The 820th Main Centre for Missile Attack Warning ( rus, Главный центр предупреждения о ракетном нападении (Гцпрн), GTsPRN
) is the
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
n
early warning network against
ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are guided only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within t ...
attack. It has headquarters in the village of Timonovo
near
Solnechnogorsk
Solnechnogorsk (russian: Солнечного́рск, lit. ''sunny mountain town'') is a town and the administrative center of Solnechnogorsky District in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located on the Moscow–St. Petersburg Highway and the Moscow ...
outside Moscow and is part of the
Russian Space Forces.
The centre consists of a network of early warning radar stations which transmit their data to the control centre near Solnechnogorsk. Other information comes from the early warning
Oko and
EKS satellites as well as the
Don-2N missile defence radar.
Information from the centre could be used for a
launch on warning
Launch on warning (LOW), or fire on warning, is a strategy of nuclear weapon retaliation that gained recognition during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. With the invention of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM ...
nuclear missile attack
or to engage the
A-135 anti-ballistic missile system
The A-135 (renamed to A-235) ( NATO: ABM-4 Gorgon) is a Russian anti-ballistic missile system deployed around Moscow to intercept incoming warheads targeting the city or its surrounding areas. The system was designed in the Soviet Union and ente ...
.
The Main Centre
The centre is the control centre for the radar network. Here signals from every station are received and, if necessary, a message can be sent to the presidential '
nuclear briefcase' for authorisation to use nuclear weapons.
There is a communications centre which has a number of backup channels to communicate with each radar station. If a ballistic missile attack is discovered the duty commander reports this to the
central command post of the
General Staff
A military staff or general staff (also referred to as army staff, navy staff, or air staff within the individual services) is a group of officers, enlisted and civilian staff who serve the commander of a division or other large military ...
.
At the same time the duty engineer reports it to the commander of the Aerospace Defence Forces, for
redundancy.
Information comes from the radar network,
early warning satellites and the
space surveillance
Space domain awareness is the study and monitoring of satellites orbiting the earth. It involves the detection, tracking, cataloging and identification of artificial objects, i.e. active/inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, or Space debris, ...
network SKKP. The centre also discovers and monitors space objects through the use of radar which are fed into the SKKP network.
Warning network
The Russian missile warning system originates in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
and is often known by its Soviet initials SPRN (СПРН),
from rus, Система предупреждения о ракетном нападении, Sistema preduprezhdeniya o raketnom napadenii 'Missile attack warning system'. It started on 15 February 1971 as two
Dnestr-M radars at
Olenegorsk and
Skrunda with a command post in Solnechnogorsk. It expanded by the addition of Dnestr-M radars in
Mishelevka and
Balkhash in 1973, a
Dnepr radar in
Sevastopol
Sevastopol (; uk, Севасто́поль, Sevastópolʹ, ; gkm, Σεβαστούπολις, Sevastoúpolis, ; crh, Акъя́р, Aqyár, ), sometimes written Sebastopol, is the largest city in Crimea, and a major port on the Black Sea ...
in 1975 and another in
Mukachevo in 1977. The
Daugava radar, a
Daryal receiver, started operations in 1975 at Olenegorsk. In 1978 an upgraded warning system called Крокус (Krokus) was introduced.
In 1982 the
Oko early warning satellite system became operational. It was joined in 1984 by the first
Daryal radar in
Pechora and in 1985 by the Daryal in
Gabala.
The 1972
Anti-ballistic missile treaty
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty or ABMT) (1972–2002) was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against ballisti ...
requires that early warning radar stations are located on the periphery of national territory and face outwards. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 this resulted in many of the stations ending up in newly independent states. The radar station at Skrunda, now in Latvia, closed in 1998. Other stations now overseas were Sevastopol and Mukachevo (both in Ukraine), Balkhash (Kazakhstan) and Gabala (Azerbaijan).
The
Volga radar at Baranavichy in Belarus came online in 2003 and the two Ukrainian radars closed in 2009.
In the mid-2000s Russia started the roll out of the next generation of early warning radar, the
Voronezh
Voronezh ( rus, links=no, Воро́неж, p=vɐˈronʲɪʂ}) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on ...
. The first station in
Lekhtusi near St Petersburg went on combat duty in 2012.
Other stations in
Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad ( ; rus, Калининград, p=kəlʲɪnʲɪnˈɡrat, links=y), until 1946 known as Königsberg (; rus, Кёнигсберг, Kyonigsberg, ˈkʲɵnʲɪɡzbɛrk; rus, Короле́вец, Korolevets), is the largest city and ...
and
Armavir were made operational in the following years.
In 2012, the
Gabala Radar Station in Azerbaijan was dismantled following failure to renegotiate its continued use.The Russian military has expressed a desire to replace or replicate all overseas radars with domestic stations as overseas ones cannot be relied upon in times of tension and war.
New stations were commissioned in locations such as
Barnaul
Barnaul ( rus, Барнау́л, p=bərnɐˈul) is the largest city and administrative centre of Altai Krai, Russia, located at the confluence of the Barnaulka and Ob Rivers in the West Siberian Plain. As of the 2021 Census, its population was ...
,
Orsk,
Orenburg
Orenburg (russian: Оренбу́рг, ), formerly known as Chkalov (1938–1957), is the administrative center of Orenburg Oblast, Russia. It lies on the Ural River, southeast of Moscow. Orenburg is also very close to the border with Kazakhst ...
and
Yeniseysk
Yeniseysk ( rus, Енисейск, p=jɪnʲɪˈsʲejsk) is a town in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located on the Yenisei River. Population: 20,000 (1970).
History
Yeniseysk was founded in 1619 as a stockaded town—the first town on the Yenise ...
.
On 4 October 2019,
Sergei Boyev, director general of
Vympel NPO, a major weapons manufacturer in Russia, confirmed to Russia's state-run media that the company was working on "modelling" the system for China. Russia hopes to integrate China's early warning system with Russia's. This will provide China with increased detection range from North pole as well as the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.
Organisational structure
In 1998 SPRN became part of the missile and space defence organisation ''ракетно-космической обороны'' (RKO) together with SKKP and the anti-missile troops.
In 2001 these services became part of the newly founded
Space Troops, and were incorporated as the 3rd Independent Missile and Space Defense Army.
The Main Centre for Missile Attack Warning was formed on 1 December 2009 and since December 2011 it had been part of the Space Command of the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces, together with facilities such as the
821st Main Space Intelligence Centre
The 821st Main Centre for Reconnaissance of Situation in Space ( rus, Главный центр разведки космической обстановки, GTsRKO) is the headquarters of the Russian military's space surveillance network, SKKP. ...
and
153rd Titov Main Space Testing Centre.
References
{{Ru space command
Military installations of Russia
Russian Space Forces
Military installations of the Soviet Union