Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) will completely switch to digital data transmission technologies by 2020, the Defense Ministry press service said in a statement.

According to the MoD press service, missile launch centers, down to the division level, as well as the SMF’s Communications Center, training facilities and the Peter the Great Military Academy in Moscow and its branch in Serpukhov, are now all equipped with digital telecommunications equipment.

Over the past four years new digital communications systems for SMF divisions have been delivered to command points across the country and satellite communications centers have been modernized along with short and ultra-shortwave up radio stations and service and repair centers.

“If the current pace of modernization is maintained, by 2020 the Russian Strategic Missile Forces will be 100-percent equipped with digital data transmission technologies,” the statement said.

On December 17, the Russian military celebrated the Day of Strategic Missile Forces (SMF).

The Russian SMF was established in 1959 in the USSR. With more than 5,000 missiles launched in 57 years, the SMF have never been used for the intended purpose as a military power.

The SMF is a vitally important branch of the Russian military in its own right, acting as a “guarantor of the security of the Russian Federation and its allies, as well as the independence of its foreign and domestic policy,” as SMF Commander Colonel General Sergey Karakayev put it. He explained the key role of the SMF as “ensuring the country’s security until in result of technological progress or change in the nature of international relations the nuclear weapons lose their deterrent role.”