on the bottom, radars at the top)
Quintuple: (Launch Complexes at the top, radars at the bottom)
In both cases, the launch complexes are fairly visible. The radar sites are located about 1km north (double) or south (quintuple). The radar sites are on elevated positions and generally consist of 1 "Square Pair" track radar per launch complexes (6 launchers). The height finding radar was generally the "Odd Pair" radar, but "Side Net" was used too. They were usually put somewhere close to the "Square Pair" radars. On the Double site, you can see it just to the south east of the two "Square Pairs" on their hills. There are a bunch of trailers near it (power trailers, most likely). The search radar was generally the "Tall King" radar, but the "Bar Lock", "Big Back", and rarely, "Flat Face", were also used. You'll note, I did NOT mention the "Tin Shield" as the search radar... and that's because it was almost never used by the Soviets as a search radar with the SA-5. It was shoehorned into that role in Syria. "Tin Shield" was primarily used with the S-300PT and S-300PS systems.
- The SA-5 Gammon is called out specifically here, because the SA-5 Griffon is an entirely different system which shares the "SA-5" designation. The Griffon never entered service, but was given a NATO Designator anyway. When the Gammon (S-200 in Russian designations) entered service, it was given the SA-5 designation as well. Ironically, the SA-5 Gammon occupied a few of the built SA-5 Griffon Sites which were constructed near St. Petersburg.
SA-10:
The SA-10 is the least consistent of the "fixed" SAM systems. I put "fixed" in quotes here because the SA-10 was employed by the PVO (Russian Air Defense Forces) and they were almost entirely static emplacements in spite of being a mobile system. The Soviet/Russian Army has their own variant of the S-300 (S-300V/S-300VM) which are NATO designations SA-12 and SA-23 respectively, and THOSE systems were employed in a more mobile fashion.
The three most common SA-10 configurations are either "circular," "box", or "linear". Quotations because it's not actually a circle, it's more like a U shape when you lay the trucks out without their revetments.
"Circular": (Note, the battery on Google Earth is an S-400 battery presently.... but 8 launchers)
"Box": (Note, 12 launchers)
"Linear": (Note, 8 Launchers)
The S-300PS generally has the "Flap Lid" engagement radar closest to the launchers. The "Clam Shell" low altitude search radar is generally not far off. In the "Linear" S-300 above, the "Flap Lid" is clearly visible immediately to the south. The "Clam Shell" is to the south east of the "Flap Lid" and can be seen. Both, in this case, are on masts, but the "Flap Lid" is NOT always mast mounted. There are MANY "Flap Lid radars" mounted on trucks, and more modern versions of the "Flap Lid" (Redesignated "Tombstone" and "Gravestone") are almost always seen truck mounted. "Clamshell" is always mast mounted as its job was to specificaclly track low flying aircraft and cruise missiles.
The Search Radars are where things get funky. It is surprisingly common to NOT see a search radar at all associated with these sites. The "Big Bird" search radar is USUALLY deployed near the command and control point for an IADS because the "Big Bird" search radar is ALSO utilized as an EWR radar. The same is true of the "Tin Shield" (also capable of being mast mounted, which is cool, IMO :P). The primary difference is "Tin Shield" was given to the Soviet SSR's while the "Big Bird" was reserved almost exclusively for Russia, proper. You will occasionally see these radars co-located on sites, but it's not overly common.
The most common site configuration for the SA-10 is BY FAR the "circular" setup. It takes up the least amount of land and provides for easy defense of the site. I should note, the S-300 site size is constrained somewhat by the length of cables run between the launchers and the control truck. This was fixed in later versions of the S-300 which CAN use cables but generally have a wireless connection to the control truck. Also, there are two variations of TELs of the S-300PS (SA-10B). The version with the enclosed section behind the driver is known as a "Smart" TEL and can "control" up to three other "Dumb" launchers. The "Dumb" launchers lack the enclosed area behind the driver. The Smart TEL is then connected to the Control Truck.