MOSCOW, September 03./ITAR-TASS/. Russia's strategic missile troops will be employed in large-scale command-staff exercises to be conducted jointly with the Barnaul-based missile troops unit in September under command of strategic missile troops' Commander Colonel-General Sergei Karakayev, a spokesman for the defense ministry's department in charge of the strategic missile troops told Tass on Wednesday.

"The aim of the exercises is to practice operations to rebuff subversive activities and attacks made by a presumed enemy with the use of high-precision weapons and fulfill combat tasks despite the enemy’s strong radio-electronic resistance and active operations the enemy conducts in the area where the strategic troops are deployed,” the spokesman, Major Dmitry Andreyev, specified.

"It is the first time that an extensive use of the Air Force, including supersonic jets Mig-31, has been planned in the exercises of that kind," the spokesman said. Combat planes SU-24 MP will be used for air reconnaissance operations, he added.