Russia has launched profound reforms in its military-industrial complex as it struggles to build a combined air and missile defense. Meeting with defense industry executives in the office of the Sukhoi Design Bureau on Monday evening, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that large associations of companies had been created for that purpose, among them the United Aircraft Corporation, Almaz-Antei, Oboronprom and others. They are assigned the important task of supplying the Armed Forces with up-to-date weapons guaranteeing reliable protection against any threat coming from the air. The bulk of the future combined defense will be S-500s, new-generation rockets that will replace the S-400 "Triumph" currently adopted by the national Air Defense Forces. Designed by Almaz-Antei engineers, the S-500 can detect, recognize and evaluate any air target and destroy up to 10 targets simultaneously. The rocket is slated for serialization by 2015.
In addition to S-500s, the army will receive sophisticated early ballistic missile warning systems. By 2020, Russia hopes to have a full-fledged aero-space defense. Pavel Zolotaryov, deputy head of the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow, thinks the defense industry is fit to cope well with the task, the more so that despite the global financial crisis, the production of S-300s and S-400s has not been curtailed.
Said Aminov, editor-in-chief of the Vestnik PVO on-line magazine, echoes that creating a fifth-generation combined air-missile defense is quite a realistic task:
"Modern air defense systems of the fourth-generation differ from their fifth-generation analogues with combined defense opportunities. The current system predominantly ensures aircraft defense and partially the so-called nonstrategic missile defense, namely against ballistic missiles with a flight range under 2,500 km, whereas the new system is equally capable of reaching targets at near-space altitudes".
To manufacture fifth-generation weapons stuffed with innovative technologies, new production lines are going to be built.
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