Land-based, surface-to-surface, short-range ballistic missiles, first designed by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. The Scud missile was first introduced to the Middle East battlefield prior to the Yom Kippur War (1973) by the Egyptians to deter Israeli combat aircraft strikes deep into Egyptian territory by threatening ballistic missile use against Israeli civilian population centers. However, the Scud played only a small part in the Yom Kippur War. In the late 1980s, Iraq developed two extended-range variants of the missile. During the first Persian Gulf War (1991), Iraq fired a total of 39 of these missiles into Israel, inflicting only limited physical damage but causing a great deal of psychological trauma among the Israeli population.
Historical Dictionary of Israel. Bernard Reich David H. Goldberg. Edited by Jon Woronoff..