MOSCOW. Jan 11 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian army air defense forces held 129 tactical drills with live-fire practice last year, involving over 15,000 servicemen, Commander of the Russian Armed Forces Air Defense Forces Lieut. Gen. Alexander Leonov told reporters.
"The number of test-fired missiles topped 1,000; munitions - over 40,000; target missiles - over 1,000. Over 15,000 servicemen and over 3,500 units of weapons, military and special hardware were involved in the drills," Leonov said.
"Several innovative approaches were tested for the first time" at the military exercises in 2016, he also said.
In particular, "this is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to create a complicated air situation meeting modern realities, as well as the application of aircraft to control the actions of the checked large formations, military units and detachments."
"For the fair evaluation of the fire practice results the Konglomerat-1P complex, which has no analogues in the world, was utilized for the first time. The advanced Barnaul-T automated air defense control systems were also broadly used during the tactical exercises with live-fire drills. The application of these automated air defense control systems allowed the substantial cutting of the time needed to evaluate the situation and make a decision," the commander said.