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According to the air force commander of Russia, the country is planning to come up with a new generation of air and space defences so that any strikes form a potential foreign threat can be countered.
"By 2030...foreign countries, particularly the US, will be able to deliver coordinated high-precision strikes from air and space against any target on the whole territory of Russia," Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin said. He was referring to the possibility for the new hypersonic and space-based offensive weapons.
"That is why the main goal of the development of the Russian Air Force until 2020 is to create a new branch of the armed forces, which would form the core of the country's air and space defences to provide a reliable deterrent during peacetime, and repel any military aggression with the use of conventional and nuclear arsenals in a time of war," the general said.
According to Zelin, all the Russian Air Force units will be constantly combat-ready by 2020. "We are planning to conduct a gradual transition of air force units to a constant combat-ready status...and accomplish this task by 2020," the commander said.
Zelin said under the new concept, air-space defence brigades will be created within Russia's Air Force, and they will be equipped with advanced S-400 and planned S-500 air defence systems.
"In line with the new air-space defence concept, we have already formed a number of brigades, which will be armed with S-400 and S-500 air defence systems," Zelin said.
The S-400 Triumf (SA-21 Growler) has been designed for the interception and destruction of airborne targets at a distance of up to 400 km, which is almost twice the range of the US MIM-104 Patriot, and 2 1/2 times that of Russia's S-300PMU-2.
The system is considered to have the potential able to destroy secret aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, and is effective at ranges up to 3,500 km and speeds up to 4.8 km per second.
