Russian missile attack early warning system

820th Main Centre for Missile Attack Warning
Главный центр предупреждения о ракетном нападении
Part of Russian Space Forces
Solnechnogorsk-7
820th Main Centre for Missile Attack Warning
Coordinates	56°14′29″N 37°00′50″E / 56.241389°N 37.013889°E / 56.241389; 37.013889
Site history
Built	1971 (1971)

Coordinates: 56°14′30″N 37°00′50″E / 56.241578°N 37.013825°E / 56.241578; 37.013825

The 820th Main Centre for Missile Attack Warning (Russian: Главный центр предупреждения о ракетном нападении (Гцпрн), tr. GTsPRN) is the Russian early warning network against ballistic missile attack. It has headquarters in the village of Timonovo near Solnechnogorsk outside Moscow and is part of the Russian Space Forces. The centre consists of a network of early warning radar stations which transmit their data to the control centre near Solnechnogorsk. Other information comes from the early warning Oko satellites and the Don-2N missile defence radar. Information from the centre could be used for a launch on warning nuclear missile attack or to engage the A-135 anti-ballistic missile system.

The centre is the control centre for the radar network. Here signals from every station are received and, if necessary, a message can be sent to the presidential 'nuclear briefcase' for authorisation to use nuclear weapons. There is a communications centre which has a number of backup channels to communicate with each radar station. If a ballistic missile attack is discovered the duty commander reports this to the central command post of the General Staff. At the same time the duty engineer reports it to the commander of the Aerospace Defence Forces, for redundancy.

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