MOSCOW, December 5. /TASS/. Russian Defense Ministry will begin trials of full-track vehicles and other combat vehicles that will last several weeks in the Arctic region, Deputy Defense Minister General Dmitry Bulgakov told reporters on Friday.
More than 20 military hardware models, including army snowmobiles, extra-low-pressure tyre vehicles, two-section crawler-transporters, combat reconnaissance vehicles Rys and anti-sabotage combat vehicles Typhoon will be tested in an Arctic area stretching for more than 2.1 thousand kilometers, Bulgakov said.
“The Defense Ministry’s expedition set out from Moscow region’s Bronnitsy to the Polar region to check and evaluate modern and promising models of full-track vehicles and other combat vehicles in a real Arctic climate,” Bulgakov said, noting settlement Pechenga in northern Russia’s Murmansk region was a destination of the expedition. Trials will be taken during a three-day autonomous march on the Rybachiy Peninsula in northern Kola Peninsula with special tests.
Russian Defense Ministry has set up a northern united strategic command in the Arctic region in December. This command comprises military units and warships re-subordinated from western, central and southern Russia. Army groupings were already created on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island and the Schmidt Cape. “Military forces were assembled in a united tactical grouping equipped with modern weapons, including coastal missile systems Rubezh and air defense missile gun system Pantsir-S1,” a source in the Defense Ministry told TASS.
Russia is building 13 airfields, one aviation firing range and ten radar positions and air direction centers in the Arctic region, chief of Russian national defense command centre Lieutenant General Mikhail Mizintsev said earlier.