YALTA, October 3. /TASS/. The first satellites of the future orbital grouping of Russia’s missile warning system’s space-based echelon are expected to be launched in 2015, the director general of Mintz Radio-Technical Institute and the chief designer said on Friday.

Russia is currently developing a space system that is set to become a space echelon of the missile warning system designed to detect and track launches of ballistic missiles around the world. “Test launches will be made next year,” Sergey Boyev said, giving no details on the number of satellites in the future grouping.

The results obtained by designers of the single space system in the Kometa corporation “fuel confidence that the first tests and the first launches will be successful,” he added. “In the end, we will boost the grouping to the needed number,” Boyev stressed.

The Western sanctions against Russia are unlikely to seriously affect the terms of the project’s implementation and the quality of the system, the director general said. “We have been developing a digital and component base for a long time, and I expect that a whole range of imported decisions will be replaced by our own,” Boyev explained.

In April, Russia lost the last geostationary satellite of the country’s Oko (Eye) orbital missile early warning network, established in 1990s to survey countries possessing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and detect possible launches.

Russia’s military officials said out of six satellites working on the high-elliptical orbit, only two continue performing tasks just three hours per day. The loss of the satellite is not expected to affect the efficiency of the missile warning system, which is mainly based on ground radar stations.

Russia has been developing a new system of air and space defense that will incorporate components for air space reconnaissance, a source from the Russian Defense Ministry told TASS.

The air reconnaissance component will provide information about detected targets to air defense troops and monitor air defense and space defense facilities, the source said.