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Russia puts new early-warning radar station on combat duty

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A new early-warning radar has become operational in northwest Russia's Leningrad Region, to fill a gap in national radar coverage that had existed for seven years, the defense minister said Friday.
LEKHTUSI (Leningrad Region), December 22 (RIA Novosti) - A new early-warning radar has become operational in northwest Russia's Leningrad Region, to fill a gap in national radar coverage that had existed for seven years, the defense minister said Friday.

"By putting this radar on combat duty, we have closed the gap in Russia's radar coverage [of its borders] that existed for the last seven years," said Sergei Ivanov.

The coverage gap appeared after the closure of an obsolete Dnestr-M radar in the Latvian town of Skrunde, 150 km from the ex-Soviet Baltic country's capital Riga, in 1998.

Russia leases ground-based radar stations in Baranovichi, Belarus; Sevastopol and Mukachevo in Ukraine; Balkhash in Kazakhstan; and Gabala in Azerbaijan. It also has radars on its own territory in Murmansk (arctic northwest), Pechora (northwest Urals), and Irkutsk (east Siberia).

Ivanov said the new Voronezh radar in Lekhtusi, Leningrad Region, will be used not only for missile early warning purposes, but also as part of a comprehensive missile and air defense network.

The Voronezh radar has capabilities similar to its predecessors, the Dnepr and Daryal, which are currently deployed outside Russia, but uses less energy and meets current environmental standards. It has extensive radar coverage of a territory spreading from the North Pole to northern Africa.

Under the program for the development of Russia's Space Forces, another Voronezh-type radar is being built in the Krasnodar Territory in southwest Russia, the defense minister said. Construction of the new radar is expected to be completed in 2007.

Ivanov also said Russia will stop using radars in ex-Soviet republics in the future, and will deploy early-warning arrays only on its own territory.

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