Middle East Yom Kippur War In the 1973
Yom Kippur War, the Egyptian and Syrian 2K12s surprised the Israeli military, who were accustomed to having air superiority over the battlefield. The highly mobile 2K12 took a heavy toll on the slower
A-4 Skyhawk and even the
F-4 Phantom, forming a protective umbrella until they could be removed. The
radar warning receivers on the Israeli aircraft did not alert the pilot to the fact that he was being illuminated by the radar. The 2K12 performed well according to a conversation between Israeli
General Peled and
Henry Kissinger, and caused the most Israeli losses of any Egyptian anti-aircraft missile, followed by the
9K32 Strela-2. The superior low altitude performance of the weapon, and its new CW semi-active missile seeker resulted in a much higher success rate compared to the earlier
S-75 Dvina and
S-125 Neva systems. While exact losses are disputed, around 40 aircraft are usually cited as lost to SAMs, and the 2K12 Kub proved the most effective of the three weapons. But in subsequent conflicts, its performance declined as captured examples resulted in effective counter-measures being developed.
1982 Lebanon war The Syrians also deployed the 2K12 Kub to Lebanon in 1981 after the Israelis shot down Syrian helicopters near
Zahlé. The SAM batteries were placed in the
Bekaa Valley near the
Beirut-
Damascus road. They remained close to the existing Syrian air defense system but could not be fully integrated into it. Early in the
1982 Lebanon war, the
Israeli Air Force concentrated on suppressing the SAM threat in the
Beqaa Valley, launching
Operation Mole Cricket 19. The result was a complete success. Several 2K12 Kub batteries, along with S-75s and S-125 systems, were destroyed in a single day. While Syria's own air defenses remained largely intact, its forces in Lebanon were left exposed to attacks by Israeli strike aircraft for the remainder of the war. It has been reported, however, that at least one Israeli
F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber was shot down in the area by a 2K12 Kub on July 24, 1982.
South African Border War The
People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) procured a number of 2K12 Kub systems from the Soviet Union in 1981. According to the
Central Intelligence Agency, Angola had obtained sixteen TEL launchers for the 2K12 Kub systems, which were deployed in the
Moçâmedes District. On 26 June 1988, six 3M9M3 missiles launched from a Cuban 2K12 Kub battery were fired at a South African weather balloon being used as a radar decoy over Tchipa.
Poland On 19 August 2003, a Polish Air Force Su-22M4K was accidentally shot down by friendly fire during an exercise by a Polish 2K12 Kub battery. The aircraft was flying from the coast over the Baltic Sea near
Ustka. The pilot, General
Andrzej Andrzejewski, ejected and was rescued after two hours in the water.
Libya The system was deployed by Libya during the border dispute with Chad and proved a threat
for French aircraft. On 16 February 1986, the system failed in detecting low flying French jets which were
attacking the Ouadi Doum airbase. On January 7, 1987, the French Air Force were successful in destroying a 2K12 Kub radar site in the
Faya Largeau area with
SEPECAT Jaguars armed with
Martel anti-radiation missiles. In March, the
Chadian rebels captured Ouadi Doum air base, seizing virtually all heavy equipment used for the defense of this airfield, intact. Most of this equipment was transported to France and the United States in the following days, but some 2K12 Kub systems remained in Chad. With this catastrophe, the
Libyan occupation of northern Chad – and the annexation of the
Aouzou Strip – was over: by 30 March, the bases at Faya Largeau and Aouzou had to be abandoned. The
LARAF now had a completely different task: its
Tu-22Bs were to attack the abandoned bases and destroy as much equipment left there as possible. The first strikes were flown in April, and they continued until 8 August 1987, when two Tu-22Bs tasked to strike Aouzou were ambushed by a captured 2K12 Kub battery used by the Chadian Army. One of the bombers was shot down. Libyan air defense, including 2K12 Kub batteries, was active during the
2011 military intervention in Libya.
Iraq Several 2K12 Kub batteries, along with other SAM systems and military equipment, were supplied to Iraq before and during the
Iran–Iraq War as part
of large military packages from the Soviet Union. The batteries were active since the start of the war in September 1980, scoring kills against U.S-supplied Iranian
F-4 Phantoms and
Northrop F-5s. The SA-6/Kub was also used during the
1991 Gulf War. The threat posed by these SAMs led to the US Navy outfitting the ALQ-167 Bullwinkle Jamming pod on their
F-14A/A+ Tomcats and
A-6E TRAM/SWIP Intruder aircraft. On the opening night of Desert Storm, on 17 January 1991, a
B-52G was damaged by a missile. Different versions of this engagement are told. It could have been an S-125 or a 2K12 Kub while other versions report a MiG-29 hit the bomber with a
R-27R missile. However, the U.S. Air Force disputes these claims, stating the bomber was actually hit by friendly fire, an
AGM-88 High-speed, Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) that homed on the fire-control radar of the B-52's tail gun; the jet was subsequently renamed ''In HARM's Way''. Shortly following this incident, General
George Lee Butler announced that the gunner position on B-52 crews would be eliminated, and the gun turrets permanently deactivated, commencing on 1 October 1991. On January 19, 1991, a
USAF F-16 (serial 87-228) was shot down by a 2K12 Kub during the massive (though ill-fated)
Package Q Strike against a heavily defended
Baghdad. It was the tenth coalition aircraft lost in combat in
Operation Desert Storm. The pilot, Captain Harry 'Mike' Roberts, ejected safely but was taken prisoner and freed in March 1991. The aircraft was on a mission to attack the Air Defense Headquarters Building. It had flown 4 combat missions before being lost. The 2K12 Kub threat was largely controlled by Allied EW assets together with the older S-75s and S-125 missile systems. Most of the losses were due to IR guided SAMs. Kubs continued to be used by the Iraqi military, along with other SAM systems, to challenge the
Western imposed no-fly zones during the 1990s and early 2000s. They were not able to shoot down any Coalition aircraft though several sites were destroyed as retaliation. In one incident, on September 11, 1996, during
Operation Provide Comfort II, one missile was fired against two USAF F-16 in northern Iraq but missed. On December 30, 1998, a 2K12 Kub site near Talil fired 6-8 missiles at aircraft enforcing the
Southern Watch component of the NFZ. American F-16s responded by dropping six
GBU-12 laser-guided bombs on the site and also launching two
HARMs "as a preemptive measure" to warn Iraqi radar operators against carrying out more firings.
Bosnia and Yugoslavia Army of Republika Srpska forces, using modified 2K12 Kub systems were successful in shooting down
Scott O'Grady's F-16 in 1995 One
Mi-17 was shot down by a Kub on May 28, 1995, killing the Bosniak Minister
Irfan Ljubijankić, and 6 other crew and passengers. During the
Kosovo War in 1999, on the first night of the war (March 24/25), a
Yugoslav Air Force MiG-29 flown by Maj. Predrag Milutinović was downed by a Kub battery in a friendly fire incident, while approaching
Niš Airport after an unsuccessful engagement with NATO aircraft. The Yugoslav Air Defence had 22 2K12 Kub batteries. Using
shoot and scoot tactics, the self-propelled ground system demonstrated a good survivability with only three radars lost in the face of nearly four-hundred
AGM-88 shots. As comparison the fixed S-75 and S-125 sites suffered losses to around 66 to 80 percent. According to the then-commander of Air force and air defense General
Spasoje Smiljanić, during the 78 day campaign, 2K12 Kub had 46 shooting with 70 missiles.
Syrian Civil War On April 14, 2018, American, British, and French forces
launched 103 air-to-surface and cruise missiles targeting sites in Syria. According to the Russian military, twenty-one Kub missiles launched in response allegedly destroyed eleven incoming missiles, However, the American Department of Defense claimed no Allied missiles were shot down.
Yemen Civil War South Yemen formerly operated these systems in the South Yemeni air defense forces. Later, United Yemen purchased a large number of these systems in the 1990s and they entered service with the Yemeni air defense forces in 1999. On 6 June 2019,
Houthi forces successfully shot down a USAF
MQ-9.
CENTCOM officials blamed the shoot down on a Houthi-operated and domestically made Fater-1 missile – a SAM system upgraded from a Soviet 2K12 Kub air defence system.
War in Ukraine Ukraine retired its Kub batteries in the early 2000s to focus on the more modern Buk systems, but with the outbreak of the
Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014, Ukraine's Aerotekhnika company begun repairing some of the 89 Kub units in storage and modernize them to the Kub M3/2D standard. According to Ukrainian media, two units were operational in 2021, while the Pentagon estimated that only one was operational prior to the Russian invasion in 2022. On 17 March 2023, the
Slovak government approved the transfer of two Kub missile launchers, one Kub radar, spare parts, 52 pieces of 3M9ME missiles and 148 pieces of 3M9M3E missiles to Ukraine. On 10 May 2023, the President of
Czech Republic,
Petr Pavel, has announced that his country will send two "2K12 Kub' missile systems to Ukraine with a "relatively large number" of missiles. On late August 2023, photos of Czech 2K12M2 Kub-M2 systems in Ukrainian service appeared on social media. ==Operators==