Construction of new radar as part of missile attack warning system to begin in Crimea soon - designer
MOSCOW. Nov 9 (Interfax) - The construction of the new Voronezh radar station as part of the missile attack warning system will begin in Crimea soon, the design phase is currently underway, Sergei Boyev, the chief designer of the missile attack warning system, told Interfax.
"The current stage is design. [It will begin] in the near future," Boyev told Interfax, answering a question about the start of the construction of the new radar station.
In November 2017, Boyev told Interfax that the new Voronezh-class radar station will be built for the Russian troops in Crimea. In late 2018, a source in the Crimean defense agencies told Interfax that the construction of the new Voronezh radar as part of the missile attack warning system was to be begin on the deployment site of the Dnepr radar, outside Sevastopol in 2019.
The new radar's combat capabilities will significantly outperform those of the Dnepr station, which covered the Middle East region among others and was able to detect launches of different ballistic missiles at a distance to up to 3,500 kilometers, the source said.
In October 2019, Russian Space Forces Deputy Commander Gen. Maj. Igor Morozov said that the construction of the radar is to be completed by 2024.
The Dnepr radar station was left in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was leased by Russia for some time, but the contract was terminated over Kyiv's stance. The Dnepr then remained unused for more than ten years and fell into disrepair.
The Voronezh-M radar station is Russia's over-horizon early warning radar, which can detect space and aerodynamic targets, including ballistic and cruise missiles.