KALININGRAD, May 24 (RIA Novosti) – Construction of Russia’s two new antimissile radars – one in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad and the other in Siberia’s Irkutsk region – should be complete by the end of next year, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday.
The minister, who was visiting the Voronezh-DM-class radar station near Kaliningrad, said that on May 12 President Vladimir Putin had stressed the importance of building an integrated radar field for the Missile Attack Early Warning System [MAEWS].
“The state arms procurement program envisions the creation of a continuous MAEWS radar field before 2018,” Shoigu said.
According to the Aerospace Defense Forces press service, the MAEWS radar in Kaliningrad – Russia’s westernmost point – will monitor the space from the North Atlantic to North Africa, providing information on any ballistic missile launches in its area of responsibility. The radar has an effective range of up to 6,000 km.
Voronezh-DM class radars can be more quickly deployed to a new site and require a smaller crew to operate them compared to previous generation stations.
Russia’s other two Voronezh-class radars are located at Lekhtusi outside St. Petersburg and Armavir near Krasnodar.
The Armavir radar monitors an area from France and Spain in the west, to Algeria in the southwest, Sudan in the south, and Iran, Afghanistan and parts of India and Pakistan in the southeast, according to the Russian military.
