Starting in the early 1960s, when the post-war baby boom generation was nearing its conscription age, the Paris peace treaty of 1947 between Finland, the Allies and Soviet Union was modified. This made it possible to temporary increase the size of the armed forces to over 100 000 people, in order to train the big age cohorts of 1945-1950 in the military sevice. In addition of allowing this, the Soviet Union and the other Allies, mostly serving as a rubber stamp, allowed Finland to have defensive missiles. Only issue in the revision of treaty was with Canada, who stubbornly refused to modify the peace treaties all the way until London informed them it would be wise to allow this revision for Finland. After the revisions, Finland bought Anti-Tank and Anti-Ship missiles from France and the USSR.

Anti-Aircraft branch was still left without any missiles, and this was thought of as a serious flaw in air defence. In 1966, Great Britain was considering the phasing out of Thunderbird missile batteries, and was looking for a customer to sell the missiles to. Mutual visits and negotiations were held by London and Helsinki, and training material was purchased to Finland starting from 1967. The purchase of the live missiles how ever fell through, as Finnish government acted too slow in the opinion of London, and more eager and active Saudi Arabia purchased the missiles from stocks. Depending on the sources, it is difficult to say was this slow pace because of political issues with president Urho Kekkonen, the Government and the generals of the armed forces, or some political back-stabbing involving favouritism to Soviet weapons industry. It still took a decade before Finland received its first Anti-Aircraft missiles. Already in 1971 the Air defence committee left a note for the government, that national defence requires AA missiles. The military and technical specialists in the country were left uneasy for the lack of any missile technology in air defence.

In the early mid 1970s, the purchase of AA missiles again rose to the spotlight in defence issues. The Air defence committee of 1973 left another note to the chiefs of staff and the president. At the same time the doctrine of potential world war 3 had slided away from massive atomic bombardment with strategic bombers, to the more mobile and quick paced missile war doctrine, using ICBMs and Submarines as main systems. Despite this, the Finnish Defence Forces still requested missiles for AA use, as ground attack planes and fighters were considered more of a bigger threat. Also, still in the nuclear readiness plans of superpowers, the bomber fleets were to be used in the conventional bombardment and 2nd and 3rd wave of nuclear attacks, if these were to be violating Finnish air space or attack the nation, they could be shot down with AA missiles just like a normal bomber. If the future war would happen, there was a gaping hole in long range AA missiles over Finnish air space. Finns found it uneasy, because obviously Soviet Union would use their own weapons in Finnish airspace if the country lacked her own ones. It his highly probable, that the Soviets in Kremlin were also feeling uneasy by the thousand mile border with no missile air defence at all. This would be of use in the weapons purchasing negotiations later.

When Finland issued a request for AA missiles for the next time in the mid 1970s, the US manufacturers were highly suspicious. The most modern weaponry was not available to the Finns, as the manufacturers themselves and the intelligence services were worried that the systems would be copied by Soviet Union. Finland had just recenlty bought Soviet equipment worth of hundreds of millions of dollars to its armed forces, including missile boats, jet fighters, tanks and infantry weapons. The French and the British had no functional modern systems to present for Finnish defence forces, though France was adamant that by the end of the decade, a new missile system would be fielded, and offered PR material about it (The updated version from the late 1980s became the Crotale, ItO-90, in Finnish service two decades later). More longer range missiles were not really available form western manufacturers, due to security concerns. According to the Finnish technical experts, who had intelligence materials and reports from Yom Kippur War, Vietnam war and even from the UN peace keepers stationed in Lebanon, the Soviet Strela 2 (SA-7) was more superior Man Portable Air Defence System (MANPADS) than the FIM-43 Redeye offered by the USA.

The Finnish president Urho Kekkonen gave a permission to purchase suitable missiles from Soviets in 1974, and the process was started. A trade delegation was sent to the Soviet Union and it went to familiarize itself with various AA missiles both long and short range. The delegation could see the bases and live firings of S-75 (SA-2), S-125 Pechora (SA-3), Kub (SA-6), and Strela 2 (SA-7) systems. From earlier negotiations and reports from Vietnamese war, it was known that S-75 was a very capable system, but its mobility was considered awful, and the price tag even more worse. Only system better than the S-75 was the S-125, but it was even more expensive to purchase. The shoulder fired Strela-2 was deemed to be the best MANPADS both on paper and in action, of the models available to Finland.

In 1976 an official decision was finally made to purchase a missile system from Soviet Union. The expensive deal was made possible by money allotted from the bilateral trade deals with USSR. As a western economy and consumer society, Soviet products other than raw materials, electricity and military technology were often hard to utilize in the bilateral trade system. Another peculiarity was that already since the early 1970s, the documents of Air defence committee and Defence Forces used NATO code names for Soviet missiles. Only after the systems were bought and fielded by the Defence Forces, were they referred to by Soviet or Finnish names. In the beginning, only some hundred Strela 2 (SA-7) missiles, a simulator system and a single battery of S-125 Pechora (SA-3) missile system was to be purchased. In 1978 even more money was allotted to the missile deal with Soviets and the numbers rose to thousands of Strelas and three batteries of S-125 respectively. When these expensive weapons could be offered to Finnish Defence Forces with such low rates compared to free markets, it sealed the deal. On the other hand, the US intelligence agencies and weapons companies had even more reason to consider Finland as a member of the Soviet bloc, and less neutral than before, which had an impact on the future acquisitions in the 1980s.

Missile training was started one year after the acquirement decision in 1977 at the Helsinki AA regiment in Hyrylä, when a group of hand picked men were pre-trained in Finland and then sent to the Soviet Union for Strela (SA-7) and Pechora (SA-3) training in 1978 and 1979, respectively. The first Strela 2 (SA-7) missiles were delivered to Finland in 1978. The long silence between 1976 decision to buy S-125 (SA-3) and 1978 made some doubts rise. Was the high altitude, more heavier system cancelled outright? In secret from many others, the men selected to the S-125 (SA-3) training were still educated in Odessa, Ukrainian SSR and other places. In february of 1979 some negotiations were still held with Soviets about additional systems of the S-125 (SA-3), like radar models and the amount and type of missiles. The Finnish delegation had wished to purchase the most modern missile type introduced in 1975, instead of the more available 1969 model. The Soviets took a note of this, but left the issue on the table “for the time being,” as in the communist state, last minute changes to production quotas and industry schedules was a gargantuan and slow bureaucratic process. The last missile training group was to return home from Finland on December 5^th 1979. The first S-125 (SA-3) systems would be delivered shortly after this. The equipment would be transported by train from Leningrad to a station near Hyrylä, where the Anti Aircraft Regiment was housed. As soon as the equipment would arrive, domestic training for mechanics and missile operators would begin in Hyrylä garrison, and increased in scale and depth as more equipment would arrive during 1980.

The official notification about this missile system delivery got lost somewhere to Soviet or Finnish government, and a rather comedic episode followed. A massive freight train destined to Järvenpää crossed the Finnish border in Parikkala some days after independence day (6th of December)  on the 10^th of December, and the stationmaster just informed the police and border guard about the fact. Frantic phone calls here and there were made by police chief and border guards to the Defence Forces headquarters and Defence ministry. The train chugged slowly to Järvenpää station, where it stopped on December 11^th 1979. Järvenpää stationmaster called the closest army unit, which was the Hyrylä Anti Aircraft Regiment in Tuusula, and the missiles and launchers found their way home, in a hurried but orderly fashion. Some 20 Soviet specialists were with the train to unload the equipment and train local mechanics and interpreters about the system and its peculiarities. The last batches of equipment arrived from the USSR in January 1980, and included some of the radars for the system. By the late December of 1979,  the system had been catalogued and stored in Hyrylä, so it received the Finnish nomenclature ItO-79, or Ilmatorjuntaohjus 79, instead of the NATO code name SA-3 or Soviet name S-125 Pechora in Finnish service. Unofficially it was still referred to by the name Pechora, and by some individuals as SA-3 until the end of its service life. A minor positive surprise for Finns was that the missiles delivered with the system were of the most modern, 1975 model, as was requested from the Soviets. This made Finland the 3^rd country in the world to operate the most modern S-125 (SA-3) missile variant after the USSR and GDR armed forces. Later in the 1980s, some Warsaw Pact countries also received them.

The S-125 (SA-3) missiles were used in the air defence of Helsinki region and in high altitude AA defence until the year 2000. Many modifications were made to the system in Finland. At the initial phase in 1980 the vehicles were modified to road safe western standards with proper headlights and electric systems. The radars received some domestic and western upgrades such as the generators, wiring and other electronic equipment, which lowered the noise level and electric shock hazards inside the radars to western health and safety regulation standards. All kinds of curiosities were delivered with the missile system, including table lamps and vacuum cleaners, which were naturally changed to western models. The S-125 (SA-3) system was upgraded and renovated many times, in 1984-1985, and in 1990-1991. The last major overhaul was in 1994, and it was made by mechanics hired from recently independent Russia. Many overhauls and upgrades were made with former GDR spare parts and equipment bought in 1990. The GDR stocks and the cheap Russian overhaul deal in 1994 made the systems life span to reach the end of the millenium.

The radars of the S-125 (SA-3) system were peculiar in the way that they operated on the VHF and UHF range, commonly used by radio and analog TV in many countries. The P-15 radar had two antennas, which could operate with overlapping fields, which eliminated a lot of gaps from the radar picture and made a more accurate radar spotting possible. The P-18 radars’ broadcast range was very high compared to many other systems, and it surprised many who operated it. During winter, when turned on all ice and snow from the antenna vaporized in seconds. It has also been told that when the radars were tested at higher power in the Hyrylä garrison for repairs and adjustment, many angry letters and phone calls filled the garrison duty officers desk and answering machine. People living in Tuusula and Kerava began to complain how their TV reception went bad and they missed important sports competitions and the famous American soap opera Dallas (1978-1991) due to signal interference. More quick witted and technically oriented sports fans and husbands and fathers of annoyed Dallas fans had counted 1+1 and correctly guessed it was because of the radars in the AA garrison. This caused a schedule change in radar operations, meaning that testing and maintenance with high power was done when Dallas or important sports events were not on TV. It has also been told that when the radars were fine tuned at the mechanical workshop in the 1980s, the unplugged TVs and VHS players went on and displayed static and other psychedelic electronic visions every time the radar spun towards the barracks or the AA school buildings located near the workshop. There were also issues with signal roaming and leaking, which disrupted radio and TV broadcasts even during more quiet times, as the radar signal leaked to other frequencies and messed with original signals and broadcasts.

The very same model of S-125 (SA-3) system, as the one in this museum got some publicity worldwide on the 27^th of March 1999, when it was successfully used to shoot down a USAF stealth jet, F-117A Nighthawk. The US planes had flown many sorties over the skies of Serbia during the Kosovo war. Overconfident and perhaps lazy, the US jets always used the same flight lines, not deviating as much from their routes as other western allied jets. The timetable, aircraft types and missions were the same from one day to the other. This made the Serbians to gain the upper hand: They used the P-18 radar of their S-125 (SA-3) system to detect even the tiniest discrepancies. The radar crew was successful during the 3rd attempt to target the stealth jets. On the third run as the F-117 Nighthawk stealth planes attacked, one of them, according to some sources, forgot their bomb bay door open. This is controversial, as the automatic systems on the plane should have closed the bomb bay doors. According to some sources, the P-18 radar caught the Nighthawk fighter-bomber with bomb bay doors closed, and could pick the plane despite its stealthy design. The plane, however shone in the radar screen of the P-18 like a christmas tree, and a missile could be locked to this target. This oversight about the capabilities of the P-18 radar turned into an expensive failure for USAF, as the F-117A was shot down.

The S-125 (SA-3) system is in use in many countries to this day. In Russia, it is still used as a target drone for AA missile crews, as thousands of missiles were left to storages all over the country when the system was dismantled in the 1990s. Modernized versions of the system are currently produced by Ukraine, North Korea and Vietnam. Ukraine has used the system in the war which began in 2022, and the missiles are either in low rate production or purchased from a 3^rd party occasionally. The most modern Ukrainian model is still guided to target by operators like the original version, but instead of 1-2 targets, the missile system can target four different targets individually. The specifications of the North Korean and Vietnamese models is not completely clear. The older or the modernized systems are used by: India, Egypt, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Poland, North Korea, Serbia, Syria, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Bulgaria and Zambia.

The P-15 and P-18 radars delivered to Finland with the equipment were phased out at the same time in 2000, and finally dismantled in 2003-2004. In many other countries, especially the P-18 Spoon Rest radars are used as an independent system. Upgrades have been made by Romanian, Russian, Czech and Vietnamese private and state enterprises. For a while between 2000 and 2004, the upgrade of P-18 radars was considered in Finland, but in the end more modern equipment was purchased, and the cost overruns were considered too great of a risk for such an ancient piece of electronic equipment. Nevertheless, the radars were kept on standby for some years after the abandonment of the S-125 (SA-3) missile system.

Sources: Ilmatorjunta 1925-1960 Ilmatorjuntaupseeriyhdistys ry 1963, Yön yli päivään – Suomen Ilmatorjunta 1925-1990 Ilmatorjuntaupseeriyhdistys Ry Helsinki 1989, Lappi Ahti Ilmatorjuntaohjukset Suomen puolustuksessa Ilmatorjuntasäätiö 2009, Mitzer Stijn,Oliemans Joost The Armed Forces of North Korea – On the path of Songun Helion&Company Warwick UK 2020, Phone conversations with Lt. Col. (ret) Keijo Tossavainen, an expert and SA-3 chief officer.