Estonian Radar will Scan the Sky over St. Petersburg

A radar for long-range monitoring of the skies over Estonia and its neighboring states has been put into operation in the northeast of the country.

The first testing of its operation is to be conducted today to make sure there are no faults in the functioning of the powerful radar, the Estonian Defense Ministry said, and only after that the official ceremony of opening the radar station, scheduled for April, will take place.

According to the information available to RIA Novosti, with the help of this equipment made by Lockheed Martin, Tallinn will be capable of monitoring airspace at the altitude of 30 km and at a distance of 450 km. It is supposed, for instance, that its antenna the size of a three-storey building will easily "reach out" as far as St. Petersburg.

It was stressed also at the Estonian Defense Ministry that the radar would become a component of Baltnet, a joint system for monitoring the skies over the Baltic States, which, for its part, will be linked to the NATO air control system.