An exercise has been conducted for servicemen of the Russian military base deployed in Tajikistan on protection of its facilities.
According to the press center of Russia’s Central Military District, the exercise on protecting the base’s facilities has been conducted with use of electronic warfare (EW) systems.
The purpose of the exercise was to rehearse interaction in protecting residential zone, munitions depots and S-300 positions against aerial surveillance with help of the Pole-21 electronic countermeasures system.
Besides, EW systems Zhitel, Lesochek, and Silok have been used for creation of an electronic dome to protect the base’s facilities.
The exercise has reportedly involved more than 500 servicemen and mere than 100 pieces of military equipment.
The Pole-21 electronic countermeasures system was developed by Joint-Stock Company (JSC) Electronic Warfare Scientific and Technical Center. The Pole-21 is reportedly designed to protect strategic installations against enemy cruise missiles, smart bombs and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) reliant on the GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou positioning systems for navigation and guidance.
The system reportedly has similarities with the R-330 Zhitel EW system, which is part of the Diabazol complex, and is designed to protect, for example, brigade- or division-level command posts against PGMs. The Pole-21 system was agreed for procurement by the Russian Armed Forces in 2016
The Russian military base deployed in Tajikistan is Russia's largest non-naval military facility outside the country. It was officially opened in Tajikistan in 2004 under a previous agreement, which was signed in 1993, and hosts Russia’s largest military contingent deployed abroad.
A total of some 7,000 Russian troops are now stationed at two military facilities collectively known as the 201st military base – in Dushanbe and Bokhtar (formerly Qurghon Teppa, some 100 kilometers from Dushanbe.