MOSCOW, August 26. /TASS/. The Research and Production Association of Machine-Building (the town of Reutov, the Moscow Region) will deliver three battalion sets of Bastion mobile coastal defense missile systems this year, Company Chief Designer and CEO Alexander Leonov said on Monday on the eve of the MAKS international aerospace exhibition.

"At a meeting at the Defense Ministry of Russia in April this year, which discussed the fulfilment of the defense procurement plan in 2019, I reported to Defense Minister Army General Sergei Shoigu that work was underway to manufacture and deliver three sets of Bastion coastal defense missile systems," the chief executive said.

The Russian defense industry earlier told TASS that new Bastion coastal defense systems would join coastal defense and land troops of the Pacific, Northern and Black Sea Fleets.

The Bastion coastal defense system with standardized Yakhont (Oniks) supersonic homing anti-ship cruise missiles went into service in the Russian troops in 2010. The Bastion is designated to strike various types of surface ships operating as part of amphibious assault formations, convoys, surface action and carrier strike groups, and also single ships and radar-contrast land targets under enemy intensive fire and electronic counter-measures.

According to the data of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russian Navy currently operates over 40 Bastion coastal defense systems. Specifically, they are deployed in Crimea, on the Kotelny Island (the Novosibirsk Archipelago), in the Kaliningrad Region, in Syria and on Kamchatka.

A Bastion battalion is capable of defending a coastline stretching over 600km. The Bastion can fire Oniks missiles to a range of 500km. The firing positions can be moved away from the coastline by 200km.