MOSCOW. Sept 20 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's state-owned arms trading company Rosoboronexport is presenting promising methods for modernizing Russian-made air-defense systems at the international aerospace and defense equipment exhibition 'Africa Aerospace & Defense 2002,' which is being held at the South African Air Force base Waterkloof.
"The modernization methods that Rosoboronexport is presenting to partners at the exhibition could significantly increase the potential of Russian and Soviet-made air defense systems that were earlier sold to the countries of that region," the Rosoboronexport press service said in a press release circulated on Friday.
In particular, the modernization of Kub medium-range air defense missile systems aims at the creation of a more perfect system, improvement of protection of the system's self-propelled intelligence and sighting station from various types of jamming, such as passive jamming, underlying surfaces and mutual jamming through the target illumination channel. In addition, elements of the cutting-edge Buk-M1-2 air defense missile system will be integrated in Kub in the framework of the upgrade.
"The fire production rate of the integrated system will double, the firing range will increase 1.7 times in length and 3.5 times in altitude. The system will be able of hitting more classes of targets. It will be capable of determining the class of the target, i.e. of seeing whether it is a plane, a helicopter, or a ballistic missile," the release reads.
"Modernization of the S-125 Pechora air defense missile system aims to boost its reliability, survivability and mobility and to improve its specifications ensuring the successful combating of cruise missiles and other modern means of aerial assault. The modernization provides for reducing the number of technicians who service the system and for cutting the period of time and the volume of the servicing. 90 percent of the air defense missile system will be transferred to the modern element base, a tele-optic channel introduced, a navigation system and telecoded communication established, the service lives ground assets and missiles reduced, and the range of spare instruments and appliances cut. The firing specifications will be improved through the expansion of the firing range and the increase in the kill probability by one missile in a regular and adverse jamming situation. The upgraded system can remain in the inventory of many countries until 2010," the release says.
Rosoboronexport is offering its African partners modernization services for Strela-10 and Osa-AKM air defense systems, ZSU-23-4 Shilka and ZU-23 self-propelled anti-aircraft systems, P-18 and P-19 radar systems, and PU-12 battery command posts.
"In the past decades African countries imported several hundred air-defense missile systems, tens of thousands of anti- aircraft mounts, guns and man-portable SAMs as well as about 1,000 radars. Today, all types of Russian-supplied air defense radars and one-third of combat assets are subject to modernization," the press service reports
The Africa Aerospace & Defense show will be open until September 22.