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Military drills

Russia's Eastern Military District air defense drills involve more than 3,000 troops

At the final stage of the field exercise, the air defense units of the district will have a series of tactical live firing drills

© ITAR-TASS/Dmitry Rogulin

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VLADIVOSTOK, July 13. /TASS/. A large-scale field exercise of the air defense units of Russia’s Eastern Military District has started in the Khabarovsk, Primorsky, Trans-Baikal, Kamchatka Territories, in the Republic of Buryatia, in the Amur, Sakhalin and Jewish Autonomous regions on Wednesday. The drills involve more than 3,000 troops and 500 units of equipment, the district spokesman Colonel Alexander Gordeyev told TASS on Wednesday.

"More than 3,000 servicemen and about 500 units of military and special equipment will be used in the complex tactical drills at 10 ranges of the district. During the field exercise, the troops will practice putting battlefield air defense units on a hair-trigger alert, marching to ranges, repelling attacks of the imaginary enemy’s sabotage-reconnaissance groups, as well as passing through a contaminated terrain," Gordeyev said.

The personnel of the military district’s air defense units will also drill bringing combat vehicles into firing position, as well as practice airborne targets’ search, detection, identification and tracking.

At the final stage of the field exercise, the air defense units of the district will have a series of tactical live firing drills, during which the crews of the Igla short-range man-portable air defense system, Tunguska surface-to-air and anti-tank missile system and ZSU-23-4 Shilka self-propelled, radar guided anti-aircraft weapon system will destroy aerial targets.

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