The Soviet Union is secretly building plants for the launching of surface-to-air missiles by Egypt, according to a Cairo report in the Daily Express here today. The launching pads are reportedly being located, at the request of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in various strategic spots in Egypt, and one of these plants, at Aswan, in Upper Egypt, is “already operational.”
At the same time, the report stated, Nasser has ordered a crash program for the development of supersonic jet fighters with a speed of Mach-2, twice the speed of sound, capable of carrying air-to-air missiles against Israel. The Express report stated that, with these steps by Nasser, “the Middle East arms race is on in earnest,” the previous balance of arms in the region having turned into “a balance of terror.”
The newspaper’s correspondent stated he had learned in Cairo that work on four of the missile launching pads is “well advanced.” The pads, he stated, are to use the Russian SAM-2 missiles. These are the weapons that brought down Gary Powers, the American U-2 pilot whose downing in the Soviet Union caused a major United States-Soviet Union crisis. The same Russian weapons reportedly brought down other American fliers that penetrated the airways over Cuba.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
