Russia doubles its S-400 interceptors on active duty

WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Russia has deployed its second state-of-the-art S-400 anti-ballistic missile system regiment, RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said the regiment had been armed with the new S-400 Triumf air defense missile system and it already had been put into combat service in Russia, the report said.

If the S-400 (NATO designation SA-21 Growler) lives up to its specifications, it could be the most advanced air defense system in the world against low-flying aircraft, cruise missiles and even intermediate-range ballistic missiles. U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles are far more vulnerable to advanced air defense interceptor systems because they fly relatively slowly, at only 650 mph, a subsonic speed. By contrast, Russia's most advanced cruise missiles fly at three times that speed -- Mach 2.8, or 1,900 mph.

The S-400 passed live firing tests last year at the Kapustin Yar firing range in south Russia's Astrakhan oblast, or region, RIA Novosti said. As previously reported in BMD Watch, the first missile regiment armed with the system already has been deployed to protect the Russian capital, Moscow, and key industrial regions in western Russia.

The Kremlin has high hopes for the S-400. Although production of the expensive, high-tech system has been going relatively slowly, it has been given priority in the Russian military-industrial sector. The S-400 Triumf is designed to be the foundation of Russia's advanced air defenses until at least 2020 and probably even beyond 2025.

According to RIA Novosti, the S-400 has the capability to intercept and hit aircraft, cruise missiles and even ballistic missiles at ranges of up to 400 kilometers (250 miles). That would be two times the effective range of the U.S. MIM-104 Patriot, and 2.5 times that of Russia's previous main air defense interceptor system, the S-300PMU-2.

RIA Novosti said the S-400 was "also believed to be able to destroy stealth aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, with an effective range of up to 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) and a speed of up to 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) per second (10,800 mph).

The report said a single S-400 battalion contains a minimum of eight launching batteries and 32 missiles in all. It also has its own mobile command post. Russia's ambitious, upgraded arms procurement plan calls for 18 such battalions to be created by 2015, RIA Novosti said.

Boeing, Army launch new air defense data project

Boeing announced Thursday it had joined the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command in a research and development program to integrate air defense sensor data.

The program will seek to "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," the company said.

Boeing and the SMDC/ARSTRAT concluded a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (on Feb. 24. The company said an initial discussion already been held on March 12 at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala.

"This agreement effectively allows the SMDC/ARSTRAT's Data Fusion Distribution Center to exercise and examine Boeing's multilevel security modeling and simulation capabilities using actual government data," said Michael Schexnayder, deputy to the commander for research, development and acquisition at SMDC/ARSTRAT. "Through this joint effort, our teams will develop a collaborative, net-centric, open-source environment to support the analyses of a multitude of space and IAMD issues."

Boeing said the program would advance within the framework of a memorandum of agreement that had already been concluded by the SMDC/ARSTRAT and the United States Strategic Command that freed experts, tools and data to advance the project.

"Boeing is proud to partner with SMDC/ARSTRAT on research and development that supports a national need for secure, cross-domain data exchange," said Dave Pope, director of Boeing Command and Control Enterprise Solutions.