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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 69-7-103
TITLE:             How Could Matthias Rust Get to Moscow?
BY:                Douglas Clarke
DATE:              1987-6-2
COUNTRY:           Soviet Union
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  RAD Background Report/87

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RADIO FREE EUROPE Research

RAD Background Report/87
(East-West Relations)
2 June 1987

HOW COULD MATTHIAS RUST GET TO MOSCOW?

by Douglas Clarke

Summary: In both the East and the West, people
are asking how it could have been possible for a
young West German student pilot, Matthias Rust,
to fly a light aircraft unhindered through the
vaunted Soviet air defenses. This dramatic
incident has caused the dismissal of the head of
the Soviet Air Defense Forces and the forced
retirement of the Soviet Minister of Defense
Soviet embarrassment over Rust's choice of a
landing spot--in Moscow's Red Square--might have
been a factor in the severity of the official
reaction. Modern air defense systems are not
particularly suited for dealing with planes like
Rust's Cessna 172.

* * *

At a ceremonial meeting in Moscow on May 27, Soviet Major
General N. V. Britvin, Chief of the Political Directorate of the
KGB Border Guards, said that the Soviet people "could rest easy
with regard to the sacred borders of their country."[1] General
Britvin's proud words might have seemed a little bit less
reassuring the next day, when a 19-year-old West German student
pilot landed his light aircraft in Moscow's Red Square after an
apparently unhindered illegal flight across one of these borders
and then some 700 kilometers of Soviet territory.

The immediate question being asked throughout the world was
how could this young aviator, Matthias Rust, penetrate the most
heavily defended air space in the world without being shot down
or at least forced to land? According to the Pentagon's report
Soviet Military Power, the Soviet Union has roughly 14,000
antiaircraft missiles, some 10,000 air defense radars, and more
than 4,000 interceptor fighters, plus innumerable antiaircraft
guns.

This material was prepared for the use of the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

[page 2]

RAD BR/87

The Soviet Reaction. The CPSU Politburo attributed the
occurrence to "intolerable unconcern and indecision" as well as
"negligence, a lack of organization . . , a lack of due
vigilance and discipline, and major dereliction of duty" on the
part of those responsible for defending Soviet airspace.[2] With
these damning words, on May 30 the Politburo dismissed Chief
Marshal of Aviation Aleksandr Koldunov as Commander-In-Chief of
the Air Defense Forces and Deputy Minister of Defense. In the
Soviet military structure, the Air Defense Forces are a separate
branch of the armed forces operating the air defense radars and
the bulk of the defensive jet fighters as well as manning most
of the antiaircraft missiles. They also operate the ring of
antiballistic missile rockets surrounding Moscow.

In a separate but obviously related move, the Politburo
announced the retirement of the Soviet Minister of Defense,
Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Sokolov.

Matthias Rust's Flight. The flight that precipitated these
harsh dismissals had begun in Helsinki, Finland, around noon on
Thursday, May 28, Young Rust, piloting an American-made Cessna
172 single-engine aircraft, told Finnish air authorities that he
was headed for Stockholm, Sweden. (The Cessna-172 ia a small,
four-seater civilian sports plane. Rust had removed three of
the seats to fit additional fuel tanks. The plane is 8 meters
long, has a wing span of 11 meters, and weighs some 700
kilograms without passengers or fuel. More than 35,000 of this
popular model have been produced.) Soon after takeoff, the plane
was observed turning to the south; it then disappeared from the
Finnish radar scopes. Fearing an accident, the Finns started a
search, only to abandon it when they learned of Rust's dramatic
landing in Moscow.

According to TASS, the German flyer crossed the Soviet
coastline near the Estonian city of Kohtla-Jarve, some 160
kilometers west of Leningrad. Soviet air defense was presumably
alerted to his approach, as TASS reported that the small plane
had been circled twice by Soviet fighters. Rust himself is
reported to have told some of the astounded bystanders in Red
Square after his landing that he had been intercepted by
fighters as he crossed the frontier, but that they had then left
him alone.[3]

So far as is known now, he was next seen circling the
Kremlin at around 6:00 P.M. He then landed on Red Square
itself, coming within a few meters of the Lenin Mausoleum.
Obviously not alerted to any threat--even though aircraft are
prohibited from flying over the center of Moscow--the KGB
Kremlin Guards apparently let Rust sign autographs and chat with
bystanders for quite some time before he was apprehended.

How Could This Happen? As impressive as the Soviet air
defenses might be, they are not geared to dealing with light

[page 3]

RAD BR/87

sports aircraft.  Rust was probably flying too low and too
slowly for the jet interceptors and most radars to handle.

The Soviets claim that the system worked in one respect:
the small aircraft was supposedly detected on Soviet radars as
it approached the Estonian coast over the Baltic Sea, and
fighters are said to have been sent to investigate. It is then
that the problems are likely to have begun. The small aircraft
was probably cruising along at less than 175 kilometers per hour
and could have been at tree-top level. The speed capabilities
of Soviet interceptors are measured in multiples of the speed of
sound. The only time they slow down to the Cessna's speed is
when they are landing. At low altitudes, jet engines use an
enormous amount of fuel. Depending on how long they had been
aloft, the two Soviet fighters that allegedly intercepted Rust
might have been able to stay near him for only a matter of
minutes before running low on fuel.

It is unlikely that Rust and the Soviet fighters would have
shared a common radio frequency, or perhaps even a common
language, although English is supposed to be the lingua franca
of aviation. Thus, if they had wished the young German to
change course or to land at some airfield in Estonia, the
fighter pilots would have had to signal their instructions to
him visually. They would not be able to do this by flying
alongside him, as the faster jets would be in danger of falling
out of the sky at his slow speed. Rust, whose light Cessna
would be much more maneuverable than the faster jets, could have
made it very difficult for the fighters to get near him.

As for shooting him down, the Soviet pilots would probably
have lacked either the authority or the motivation. Clearly,
the intruder was not an immediate threat--it was not a cruise
missile, nor could it be mistaken for an American spy plane, as
had the South Korean 747 shot down over the Soviet Far East in
1983. In that earlier incident, clearance to fire reportedly
came directly from Moscow after the aircraft had been in and out
of Soviet airspace for some two hours.

Once Rust was over land and the fighters had apparently
departed, whether because of low fuel or indifference, he would
have been lost to the Soviet air defense system had he been
flying at a very low altitude. While radars could detect his
small plane over water, which is flat and without any
obstructions, similar radars could not follow him over land.
His aircraft would have been either below the beams of the
land-based radars or its radar reflection would have been lost
in what radar technicians term "ground clutter"--the returns
caused by trees, hills, and houses. It is this phenomenon that
makes the low flying cruise-missiles such a threat.

To counter this threat, the Soviet Union has developed, as
has the United States, large radar aircraft. The Soviet version
is known in the West as the Mainstay. Flying at high altitudes,

[page 4]

RAD BR/87

its radar looks down at the ground and can detect low flying
targets that would be masked from ground-based radars by hills
and trees. Yet the problem of ground clutter remains; and to
combat it, the airborne radars are electronically adjusted to
ignore stationary or very slow targets. Otherwise, in a
conflict, defending fighters would be chasing cars and trains
rather than cruise missiles and low-flying enemy bombers.
Details of how and where the Soviets operate their Mainstay
radar aircraft are closely guarded Soviet secrets. They
probably patrol the borders between Warsaw Pact and NATO
countries and not the interior of the Soviet Union; and even if
a Mainstay had been aloft over Estonia, it might not have been
able to follow Rust's small plane.

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back. On the face of it,
then, it looks as though Marshals Sokolov and Koldunov might
plausibly be excused from culpable negligence in this affair.
Yet Matthias Rust's bold choice for a landing spot--the
innermost sanctum of Soviet power--has propelled the incident
onto front pages throughout the world, to the obvious
embarrassment of the Soviet leadership. The young German's feat
has captured the imagination of romantics in both the East and
West. Press interviews with Soviet witnesses to his landing
cite one Moscow resident as saying that Rust should be given a
medal, while another is said to have described the event as
hooliganism, but "beautiful hooliganism."[4]

Reacting decisively to this affront, Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev has apparently decided to use the incident as a
pretext for introducing military leaders who will push his
program for "restructuring" [perestroika] with more vigor. More
heads may yet roll. The Air Defense Forces remain particularly
vulnerable. Rust's bold intrusion came only a few days after a
Soviet citizen had stolen a light aircraft and flown it to
Sweden, where he defected. The Air Defense Forces, along with
the Border Guards, are responsible for keeping watch over what
goes out as well as what comes in. At a meeting this March of
party activists in the Ministry of Defense who deal with
restructuring the armed forces, the Air Defense Forces were
criticized for quite a few instances of "oversimplification and
lax organization of combat training."[5] In the Soviet
leadership's eyes, Rust's exploit dramatically underlined these
shortcomings.

As for Matthias Rust, he will undoubtedly be treated as a
national hero by many when he eventually returns to West
Germany. The heavy fee that he will be charged for the return
of his rented Cessna 172 to its owners will most probably be
paid by others. It is rumored that he has lost all chances of
becoming a professional pilot, which would unquestionably be a
heavy blow to this young lad, who reportedly dreams of nothing
else. He will have to find solace in the fact that he helped to

[page 5]

RAD BR/87

bring about the downfall of two of the top military leaders of
one of the superpowers--no mean feat for a nineteen-year-old.

(1) Krasnaya Zvezda, 29 May 1987.

(2) TASS (Moscow), 30 May 1987.

(3) AP (Moscow), 30 May 1987.

(4) Washington Post, 30 May 1987.

(5) Krasnaya Zvezda, 18 March 1987.

-end-

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