KUBINKA /Moscow Region/, August 24. /TASS/. Russian-made radar Rezonans-NE, which Iran purchased to identify and track stealth aircraft and hypersonic targets, successfully spotted and tracked US F-35 fighters near the country’s borders during an aggravation of tensions at the beginning of 2020 following the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the deputy CEO of the research center Rezonans Alexander Stuchilin told TASS on Monday.

"At the beginning of 2020 this radar identified US F-35 planes and tracked them," he said on the sidelines of the international military-technical forum Army-2020.

Stuchilin said that he was referring to the "well-known events of the beginning of this year."

"The radar’s personnel were transmitting information, including the routes of F-35 flights, in clear, thus confirming that it was reliably tracking the planes. For this reason, the opponent did not commit any irreparable actions that might have caused a big war," Stuchilin said.

He remarked that the Rezonans-NE radar had been on round-the-clock combat duty in Iran for several years.

The situation in the Middle East aggravated sharply after the January 3 US overnight attack near Baghdad airport, which killed the commander of Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, General Qasem Soleimani. Tehran retaliated on January 8 with an overnight missile strike against two targets in Iraq that were being used by the US military: the Ain al-Assad base and Erbil airport.