15th Special Purpose Aerospace Army
Identity
This record matches the Russian Space Forces formation officially described as the 15th Army of the Aerospace Forces, special purpose. Russian state reference material says it was created on 1 December 2011 within the Aerospace Defense Troops and remained part of the Space Forces after their re-establishment inside the Aerospace Forces on 1 August 2015. ([tass.ru](https://tass.ru/info/1484003?utm_source=openai))
Command node
Open sources tie the army’s visible command-and-control hub to Krasnoznamensk, Moscow Oblast, not clearly to Moscow city. RT reported in April 2019 that the Titov Main Test Space Center in Krasnoznamensk housed the command post and control center of the 15th Army, and a 2022 Moscow Oblast report described awards being presented to 15th Army officers there. I did not find a reliable open source confirming a separate headquarters in Moscow city, so the metadata claim of HQ Moscow should be treated as unconfirmed. ([russian.rt.com](https://russian.rt.com/russia/news/621328-nochnye-volki-den-kosmonavtiki))
Mission
Verified open sources describe the army’s core roles as missile-attack warning, monitoring the space situation, and command and control of a large share of Russia’s military and dual-use satellites. In a 2020 interview reported by TASS, Lt. Gen. Andrei Vyshinsky said its forces detected more than 60 ballistic-missile and space-launch events that year, added more than 1,500 space objects to tracking, and detected more than 250 foreign satellite maneuvers. ([cna.org](https://www.cna.org/reports/2023/11/Role-of-Space-in-Russias-Operations-in-Ukraine.pdf))
Composition
Open sources consistently identify three principal subordinate centers: the Main Missile Attack Warning Center, the Main Space Reconnaissance Center, and the Titov Main Test and Space Systems Control Center. Together they provide the army’s early-warning, space-surveillance, and orbital-control functions. ([cna.org](https://www.cna.org/reports/2023/11/Role-of-Space-in-Russias-Operations-in-Ukraine.pdf))
Footprint
The formation is geographically distributed rather than concentrated at one installation. Russian reporting says its units extend from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka, while the space-surveillance network uses specialized radar, laser-optical, and electro-optical assets in the Moscow Region, Altai, the Far East, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, and Tajikistan. Russian state reporting also described ongoing expansion of new space-surveillance systems and early-warning radars. ([360.ru](https://360.ru/news/mosobl/vorobev-nagradil-lichnyj-sostav-armii-vks-v-krasnoznamenske/))
Leadership status
Lt. Gen. Andrei P. Vyshinsky is publicly confirmed in open sources as commander in October 2020 and again in a Ministry of Defense report dated 20 May 2021. I did not find a later official public confirmation of the army commander in the sources reviewed as of 12 March 2026, so his status should be treated as last openly confirmed, not definitively current. ([tass.com](https://tass.com/defense/1207687?utm_source=openai))