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No matter how well a woman lives, sooner or later she ends up marrying someone like me. Just when she stops buying toys for the children, she starts buying toys for her husband. So today I received a present from my beloved wife.

From here on, unless stated otherwise or completely obvious, all abbreviations are written in Cyrillic in the original text.

I already have one “FROG”; I have even started building it. But yesterday Nadya decided to give me a “little tank” as a present (just so I would have one), and I had about 20 minutes to choose something. I hesitated for a while over a 2K11A Krug (SA-4 Ganef) system, which would go rather nicely with the P-40 radar, but in the end I decided that this month I wanted to “upgrade” my “Luna” to the “Luna-M” version. That version proved considerably more successful and remained in service much longer — long enough that it is still in service in some countries.

The system was also in service with the Bulgarian Army, but it has long since been “retired” and replaced by the OTR-21 — 9K79 Tochka / 9K79-1 Tochka-U (SS-21 Scarab according to the NATO designation).

The model consists of a 9P113 TEL (transporter-erector-launcher), based on the ZiL-135, and a 9M21 missile. Unfortunately, it is not clear exactly which missile variant is included — 9M21B (nuclear), 9M21E (cluster), 9M21F (high-explosive fragmentation), or 9M21Kh (chemical). Or perhaps I simply cannot tell them apart — I will have to do some additional research into the differences between these missiles and whether there are any external differences at all.

Eight paint schemes and decal options are provided, but unfortunately none of them represent those used by the Bulgarian Army. More research will be needed again…

The “evolution” of the kits is interesting as well. Although the FROG-5 was released around the end of 2018, it consists of about 570 parts and includes one photo-etched fret. The FROG-7 was released a little more than two years earlier, yet it consists of about 900 parts and includes three photo-etched frets. And yes — the difference in box size is quite noticeable.