BALASHIKHA (Moscow Region), December 22. /TASS/. Russia has created a full coverage radar system this year for the first time in its history, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at the ministry’s year-end board meeting attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"For the first time in Russia’s history, a full coverage radar system has been created around Russia," the defense chief said.

The commander of the Russian Aerospace Defense Force, Col. Gen. Alexander Golovko, earlier said that, for the first time in history of the Russian Federation’s armed forces, three advanced Voronezh-type radars of the early warning system entered combat duty simultaneously in the Krasnoyarsk, Altai and Orenburg Regions.

According to Golovko, after the launch of these radars a network of seven new-generation radars (four more are already on combat duty in the Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Irkutsk and Krasnodar Regions) will provide continuous monitoring of areas from which missiles can be fired.

Golovko reiterated that the Daryal radar in Pechora, the Dnepr radar in Murmansk and Kazakhstan and the Volga radar in Belarus also monitor areas from which missiles can be fired. However, the Daryal and Dnepr radars are aging, the general added, and new-generation radars are being built in the Komi and Murmansk Regions.

The early warning radar system is designed to get and provide data on missile launches and missile trajectories to state and military governance posts and warn about a missile attack. The system also provides data on space objects for space control. The system has two echelons: a ground echelon and a space-based echelon. The ground echelon consists of a radar network and is capable of detecting ballistic missile attacks from up to 6,000 kilometers. The space echelon consists of satellites capable of detecting ballistic missile launches from the territory of any state in a real-time mode.