It is one of several Soviet missiles to carry the reporting name Scud; the most prolifically launched of the series, with a production run estimated at 7,000 (1960–1987).

The first mock-up was designed and built by Makeyev in 1958–1959, before the programme was transferred to the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant in 1959 for mass production.

[11] The Soviet Union made little effort to export Scud-B systems outside of the Warsaw Pact, since it was complex, expensive, and not military effective without a nuclear warhead, but several Middle Eastern countries showed interest in obtaining some systems, partly for propaganda purposes, giving their militaries a veneer of modernity and partly for the possibility of carrying deep strikes inside Israel, since their air forces proved to be incapable of conducting ground attack missions when faced against the better-trained Israeli Air Force.

[13] Faced with the Soviets refusal to supply R-17 missiles, the North Koreans set up a rogue production line with Egyptian assistance, locally producing it as the Hwasong-5.

[18] The new MAZ-543 vehicle was officially designated 9P117 Uragan, and its Russian crews nicknamed it Kashalot (sperm whale), because of its size.

The missile is raised to a vertical position by means of hydraulically powered cranes, which usually takes four minutes, while the total sequence lasts about one hour.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s some Scud brigades assigned to the border with NATO had an additional battery included per battalion, increasing the total number of launchers to 18.

They were used against the Afghan mujahideen ammunition dumps near the Pakistan border and during the successful defense of Jalalabad, where 438 Scuds were launched in total.

As the Soviets concluded their withdrawal and the country descended into protracted civil war, the number of Scud launches declined.

The Taliban managed to capture part of the surviving stockpile during the fighting in the late 1990s, but due the poor state of the equipment and lack of trained personnel, only five missiles were fired after the summer of 1996.

[25] During the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Armenians reportedly fired Scud and Tochka missiles on the city of Ganja, Azerbaijan.

They also noted that both Armenia and Azerbaijan could hit most targets in the region with long-range rocket artillery, limiting the tactical value of using expensive ballistic missiles.

The Israel Defense Forces were unaware of the missile attack until they discovered the impact craters in the desert days later.

As a result, Egypt decided to refurbish and improve its inventory of Scud missiles with North Korean assistance during the 1990s.

[28] In 12 March, 1985 the first Iranian Scud was launched by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Khatam al-Anbiya Missile Unit against Kirkuk.

They were less successful at manufacturing Scud copies, due the difficulty in producing some of the more complex components such as engine turbo-pumps and guidance gyroscopes.

Iraqi engineers also worked on locally building TELs (based on commercial trucks) and some static launchers (to be used against Israel).

A problem faced by the Patriot was the Al Husayn poor design: due the stretched fuselage, the missile became unstable upon descent, disintegrating upon atmospheric re-entry, forcing Patriots to choose which trail of debris to intercept, with critics pointing out that 1.8 tons of missile debris hitting the ground at high speed could still cause significant damage regardless of whether the Scud warhead detonated.

Regardless of the controversy, Zaloga argues that the use of Patriots did serve the political purpose of restraining the Israeli response to the Iraqi missile strikes which could have severely affected the cohesion of the Coalition.

[39] On 14 August 2011 a confirmed R-17 launch was detected by a US Aegis destroyer, with the missile fired from Sirte and heading toward rebel positions in Ajdabiya.