Air Force and Air Defence

• Mission
• History
• Command
• Organisation
• Equipment and weapons
• Contacts

Mission

The Air Force and Air Defence (AFAD) is a service of the Belarusian Armed Forces, designed to defend critical facilities and military forces from air attacks, destroy enemy military industrial installations and troops and support the Belarusian Army.

AFAD consists of two operational-tactical commands and military units providing combat and combat service support.

Tasks in peacetime:

• pulling combat duty, as well as duty for Belarusian uniformed services (the Border Committee, Interior Ministry, State Security Committee and Emergencies Ministry), transporting the Defence Ministry’s task groups and senior military and state officials, conducting continuous radar intelligence in the airspace, supervising that all bodies abide by relevant regulations when using the airspace and flying across the state border;
• training units to accomplish combat missions;
• supporting training activities of the Army and executing special tasks (transportation of troops and military and civil cargoes).

Tasks in wartime:

• providing air defence of critical military and state facilities and groups of forces;
• destroying hostile aircraft on the ground and in the air in order to repulse or frustrate the enemy’s attack and prevent him from gaining air supremacy;
• attacking enemy objects;
• furnishing air support to the troops;
• killing enemy airborne forces in the air and at landing areas;
• conducting airborne operations;
• transporting troops and cargoes;
• carrying out electronic warfare and air surveillance.

AFAD performs its tasks in conjunction with the Army’s air defences and the Armed Forces’ rocket troops and artillery, electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance forces.