Modernization of the Russian strategic missile defense system has been completed
Hundreds of billions of operations per second, an updated radar control station, and a new missile. In Russia, the modernization of the missile defense system of the Central Industrial District has been completed. From Sofrin near Moscow, a fully automatic system, which includes the Don-2N radar, 53T6 interceptor missiles according to the Western Gazelle classification, will protect the sky over Moscow and 12 adjacent European regions of the country from a possible missile strike.
The commander of the anti-missile defense unit of the Aerospace Forces, Major General Sergei Grabchuk, said that this year in Moscow, work was completed on the installation of an upgraded command and computing center of the city's anti-missile defense system. "As a result of the replacement of the current Elbrus-2 computing system with Elbrus-90S, an increase in performance has been achieved to almost hundreds of billions of operations per second. The power consumption will be significantly reduced-by 40 times. The area of equipment placement will be reduced by four times, " Grabchuk said.
In addition, according to him, the modernization of the transmitting and receiving parts of the Don-2N radar station has been completed. This radar is considered the central and most complex element of the missile defense system. It solves the problems of detecting ballistic targets, tracking them, selecting them, measuring coordinates and pointing anti-missiles at them against the background of a real space situation.
Currently, the country's missile defense system consists of three elements. The first one is cosmic. These are satellites that detect the launch of ballistic missiles. According to the website "Strategic Nuclear Weapons of Russia", in November 2015, the Aerospace Forces launched the first satellite of the new-generation missile warning system "Kosmos-2510". The second spacecraft of the system, Kosmos-2518, was put into orbit in May 2017, and the third, Kosmos-2541, in September 2019. According to the VKS command, in this composition, the system provides constant monitoring of the areas of possible launches of ballistic missiles. Although, according to experts, to do this, the grouping must be brought to at least 10 devices.
The second tier of defense is ground – based. It includes the Voronezh missile attack early warning stations. They stand around the entire perimeter of the country. The first one was built in 2008 in the village of Lekhtusi near St. Petersburg. As a result, it became possible to see everything that is happening in the air and space from the coast of Morocco to Svalbard, and at a distance-to the east coast of the United States. In 2009, the station near Armavir was put into operation. It monitors everything that happens on the stretch from North Africa to India. A radar station in the village of Pionerskoye in the Kaliningrad Region has been put on combat duty. An object in the Irkutsk region, which "breaks through" the space from China to the west coast of the United States, has been commissioned. Several other facilities in the Orenburg and Pskov regions, near Vorkuta and Murmansk closed their destinations.
The completion of the modernization of the country's missile defense system is a landmark event. Its heart is the Don-2N radar station in Sofrin, near Moscow. At maximum power, the radar outputs a signal of 250 MW. It is able to "break through" space in more than a few tens of thousands of kilometers and detect an object the size of a few centimeters. At the same time, it can monitor more than 100 targets and aim 53T6 anti-missiles at them with high accuracy.
From the nearest American ballistic missile position to Moscow, 21 minutes of summer. Seven minutes before the approach to the capital, they are detected by the Don-2N. That's how much time the station has left to calculate the trajectory of their flight and accurately calculate the time of the meeting with the "Gazelles". Due to the high speeds, there is almost no time to make a decision. Therefore, the object operates in a fully automatic mode. People just control the health of its systems.
At the same time, the radar itself is completely autonomous. Its operation is provided by independent electricity and water supply systems, powerful refrigeration equipment. But there is one "but". Due to the high energy consumption, the Don practically sleeps most of the time waiting for an alarm signal, which is given to it by the Voronezh-type SPRN stations, operating in the low-radiated power mode. Now, judging by the words of Sergey Grabchuk, this drawback has been overcome. The station has become 40 times more economical in terms of energy consumption, which means that it can operate in constant combat mode.
In addition, the anti-missile defense system was upgraded under the 53T6M index. The Ministry of Defense has shown videos of tests of these products several times. Experts suggest that in the upgraded version, the speed of the anti-missile exceeds 5.5 km / s. It can withstand huge overloads and can intercept the warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles at a range of more than 100 km at altitudes from 5 to 50 km. Unlike the previous generation of interceptor missiles, the new missile can be equipped not only with a nuclear warhead, but also be able to destroy a ballistic target by directly hitting it – to perform a so-called "kinetic interception".
