Russian Air Defense Radars: Turning Slowly to TargetAleksandr Stukalin,
Kommersant Publishing HouseLate 1990s: cuts and mergersOn July 16, 1997 Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued Decree No 725 “On urgent measures to reform the Russian Armed Forces and optimize their structure”. As part of that reform, the Radar Troops (Radiotekhnicheskie Voiska) of the Air Defense Service (Voiska PVO) were incorporated into the Air Force - a process that entailed significant cuts. To comply with the new Air Force staffing schedule approved on January 27, 1997, the Radar Troops lost 12 units, including three radar brigades out of the total of 18, and nine radar regiments out of 19.
1
As a result, the service lost about 30 per cent of its units (radar battalions and companies) and 60 per cent of its personnel. In fact, the cuts were even deeper if we take into account previous rounds of reform and restructuring. In 1997 alone (both before and after Decree No 725) some 20 radar units (which accounted for 33 per cent of the service’s strength) were disbanded. Compared to Soviet times, the number of radar units fell by 80 per cent, and their ability to monitor Russian airspace by 50 per cent.
2 (In 1989 the Soviet Union’s Air Defense service had more than 60 radar brigades and regiments, consisting of over 1,000 smaller units).
The Russian MoD sacrificed even some of its radar capability in the strategically important Arctic region, including Franz Joseph Land (Graham Bell Island), the northern part of Novaya Zemlya (Cape Zhelaniya), Vize Island in the Kara Sea, as well as the islands of Severnaya Zemlya, Vaygach, Wrangel, and Dikson.
3 The ministry’s priority was to retain its radar capability in the central, western and northeastern parts of Russia. As of 2000, the Russian Radar Troops were capable of tracking up to 50,000 air targets every year across the country.
4
As part of the reductions, the MoD decommissioned large numbers of obsolete radar models (including the P-12, P-14, P-35, and others).
Nevertheless, even after that decommissioning, there were 19 types of radars left in service with the Russian Air Defense service, including:
- 22Zh6M Desna-M, a high and medium altitude combat-mode radar
- 5N87 Kabina-66 medium and high altitude radar
- 57U6 Periskop-VM combat-mode radar
- P-37, 1L-117, 1L-13 Nebo-SV, 59N6 Protivnik-G, 19Zh6 ST-68U, 35D6 ST-68UM, 55Zh6 Nebo, 55Zh6-U Nebo-U, 5N84A Oborona, P-18 Terek, and 64L6 Gamma-S1 radars;
- 39N6 Kasta-2-2 and 35N6 Kasta-2 low-altitude radars
- PVR-13, PRV-16 and PRV-17 radio-altimeters.5
It must be said that having such a large number of radar models in service is a practice Russia inherited from the former Soviet Union. The Soviet defense industry had a lot of redundancy and duplication; there were often three different companies making three very similar products, and all three products would be on the Russian armed forces’ procurement list. Obviously, such a system meant unnecessary complications in terms of personnel training, repair and maintenance.
In the post-Soviet period most of the radars still in service were old Soviet models. Lt. Gen Aleksandr Shramchenko, who served as the commander of the Air Force Radar Troops, once described the existing radar fleet as “yesterday’s technology”. He estimated the requirement for new radars (such as the Protivnik-G, Kasta-2, and Gamma-S1) at “tens of units”, whereas annual deliveries were “in the single digits”.
6As far as procurement is concerned, the Russian armed forces could afford only limited upgrades, service life extensions, and repairs of the existing radars at MoD and defense industry facilities. By 2000, many radar units had been given sufficient training to repair complex technology (including the 22Zh6M, 35N6, and 57U6) on site. The MoD believed it made better sense to spend only 7-12 per cent of the money required to buy new radars on repairing the existing hardware, thereby extending its service life by another four to seven years.
7 In 2001, the price tag of a new radar was 90m roubles and upwards.
Few signs of turnaround in the early 2000sBy the end of the 2000s the situation remained almost unchanged. Even the radar units of the Air Defense Special Command, a new strategically important air defense formation in charge of airspace over Moscow and Central Russia, continued to operate old hardware. For example, in 2008 it reported that deliveries of “modern digital radars, including the Lira-T, Gamma-S1, and Protivnik-G, which have been improved to take into account the Strategic Command’s requirements”, still remained “in the single digits”.
Speaking about the situation in the Radar Troops, the head of the Special Command, Col. Vladimir Filippovich, was glum: “the bulk of the radars currently in service is analogue hardware made in the late 1980s and early 1990s ... We are well aware that we will not be able to replace all of the old radars any time soon. We would need to buy hundreds of radars to do that... That is why the only realistic solution is to repair and upgrade the existing hardware”.
The repair and upgrade programs, however, were also struggling, according to Col. Filippovich. “Due to the lack of funds ... the repaired standard replaceable components (the electronic core of the radar, called the ‘cell’), are arriving from the repair plants well behind schedule… The money allocated for the repair of these cells every year is only about 30 per cent of the requirement. As for out own requirement for repairs, only about 65 per cent of it is being met. In the Moscow air defense units alone there are currently 17 radars out of order.”
Col. Filippovich said that the situation with the air defense automation sets was even more worrying. “About 80 per cent of the automation sets have been in service for 15-20 years; they are obsolete. The technical specifications to which they were built date back to the late 1970s… Our command is now building an integrated automated airspace monitoring system. To that end we need, first and foremost, to rearm about 60 radar units and formations with modern regimental, battalion and company-size automation sets: the Fundament-3, Fundament-2 and Fundament-1. Apart from being easy to use (the Fundament system looks very much like an ordinary desktop PC), these systems will enable us to supply all the information about the airspace situation to missile and air force command stations in an automated mode. Unlike their predecessors, such as the Pole or Osnova (which are the size of several 15m truck trailers), the Fundament automation sets are compatible with all the new as well as old types of radars. One of the early modifications of the Pole-S, which is still in service with several radar units, is incompatible with the new Kasta digital radar. As a result the unit cannot supply data about small low-altitude targets up the chain of command in an automatic mode”.
Unfortunately, the rollout of the new Fundament system soon ran up against several problems related to the manufacturing ability of the suppliers, the financial crisis of 2008, and the war with Georgia that same year.
“To begin with, it turned out that some of the defense companies simply could not handle the volume of orders the MoD wanted to place,” Col. Filippovich explained. “As a result, the ministry had to make changes to the procurement plans, pushing back some of the deliveries. Still, we were hoping to replace all the obsolete Osnova and Pole battalion and company automation sets with the new Fundament systems by early 2010… Over the past two years (2007-2008) we have been able to rearm about 20 per cent of our units with the new battalion and company automation sets; most of those units are on the border with Ukraine and Belarus. Unfortunately, we could not procure any more Fundament systems. Now, as we all know, the country is facing an economic crisis,” Col. Filippovich said in late 2008. “We have already been notified that the existing plans for deliveries of the new automation sets will have to be scaled back.” In addition, following the war with Georgia, the MoD reprioritized the deliveries of new automation sets in favor of other Air Force and Air Defense units (probably those stationed along the Russian border, especially in the North Caucasus).
8New reforms, new paceAs part of the new military reform launched in 2008 (shortly after the Five-Day War with Georgia) by then Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov and then chief of General Staff Nikolay Makarov (both were sacked in November 2012 for political reasons), the Radar Troops have undergone another round of optimization. Some of the radar units which belonged to the disbanded regiments were reassigned to other commands; similarly, some of the radar companies were reassigned between battalions. That “reconfiguration”, along with further cuts, enabled the MoD formally to bring the number of radars in service with the units that have survived the cuts to 100 per cent of the target, and the number of automation sets to over 70 per cent. The Radar Troops units were also reclassified to permanent combat readiness formations.
As for the level of radar technology in the armed forces, in 2010 the then commander of the Russian Air Force, Col. Gen. Aleksandr Zelin, was less than upbeat. “Most of the hardware currently in service is old and obsolete,” he said. “The radio-electronic systems in service with the Radar Troops that are being decommissioned upon reaching the end of their service life are not being replaced with new ones. The situation with replacing the radars is especially dire. The number of new radars received by the troops over the past five years is only a fifth of the actual requirement.” According to Zelin, in 2005-2010 the MoD bought “about 70 new and upgraded radars, and up to 80 automation sets”. He said that in 2010 the MoD would buy about the same number of radars and twice as many automation sets as in the previous years.
9Some information about the specific models of hardware supplied to the troops during the period Zelin spoke about is contained in a very detailed annual report by the Nizhny Novgorod Radar Technology Research Institute (NNIIRT) – see Table 1. The report is official, and has been released into the public domain.
10Almost all of the radars listed in the table (as well as the P-18 upgrade kit) were developed by NNIIRT and entered mass production in the 1990s and 2000s.
One model that deserves a special mention is the 52E6MU, the latest distributed radar system developed in 1997-2007 under the Snaryad R&D project. It is a bistatic radar, which has a much better performance compared to ordinary monostatic radars when detecting and tracking small and low-velocity targets flying at low and very low altitudes (the effective target scattering area is improved by three or four orders of magnitude when using the bistatic method). The distributed radar complex can consist of up to 11 receiver-transmitter stations. The length of a single span in this chain can reach 40-50km, and the barrier zone altitude is 30 to 7,000 meters.
11Another large Russian maker of radars, the Nizhny Novgorod Television Plant (NITEL), is also receiving MoD orders under the State Armament Program to 2015. In 2006 NNIIRT supplied NITEL with the design and engineering documents necessary for the launch of mass production of the 55Zh6-U radar. In 2009 NITEL delivered four such radar stations to the armed forces under the defense procurement program.
12 Another seven radars followed in 2011.
13Meanwhile, the MoD and the 3821
st Military Hardware Repair Plant are working on a program to upgrade the old Soviet-made 55Zh6 radars simultaneously with their refurbishment. More than 40 such radars have been upgraded in 2002-2012. NITEL and the Lianozovskiy Electromechanics Plant (LEMZ, Moscow) have developed an upgrade option for the P-18 and the 5N84A radars; an upgrade program for the latter model was launched in 2008.
14The radar hardware procurement programs still remained on a relatively small scale in the second half of the 2000s and in the early 2010s – but the numbers of radars being delivered every year to the Air Defense service were no longer “in the single digits”. Another thing to take into account is that the prices charged by the suppliers had grown substantially over the decade to 2010. For example, in 2009-2010 the MoD was paying 381.08m roubles for each 59N6-1 Protivnik-G-1 radar.
15Even more importantly, by 2010 the Russian defense industry had launched several new radar R&D projects in the following areas:
- “future mobile radars which can detect new offensive air and space weaponry”
- new dual-purpose en-route radars
- future automation sets for command and control stations (part of an R&D project to develop a single integrated automated air traffic and air defense system)
- upgrades of the existing radars, including the Gamma, 22Zh6M, Nebo, and Protivnik radars, low-altitude radars and radio-altimeters (to replace the old electronic components), and of the Fundament automation sets.16
Gen. Zelin’s claims about new R&D are also borne out by company reports. In 2007 NNIIRT won an MoD contract to conduct the Volga R&D project (59N6-M radar) and the Niobiy project (55Zh6UM radar). In 2008-2011 a prototype of the 55Zh6-M model (Nebo-M R&D project) passed preliminary and state trials, and entered mass production. The industry is also developing Izdelie 1L126, a highly mobile 3D radar which is designed to detect combat elements of high-precision weapons in flight.
The Pravdinsk Design Bureau (PKB, Pravdinsk, Nizhny Novgorod Region) has launched production of the 59N6-M model radar; two units were made in 2011.
17Meanwhile, the Pravdinsk Radio Plant (NPO PRZ, Pravdinsk) has developed the 22Zh6MM upgraded 3D high and medium-altitude radar to replace the 22Zh6M model.
The Murom Radio Measuring Instruments Plant (MZ RIP, Vladimir Region) has begun deliveries of Izdelie 39N6 and 64L6M Gamma-S1M radars.
19 The Elektroagregat plant, based in Novosibirsk, is also involved in the mass production of the Niobiy radar; in fact, the model is expected to take up the plant’s entire capacity until 2020.
20More than 35 Russian companies were involved in the production of active phased array radars in 2011.
21Large deliveries, bright outlookFollowing the adoption of the three-year budget for 2011-2013 and the State Armament Program for 2011-2020 (GPV-2020), the MoD has been able to ramp up the procurement of new radars. The Radar Troops themselves, however, have been subjected to another round of reform and restructuring; the air defense units and formations that protect Moscow have been reassigned from the Air Defense Special Command to the newly-created Air and Space Defense Troops (Voiska Vozdushno-Kosmicheskoi Oborony - VKO). That latest reform was ordained by President Putin back in 2006, but implemented by Serdyukov and Makarov several years later.
22 Nevertheless, the procurement of new hardware for the two armed services that operate radars has been improving, slowly but steadily.
In late 2010 the head of the Air Force’s Radar Troops, Maj. Gen. Viktor Gumennyy, announced that as part of the State Armament Program to 2020, the proportion of advanced new hardware in service with those troops would increase to over 30 per cent by 2016. He also said that by 2020 some 70 per cent of the Radar Troops units will have been re-equipped with radically upgraded hardware and new monitoring and combat-mode radars, including the Kasta, Gamma, Nebo and Radioluch models.
23The MoD has said that in 2011 the Radar Troops took deliveries of Nebo-M medium and high-altitude radar stations; Protivnik-G1M and Sopka-2 medium and high-altitude radars; Podlet-K1 and Podlet-M low-altitude stations; Kasta-2-2 low-altitude radars; and the new Fundament and Krym automation sets. The number of targets tracked increased to 850,000 in 2011.
24The procurement plans for 2012 included 20 Gamma-S1M, Volga, Podlet and Kasta-2-2 radars, as well as various modifications of Nebo
25, including the latest Nebo-M. The number of the Nebo-M radars in service is expected to reach 100 by 2020. The Radar Troops training center in Vladimir has already begun training personnel in the operation of new hardware.
26 The first Gamma-S1M radars have been put on combat duty with the Air and Space Defense units that protect Moscow and the Central Industrial District of Russia. In particular, units of the Rzhev Radiotechnical Brigade in Tver Region have received four Gamma-S radars.
27Units of the Air Force and Air Defense Command in the Central Military District also received the first two Gamma-S1 radars in 2012. The hardware was deployed in Perm Territory and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District. In 2012 units of the Central Military District took delivery of more than 15 new and upgraded radars and automation sets, including the Fundament-3.
28 The radar regiment of the Southern Military District Command (in Novocherkassk) received several new 59N6, 39N6, and 55Zh6-U radars.
29Procurement plans for 2013 are also fairly ambitious. The Air and Space Defense troops are to receive another 20 new radars, including the Gamma-S, Nebo-U and Podlet-K models, as well as upgraded hardware (Desna, Kasta, and other models).
30 Units of the Radar Troops in the Western Military District are to take delivery of 16 new radars. “Deliveries will include Kasta-2-2 radars, which detect aircraft and cruise missiles at low altitudes; Nebo-M and Nebo-U radars, which track targets at medium and high altitudes; Sopka, which tracks targets at low and extremely low altitudes; and Oborona, which detect targets at long range,” the Western Military District press service has said. The MoD will also continue to upgrade the existing radars as part of the SAP-2020 program. More than 50 modern radar stations are to be delivered to units of the Western Military District by 2020.
31To summarize, deliveries of new radars to the Russian armed forces have increased by a factor of 10 or more compared to the early 2000s. If the Russian government continues to provide support to the radio-electronic industry (and barring any unexpected crises or wars, such as the 2008 war with Georgia), by 2020 the Russian Air Defense service and the Air and Space Defense Troops may well reach an entirely new level of radar technology and capability.
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