Russia orders major S-400 deployment

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:33:01 GMT

Army trucks moving S-400 batteries

The Russian army has doubled the deployment of its hi-tech anti-ballistic S-400 missiles in the face of its growing concerns of air attacks.

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov recently announced that Moscow had authorized a new military division to employ 32 S-400 interceptor missiles capable of hitting low-cruising stealth aircrafts and intermediate-range ballistic missiles to ward off possible attacks.

The S-400, alias SA-21 Growler, enjoys versatile firing facets and can destroy targets flying low at a speed exceeding 2.5 Mach or just over 3,000 km per hour -- a feature lacked by modern US Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Russia hopes to keep its advanced interceptor rockets in service until 2025.

The news comes as the US army has negotiated a new contract with the aerospace and defense corporation, Boeing, to develop state-of-the-art aerial protection systems for the country.

The program will make an "effort to coordinate and fuse multiple types of sensor data in a secure environment for Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) and space situational awareness concept exploration," UPI quoted Boeing's Thursday statement.

The S-400 is twice more efficient than the US MIM-104 Patriot that can only intercept and annihilate subsonic missiles within a 200 km range.