SEVASTOPOL, September 23. /TASS/. The teams of the Black Sea Fleet’s Bastion mobile coastal defense missile systems delivered missile strikes against enemy warships during drills in the Black Sea, the Fleet’s press office reported on Thursday.
The drills were part of the Black Sea Fleet’s combat training measures amid the naval maneuvers of its Crimean and Novorossiysk naval bases running in the Black Sea, the press office specified.
"In the course of the drills, the combat squads of Bastion coastal anti-ship missile launchers practiced detecting and eliminating mock sea targets with anti-ship missile launches at the Opuk training ground in Crimea," the press office said in a statement.
"After getting the target acquisition data, the Black Sea Fleet’s Bastion teams assumed their positions, readied their launchers, and conducted missile launches against uncovered training targets. Two large shipborne target screens simulated the notional enemy’s warships in the drills," the statement says.
As a specific feature of the drills, the coastal defense troops employed unmanned aerial vehicles to track the hypothetical enemy’s naval taskforce with deck-based aircraft at distant approaches of their destruction range, the press office specified.
"In addition, the personnel carried out timed operations to relocate launchers to avoid an enemy strike, change, equip and camouflage both new and dummy launch sites, replenish the ammunition and conduct electronic missile launches," the statement says.
The Bastion coastal defense system with the standardized Yakhont (Oniks) supersonic homing anti-ship cruise missile is designated to strike various types of surface ships operating as part of amphibious assault formations, convoys, surface action and carrier strike groups, and also sole ships and radar-contrast land targets under intensive fire and electronic counter-measures.