MOSCOW. Nov 17 (Interfax-AVN) - The first commercial-off-the-shelf radar in the missile attack warning system will be put on combat duty in northwestern Russia before the end of the year, Colonel General Vladimir Popovkin, commander of the Space Forces, said on Friday.
"Preliminary tests of the first commercial-off-the-shelf VHF radar in the missile attack warning system are underway. The radar is likely to be put on test duty in December 2006," Popovkin was quoted as saying at the Space Forces Council session by the forces' press service.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov earlier said that fielding a new component of the missile attack warning system, being constructed outside St. Petersburg, will allow the radar coverage, disrupted when the Russian radar, deployed near the Latvian village of Skrunda, was shut down, to be restored.
"The new radar is a prototype of a totally different more sophisticated generation of radars," Ivanov told reporters.
The new radar is the new VZG-M commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) VHF radar. All components of the radar were manufactured by defense enterprises and then sent to the Leningrad region to be assembled, Ivanov said.
While earlier it took five to nine years to deploy such a radar, now it takes only a year and a half. Other advantages comprise a feasibility to boost its characteristics by replacing certain components.
The COTS technology allows experts to develop missile attach warning radars, capable of detecting both ICBMs and tactical missiles. This fact will allow the radar to be used for both missile defense and air defense. In addition to that new-generation radars will considerably reduce expenditures on their development, and decrease maintenance costs by 40%, given the small size of the radar.
According to experts, the Dnepr, the Daryal, and the VZG-M radars consume 2 MW, 50 MW, and 0.7 MW respectively. The combat crew of the Dnepr radar is 39 men, the Daryal radar - 83 men, and VZG-M - 15 men.