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Pionersky, Dunayevka airbase, Kaliningrad

The resort town of Pionersky is one of the cities in the resort zone of the Kaliningrad seashore, located 40 km to the north-west of the regional center on the Baltic Sea coast, between the federal resorts Svetlogorsk and Zelenogradsk. Pionersky is connected with the citi es by rail and road. In the city there is an open seaport. According to the 2002 census, the population of Pionersky (formerly Neukuren) is 11,800 people.

Municipal formation "Pionersky City" is located on a high 30-meter shore, from the height of which a panorama of the Baltic coast opens. The green outfit of the city is very rich, where rare plant species are found. As a separate settlement Pionersky (Neukuren) is known since 1254. However, the neighborhood of the city from ancient times were considered sacred places of the Prussians. Sanctuaries Rantava preserved until this time. Resort construction began in 1837, in 1924 the construction of a seaport closed by the sea mole was completed. Interesting in its architecture are boarding houses and sanatoriums of the XIX-nach. XX centuries.

A special feature of the city is the combination of industrial and spa zones. Here is the only federal children's orthopedic sanatorium in the world. The non-freezing fishing port determines the direction of production activity, has an open access to the Baltic Sea. MO "Pionersky City" is one of the most industrially developed municipal formations of the region. Here, at the beginning of 2005, 87 industrial enterprises, 41 construction companies, 13 transport and 74 trade organizations were registered. The leading place in the industry is the food industry: extraction, processing and processing of fish, the production of canned goods, frozen fish products, the provision of cargo transportation services, and the production of meat products.

Dunayevka Airfield (also spelled as Dunaevka, also known as Marienkhof Air Base) was an airfield in the Kaliningrad exclave, Russia, built after the Great Patriotic War in what was then former East Prussia (Ostpreußen), Germany. Many former German villages in the immediate area were demolished for aggregate to build the airfield. During the 1950s the airfield served as a bomber airfield of the Soviet Air Force. In 1960 Khrushchev abolished the bombers, believing that balllistic missiles would be enough to handle Soviet deterrence. In the 1960s and 1970s the airfield housed two fighter regiments. When they were withdrawn, the airfield remained as a reserve base for the regiment at Nivenskoye North until 1984.

Voronezh High Depot Readiness (HDR)

Today the former airfield is abandoned, although a completely new 77YA6-DM radar site was built immediately to its east. The site was remarkable, as the Russians were fiercely opposing a similar NATO radar site just across the border in Seddin, Poland. The radar site was officially opened in November 2011 by Russian President Medvedev, although it will not be fully operational until 2014.

Russia’s radar station in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad will monitor missile launches from the North Atlantic, as well as the future European missile defense system. Dunayevka (Marienkhof) is an air base in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia located 10 km south of Pionersky. It was in use during the 1950s and has been abandoned near the end of the Cold War. It has a spartan layout, unimproved pads, if any, and alert strip feeding directly onto runway threshold. Russia put the Kaliningrad early warning radar station on experimental combat duty, the press service of the Federal Agency for Special Construction (Spetsstroy) said 23 June 2014. “The Voronezh-DM missile attack early warning radar station located in Kaliningrad Region has gone on experimental combat duty. The state testing of the station will be conducted within three months, and upon completion it will be put on combat duty,” according to the press service. The construction of the Voronezh-DM radar station in Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave, began in February 2010. It covers almost all of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, has a range of 6,000 kilometers and can simultaneously track up to 500 objects. It covers a radius of 3,728 miles over the Earth’s surface and 4,970 miles into space.

Commander of the Air and Space Defense Forces, Colonel-General Oleg Ostapenko arrived in the village of Pionersky, Kaliningrad region on 09 August 2012, where the military units of the Space Command of the EKO troops are stationed. The main purpose of the trip is to check the functioning of the new Voronezh-DM radar system of the missile attack warning system, which was introduced into the airspace defense troops in November 2011.

Oleg Ostapenko paid special attention to the organization of carrying out pilot-combat duty by officers of the command post, the preparation of technical facilities, buildings of the barracks and housing stock for winter exploitation.

Such trips are made by the commander of the troops of the East Kazakhstan region on a regular basis. This makes it possible to personally supervise the activity of the command of military units, analyze and promptly solve emerging problem issues and, as a result, to achieve effective fulfillment by all structural divisions of tasks for their intended purpose.

In February 2012, the VZH Voronezh-M radar in the Leningrad Region was put on combat duty. In May 2012, the same station took up an experimental and combat duty near Irkutsk. Preliminary tests and preparations for conducting state tests of the Voronezh-DM VZR radar near the city of Armavir in the Krasnodar Territory are nearing completion.

The plans for the development of an early warning system for the coming years envisage the construction of new VZR radars in a number of other regions of Russia. This will ensure a continuous radar monitoring of all missile-hazardous areas.

The construction of radar stations of the missile attack warning system in the Kaliningrad and Irkutsk regions should be completed before the end of 2014. This, according to RIA Novosti 27 May 2013, said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. It's about radars like "Voronezh", the range of which is about six thousand kilometers. The Russian State Arms Program provides for the creation in Russia of an uninterrupted radar field of the missile warning system by 2018. "By the end of 2014, it is necessary to eliminate the backlog in remote construction projects and complete the construction of a meter-range radar in the Irkutsk region and a decimeter in the Kaliningrad region," Shoigu said, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier noted the importance of creating a continuous radar field.

The radar station of the decimeter range "Voronezh-DM" was put on combat duty in the Kaliningrad region in November 2011. The first stage of the radar was built in the village of Pionersky. Upon completion of the construction, the radar in the Kaliningrad region will be able to control the airspace from the North Atlantic to North Africa, collecting information on any launches of ballistic missiles in the area of responsibility.

The combat alert for the Voronezh-M meter range in the Usolye-Siberian Irkutsk region began in May 2012. One section of the station was commissioned; The second is being completed at the present time. After the full launch of the completed radar, its survey will increase to 240 degrees. "Voronezh-M" in the Irkutsk region will control airspace from the western coast of the United States to India.

At present, there are four Voronezh-type radar stations on the territory of Russia. In addition to the radar in the Kaliningrad and Irkutsk regions, the Voronezh-M and Voronezh-DM radars operate in the Lehtusi settlement of the Leningrad Region and Armavir of the Krasnodar Territory, respectively. The airspace from Morocco to the east coast of the USA, and the second from southern Europe to the coast of North Africa, enters the zone of responsibility of the former.

In the next few years, it was planned to build two high-potential stations "Voronezh-VP" near Pechora in the Komi Republic and Olenegorsk Murmansk region. In the long term, it is planned to replace all of the obsolete operating radars of the Dnipro, Daryal and Volga types with new Voronezh stations.

>President Medvedev launched a radar warning system for a missile attack (SWADS) near Kaliningrad. The radar station (RLS), which was planned for a long time, was officially declared not directed against the West, but included in the system of measures for an asymmetric response to the unilateral deployment of the US missile defense system in Europe. The Kaliningrad radar detection station "Voronezh-DM" of the missile attack warning system (RWS) entered combat duty. This station throughout the year worked in an experimental combat mode; During the entire service life, there were no failures recorded.

The Kaliningrad radar assigned for combat duty refers to the so-called radar stations of high factory readiness 77Y6-DM Voronezh (VZG Voronezh-DM radar station). Russian President Dmitry Medvedev noted that the cost of the new radar station in Kaliningrad is much lower than the cost of the stations that were built in the Soviet Union.

The new radar station in Kaliningrad was ready to be included in the Missile Attack Warning System, Lieutenant-General Oleg Ostapenko, commander of the Air and Space Defense Forces, said on 28 November 2013, "We have completed all construction work on the commissioning of this station in Kaliningrad, the work has been done to prepare the calculations and allow them to operate the station. For today, we are ready, at the command of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, to introduce this radar system into the general Missile Attack Warning System, stressed the general.

Assessing the technical characteristics of the said station, O.Ostapenko said: "It gives an opportunity to exercise effective control of missile launches to the depth of the European continent as well as from the North Atlantic, which will, among other things, control the operation of the EuroPRO system," the commander-in-chief.

On November 23, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev reported on the station's readiness to work as part of the troops of the East Kazakhstan region. This radar belongs to the class "Voronezh-DM". The station closes the western sector, for which in Soviet times the stations in Mukachevo and Baranovichi responded. Two more similar stations are under construction: in Armavir and in Irkutsk region.

With the adoption of two new Voronezh-DM stations, the entire radar warning field, destroyed with the collapse of the USSR, will be restored.

In its TTX, the Voronezh-DM radar is not inferior to the current stations of the Daryal and Dnepr-M type. With the current target detection range of 4,500 km, it has the technical capability of increasing it to 6,000 km. The power consumption of Voronezh-DM radar does not exceed 0.7 MW, the cost of creation is about 1.5 billion rubles. For example: the radar "Dnepr" in prices for 2005 is estimated at 5 billion rubles., "Daryal" - about 20 billion rubles.

On 14 May 2015, the Russian Defense Minister, Army General Sergei Shoigu made a working trip to the Kaliningrad region, where he visited a new radar station of the Air and Space Defense Troops. The head of the military department got acquainted with the features of the functioning and qualitative parameters of the new-generation radar station "Voronezh-DM" of the missile attack warning system, which is on duty on radar control of the western missile-dangerous direction in the village of Pionersky, Kaliningrad region.

Major-General Alexander Golovko, Commander of the Air and Space Defense Troops accompanied the command post of the separate radio technical center of the Minister of Defense. As it follows from his comments, the data received by the radar in the Kaliningrad region are transferred to command posts of the Missile Attack Warning System and the Space Monitoring System. After that, the order of the duty of the officers of the command post of the station was checked. According to the report of the commander of the military unit, at present the radar is operating in the mode of pilot-combat duty.

Sergey Shoigu also supervised the progress of construction works performed by Spetstroy of Russia on the creation of new technical and social facilities designed to provide comfortable living conditions, cultural and sporting development of servicemen who are on military service on the new radar station and members of their families. For them, the construction of a sports complex, a stadium, a club, a soldier's canteen is being conducted in the town, office dormitories for family servicemen, a service hostel for servicemen under contract, and a soldier's barracks have been prepared for settlement. In addition, the construction of a technical park zone is being completed, designed for storage and comprehensive maintenance of automotive and special equipment.

As explained by the representative of Spetsstroy, "the total cost of the entire complex is 2 billion 600 million rubles." The transfer of facilities to the military department is planned by December 1, 2013. As part of the working trip, the head of the military department held a working meeting with representatives of the leadership of the Ministry of Defense, the Air Defense Forces, heads of Concern RTI Systems, NPK NIIDAR and other industrial enterprises developing and manufacturing new radar stations generation.

The task was to complete all work related to the construction of radar stations (high-availability radars) in the Kaliningrad and Irkutsk regions by the end of 2014. "In Kaliningrad, we see today the results of the work done. Readiness is high enough. I hope that at the appointed time we will finish all the work on Irkutsk and Kaliningrad stations," the head of the military department said.