Russia to launch ten missile attack warning satellites by 2020

MOSCOW, December 20. /TASS/. Russia’s Aerospace Force plans to commission about ten new satellites and build five radars to upgrade the missile attack warning system by 2020, the Aerospace Force’s first deputy commander, Pavel Kurachenko, said on Tuesday.

"Within the framework of efforts to upgrade the missile attack warning system five high factory readiness radars Voronezh are to be built and some ten satellites of the integrated space system of missile launch identification and combat control will be put in orbit," he said.

Under the government program for armaments extending till 2020 the missile attack warning system is to be completely upgraded. The outgoing Dnepr and Daryal radars will be replaced by high factory readiness stations Voronezh.

As the deputy commander of Russia’s Aerospace Force for testing, Andrey Ivashin, said late last November, Voronezh radars are currently on duty in the Leningrad, Kaliningrad and Irkutsk regions and also in the Krasnodar Territory. More radars in the Krasnoyarsk and Altai territories and the Orenburg Region are almost through government certification tests. By the end of 2019 Voronezh radars will emerge near Murmansk and Vorkuta. 

Integration of all air and space defense systems

Russia’s western region will be the first to see the integration of all air and space defense systems into one whole, which is to happen by the year 2021, the first deputy chief of Russia’s Aerospace Force:

"By 2021 the research and development project codenamed Selection is to bring about a pilot unit incorporating all means and facilities capable of coping with aerospace defense tasks - current and future ones - within the boundaries of the western region."

The chief of Russia’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, disclosed plans for pooling the air and space resources into an integral aerospace system by 2030.