Hugh Harkins

Russia's Coastal Missile Shield, Bal-E & Bastion Hugh Harkins

The Bal-E and Bastion mobile coastal missile complexes, introduced to service with the Russian Federation in the second decade of the twenty first century, are new generation weapon systems designed to deny access to a potential enemy - in particular the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) alliance, which is perceived as the main threat to the Russian Federation - to Russia's vast coastlines, sea lines of communications, ports and naval bases. Bal-E and Bastion capabilities are complementary to each other and form two of the three surface based medium range and inner elements of Russia's overall defence in depth policy to counter NATO land attack cruise missile armed warships, aircraft carrier battle groups and amphibious assault groups threatening Russia's territorial integrity. This volume sets out to detail the Bal-E and Bastion complexes in domestic Russian service and extends to the stationary Bastion complex that has been developed and tested, but, as of 2018, remains un-fielded. All technical data relating to the respective weapon systems and their components have been provided by the respective design bureaus and manufacturers, as has much of the imagery and graphics, with additional impute from the MODRF (Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation). Whilst the use of an 'E' at the end of a specific Russian Federation weapon system designation often denotes an export standard, the use of the Bal-E designation is employed by the MODRF in reference to the domestic standard. This revised volume replaces the volume published in 2018. It is generally identical except in respect to the calculation of Bastion complex missile flight time. The value for the entire flight duration is included, whereas the 2018 volume carried only the value for the terminal flight phase.