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100 years of Russian air defense: The principal milestones of the centenary March 9, 2015 Alexander Korolkov, special to RBTH The year 2015 marks 100 years since the very first air defense systems were put into action in Russia. RBTH looks back at how Russia's air defense evolved from the customized navy cannons that served as the earliest anti-aircraft guns to the S-400 system, capable of shooting down any target in the stratosphere. Air defense systems appeared as soon as airplanes were spotted over the battlefields of World War I. It is still not clear who was the first in Russia to use military planes and how successfully, but by 1915 all the warring countries had airplanes in their arsenals. The first anti-aircraft system in Russia was created after the beginning of WWI and protected Petrograd [St. Peterburg], the Russian capital at the time. As was no special anti-aircraft technology at the time, 75-mm navy canons were adapted to shoot at the sky and thus defend the city. The Russian defenders' first success occurred only after a year, when an anti-aircraft unit under the leadership of Captain V. Tarnavsky shot down a plane for the first time in Russian history, a German one. On Dec. 13, 1915 General Alexeyev, head of the Supreme Headquarters, signed a decree on the formation of four separate light batteries "for firing on military airplanes." In 1932 the Soviet Union began developing a single anti-aircraft system. By the beginning of WWII the anti-aircraft's destroyer aviation had received I-15 destroyers, and later the even faster YAK-3s. These were equipped with the 85-mm, 76-mm and 37-mm anti-aircraft guns. The military then acquired projectors, new, more powerful radio transmitters, reliable wire communication, cars and other technology. - http://rbth.com/defence/2015/03/09/100_years_of_russian_air_defense_the_principal_milestones_of_the_cent_44273.html)
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