MOSCOW, October 5 (AVN) - The Russian Air Force is completing development of documents regulating activities of its radio-technical troops, Lieutenant-General Alexander Shramchenko, the troops commander, said on Thursday.
The tactics of the troops' combat application had to be reconsidered after unification of the Air Force and Air Defence, Shramchenko told the Military News Agency. "As the Air Force and Air Defence armies now have attack aviation, there is a need to provide radio-technical support to it in the zones controlled by fronts and combined-arms armies and ensure interaction with radio-technical formations of the army air defence within the Air Force," he said.
The unification "made us look for a new approach to estimation of radio-technical units' manoeuvre capacities and to establishment of interaction with radio-technical units of the army air defence," the commander said.
The radio-technical troops should definitely meet one of the main demands to the tactics of their combat application - to be capable of engagement in manoeuvre, reconnaissance and information-gathering activities by means of mobile radiotechnical formations, the general stressed.
Drafters of the new combat documents and designers of new armament for the troops "have taken into account the valuable experience gained in the course of the troops' participation in the anti-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus, as well as in flight and tactical exercises of attack and bomber aviation regiments," Shramchenko said.
The Air Force is currently testing a new organisation of radio-technical troops management which has a separate engineering and radar service. In a situation when there were no experts of the engineering and radar service in the radio-technical troops command structure, the commander had no operative influence on the state of armament and military equipment, which is an integral part of combat readiness, the general noted.