New Communication Systems Delivered to the Armed Forces

The Belarusian Armed Forces continue to receive advanced communication equipment. At the same time with the modernisation of equipment, the military pursue the procurement of new domestically made systems. These systems are delivered to the troops by companies of the State Authority for Military Industry under the state defence order.

On 30 November 2020, the Grodno garrison hosted a ceremony of delivering the R-434 Citrus and R-414MBRP Sosna-2 radio relay communication stations, which are produced by Agat–Electromechanical Plant JSC, to the signals battalion of the 74th Separate Signals Regiment, the Western Operational Command. The military received a total of 22 latest and upgraded communication systems.

The ceremony was attended by Maj. Gen. Alexander Volfovich, Chief of the General Staff, First Deputy Minister of Defence; Maj. Gen. Oleg Mishchenko, Chief of Signals, Chief of the General Staff Signals Directorate; and Alexander Malygin, assistant director of Agat–Electromechanical Plant JSC. They handed over the product certificates and datasheets for the new communication equipment to the commanders of the signals battalion.

“It is very important that after conducting a number of studies, we, together with our country’s defence companies, have started mass production of systems of all types of communications that are used in the Belarusian Armed Forces,” Oleg Mishchenko said.

The R-414MBRP Sosna-2 digital radio relay station on the mobile and rapidly deployable platform has been delivered to the military since 2018. Now their number has increased to seven. Their design incorporates new principles, advanced technical and engineering solutions, which enhance their mobility and survivability, as well as increase the number of organised radio relay directions. The universal rotary support devices and mounts allow customers to mount various types of antennas on the mast. A special feature of the Sosna-2 station is the possibility of its subsequent upgrade without significant changes to its design.

An earlier development, the R-434MT Citrus radio relay station, features high mobility and throughput. It allows the military to replace up to 11 old-design communication equipment vehicles at the communication centre and achieve a 5–6-fold reduction in the number of service personnel. The cutting-edge telecommunication technologies and componentry incorporated in the product make it possible to implement both the channel switching functions and packet switching functions to provide promising TriplePlay communication services (voice, video, data), which offers broad operational capabilities.

Communication systems manufactured by Belarusian defence companies are capable of switching any type of traffic and providing routing in Ethernet/IP networks. They are fully integrated with the public telecommunication network and special-purpose networks.